In contrast yellow-eyed penguins do not nest within visual sight of each other.

It was concluded that the yellow-eyed penguins were being infected by biting black flies in their nesting area.

Protecting yellow-eyed penguins, the rarest penguins, presented other challenges.

We stopped and admired kakas, long-tailed cuckoos and yellow-eyed penguins.

We will search for rare yellow-eyed penguins, the endemic teal duck and powerful Hooker sea lions.

And a short walk away at low tide there is a petrified forest in a cove, home to yellow-eyed penguins returning to feed their chicks.

The island is a nature reserve, and is home to many protected seabirds, notably Yellow-eyed Penguins.

I left on my wildlife tour, scaling cliffs in the rain to take photos of yellow-eyed penguins wading in from the sea.

Mr. McGrouther had noticed four pairs of yellow-eyed penguins nesting at either end of the beach.

Diphtheritic stomatitis is a recently discovered disease and has thus far been reported only in Yellow-eyed penguins (Megadyptes antipodes).

After their extinction, their range was occupied by Yellow-eyed Penguins, previously most abundant in the sub-Antarctic islands further south.

Administered partly by the Otago Peninsula Trust, the beach is a habitat for many rare species, notably yellow-eyed penguins.

A new grandstand was built and Marineland saw yellow-eyed penguins and little blue penguins lay eggs for the first time including some successful hatchings.

A colony of little blue penguins lives on the harbour, and a colony of yellow-eyed penguins just south of the town attracts ecotourists.

Yellow-eyed penguins are unusual in that they require forest for nesting, putting them in proximity to New Zealanders who have logged to make way for farming.

The consensus view of New Zealand penguin workers is that it is preferable to use habitat rather than colony to refer to areas where yellow-eyed penguins nest.

Among the fauna that may be observed are Yellow-eyed penguins, Little penguins, Spotted Shags, Sooty Shearwaters, fur seals, and Hector's dolphins.

The seabirds include Southern Rockhopper and Yellow-eyed Penguins, Antipodean, Southern Royal, Light-mantled and White-capped Albatrosses, and White-chinned Petrel.

Mr. Darby said yellow-eyed penguins had been adopted as mascots of a New Zealand cheese made by Mainland Products Ltd., whose commercials had long featured an elderly fellow who walked with a bit of a waddle.

"In 1990, over half the known yellow-eyed penguins died from some mysterious disease," said John Darby, seabird conservationist, now retired from the University of Otago, who has studied these endangered penguins in New Zealand for 22 years.

"It is an ocean ringed with cold water," he says, "with kelp forests and sea lions, squid and jellyfish," where "yellow-eyed penguins fly over dark sea bottoms and southern pigfish roll in surf that sweeps over sandy seabeds."

"Our findings demonstrate that yellow-eyed penguins on mainland New Zealand are not a declining remnant of a previous abundant population, but came from the subantarctic relatively recently and replaced the extinct Waitaha Penguin," said team member Dr Jeremy Austin, deputy director of the Australasian Centre for Ancient DNA.