[update: added two panoramas]
Penguin day!
We left Timaru and headed south via the coastline to Oamaru where they have both a little blue penguin colony and a colony of the more endangered yellow eyed penguin. Penguins feed at sea all day long then return to their burrows in the evening to rest. The little blues had only recently (in the ’90s) started nesting in an abandoned quarry on the coastline and a viewing area had sprung up around it.
The blues are the smallest penguins in the world. (There are only 17 kinds and most live in NZ.) This reserve colony has been set up with man-made nesting boxes that are just barely big enough for the blues to get into but too small for predators (e.g. cats, dogs, etc.) to get in easily — at least not with a penguin beak pecking back at them. Every evening the penguins come back from their day at the sea, clamber up the rocky shoreline and head into their little burrows in the field by the coast. And waiting for them is a grandstand full of penguin nerds. It was noon when we got there and the usual flock of penguins would not be arriving back from the sea until 8pm or so, by which time we would be long gone down the coast, 
so we instead got a look at the three moulting penguins stuck in their nests waiting for their plumage to replenish (takes a few weeks). We could get a look into their nests via a darkened hut that the boxes backed into. Sorry no pictures of live little blues; none allowed. This pic is of two stuffed (~sniff~) guys in a glass box.
As a consolation prize, we walked out on the cliff face along a treacherous path that took us above some shag nesting sites. Actually, we didn’t see them at first, until we noticed one looking up at as, and carefully leaning out we cou
ld see that dozens were right there below us.
Around the corner of the bay was a coastline where yellow eyed penguins roost. The yellow eyed penguin is the most endangered penguin in the world. This colony is one without a shop / ticket area; just a viciously windblasted pathway along the top of a cliff to the top of the hill overlooking the bay. There was one lone penguin waaaaay in the distance and one other set of people watching it with binoculars.
We set off for Dunedin a few hours down the road. Dunedin itself seemed perfectly charming, somewhat Scottish looking — apparently it was modeled on Edinburgh but how would we know. We made a brief stop at the Speight’s beer brewery (“Pride of the South”) and then continued out of town to the Otago peninsula, which is where our campground and more wildlife destinations were.
The drive out on the peninsula was spectacular. Breathtaking! Or gut-wrenching, in the case of Sharon peering down at her imminent death on the ultra narrow and twisty roads.
A yellow eyed penguin colony conservation center, aka Penguin Place was set up on the Otago Peninsula. This one has been there for over 20 years. It’s at the base of a steep hillside that ends in a bay. 
The reserve has set up long, deep trenches that are covered by camoflage and allow visitors to make their way through the penguin nesting grounds without disturbing the penguins. It felt rather like a battlefield, with Chris thinking of WW1 trench warfare and Sharon feeling like she was in Viet Cong tunnels. 
Tour groups of about 15 can go through this maze of trenches/tunnels to viewing areas (where your peer out at ground level through slots high in the wall) and peer out at the penguins ambling by. As with the little blues, many are entering their annual moulting season where they regrow a new set of feathers. 
They must sit on land for about 4 weeks without fishing for any food, because the new feathers aren’t waterproof as they come in. They fatten up in the weeks preceeding and then must conserve their energy during the molt. If startled by people they can become so alarmed it uses up their fat stores and they may eventually starve to death before they can finish the moulting. These penguins come ashore off a blustery coast in the midst of seals lounging around and the ever present sheep. The yellow eyes nest in the forest up from the beach.
Special guest blog appearance by a sheep!
Had dinner at the 1908 Cafe in Portobello just down the street from our holiday park. The 1908 is an old residence that has been converted into a assorted things over the years, including a post office. It’s a grand little restaurant with excellent food. We had a bottle of local pinot noir and Chris had venison with mashed roasted vegetables and Sharon had pan-seared cod with passion fruit/chile sauce. Really a fantastic restaurant and our waitress Emily (“Emmalay”) was a doll.