Urban Wildlife Trust

08/06/2026

27/05/2026

19/05/2026

11/05/2026

Check out this solid unit 👀 Today we're saying 'kia ora' to kererū! Around Wellington we've seen a 243% increase in kererū since 2011. These big native birds have big mouths... and big puku! That means they can eat the largest berries of our native trees: things like tawa, miro and karaka. When we remove predators, kererū thrive and this helps restore our native forest 💚

Read more about how native birds have increased in Pōneke 👉🏽 https://www.pfw.org.nz/our-project/news/lets-crow-about-soaring-bird-numbers-in-the-capital/

📸 Tony Stoddard

28/04/2026

A Long Beach resident had to quickly shield her toddler's eyes after they walked into a cave filled with dead penguins.

It's feared the settlement's small but thriving little blue penguin colony, near Dunedin, has been completely wiped out in an apparent dog attack.

A Long Beach resident had to quickly shield her toddler's eyes after they walked into a cave filled with dead penguins.

02/03/2026

We have a full house in our nest camera box today. This is not unusual and we've had up to 7 chicks in one box before. This happens when the chicks head out of the nest at night to ambush the parents when they return. Then afterwards they might go back into a different (perhaps closer) nest. The adult is likely to be a random adult, maybe about to moult. We'll find out tomorrow during monitoring.

Head over to our livestreams to check out the progress:
https://www.youtube.com/@%C5%8CamaruPenguin/streams

And you can see the location of the nest on our website that has live updates from our monitoring team:
https://www.penguins.co.nz/about/meet-the-colony

10/02/2026

Sadly we picked up this penguin in the long weekend that had been bitten by a dog. He was still alive but had to be euthanised as his injuries were not survivable. Please always have your dog on a leash in coastal areas, even if you think there isn't any wildlife present. Little penguins are a cryptic species and could be anywhere along the coastline. At this time of year they're coming ashore to moult and might hide in areas where they wouldn't normally go. This penguin was only just over a year old and had fledged from our colony, so he probably hadn't started breeding yet.