Little Blue Penguin.

 

Places for Penguins

Through pest control and habitat restoration, we’re giving the little blue penguin a fighting chance of reversing its population decline in urban Wellington.

This community driven programme was established on the Miramar peninsula in Wellington during Wellington’s Seaweek in 2007.

It focuses on coastal restoration, predator control, and nest-box building to establish favourable habitat and safe homes for Little Blue Penguins.

We also run education campaigns to raise awareness about Little Blue Penguins and encourage people to adopt responsible dog control.

The nesting program was test-launched by the Waitaki branch in Oamaru and has since been adopted by the West Coast Blue Penguin Trust.

There are now 300 nest boxes in the Oamaru area and Places for Penguins has established 250 nest boxes in the Wellington area.

Seatoun, Wellington High School, Strathmore school and the Wellington City Council & Greater Wellington Regional Council help out with the program and are involved in program activities. In 2012, Wellington Zoo became a Places for Penguins partner as well.

In the future, we hope to expand the Places for Penguins project to include other areas the penguins call home including Hawke’s Bay and Taranaki.

Little Blue Penguins: Life cycle

Little Blue Penguins (kororā) live around all of New Zealand’s coastal areas (except the Sub-Antarctic islands and the Kermadec Islands), and in South Australia and Tasmania.

Little blue penguin. Photo: Craig Mckenzie

They are the world’s smallest penguin, standing only 35-43 cm (just slightly taller than a rugby ball) and weighing slightly over 1kg.

Little Blue Penguins have a slate blue back with a white belly—perfect camouflage for blending in against the lighter water as seen from below and the darker as seen from above.

The birds hunt at sea, feeding on small sardine-sized fish, and may swim up to 25km offshore and up to 70km from their colonies, reaching speeds of 6kph.  In fact, their Latin name Eudyptula minor means“good little diver”.

Read more about Little blue penguin at:

http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/saving-our-environment/marine-and-coastal/places-penguins/little-blue-penguins-life-cycle

 

Story telling : Letter U for Unchained melody

Story Challenge: Letter “U”

Hi Bloggers! Do you have to share a story or a short reflection tagged with the letter “U”? says http://flickrcomments.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/story-challenge-letter-u/

 

Unchained Melody

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Origin of song

In 1955, Alex North and lyricist Hy Zaret were contracted to write a song as a theme for the obscure prison film Unchained,^[4] and their song eventually became known as the “Unchained Melody”. The song does not actually include the word “unchained”, and songwriter Zaret chose instead to focus his lyrics on someone who pines for a lover he has not seen in a “long, lonely time”.^[4] The 1955 film centers around a man who contemplates either escaping from prison to live life on the run, or completing his sentence and returning to his wife and family.^[4]

With Todd Duncan singing the vocals,^[2] the song was nominated for an Oscar in 1955, but the Best Song award went to the hit song “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing“.

The best known version of “Unchained Melody” was recorded by The Righteous Brothers. This song was produced by Phil Spector in 1965, credited to The Righteous Brothers, but performed as a solo by Bobby Hatfield, who later recorded versions credited solely to him. This recording climbed to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1965. It reached #14 in the UK in 1965.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unchained_Melody