Time for chicks - Royal Albatross Centre

We spent a few days in Dunedin, and one of the must-see's there is the Otago Peninsula. And that's exactly where we went. The peninsula is home to the world's only mainland royal albatross colony. And a tour is the only way to actually see the albatrosses, so, cheapskates as we are, we got tickets through a discount site, and booked a tour for 3pm.

Taiaroa Head Lighthouse

The colony is right at the head of the peninsula. We arrived a bit early so had a look around at the parking lot, with lots of screaming gulls. But no albatrosses of yet. We took a stroll to the cliffs, looked at the lighthouse, and the fur seals below them. We have seen a lot of fur seals this trip!

Our tour started with a video of albatrosses and a short talk. Both very informative. Did you know albatrosses mostly eat floating dead squid because they can't dive very deep? I didn't. 

Anyway, after that we walked up to the observatory, right in between the nesting albatrosses. There were several binoculars, so we could take a look. November is nesting period, and with the binoculars, we could see 5 birds from the observatory. Our guide tolds us a bit about their personalities, and about life in the colony in general. 

Southern Royal Albatross nesting 

Lower at the cliff we could see the cormorants nesting. After about half an hour we walked down again. For some of the participants this was it, but we had booked the 'unique tour', so we were allowed up in the old fortress.

We got to see the disappearing gun (yes really!), the old armoury, but best of all... two albatrosses up close! Appearantly they prefer nesting closer to the viewing post of the fortress than next to the observatory, who knew?

Red-billed gull

After the fortress tour, we walked all the way down, passed the red-billed gull colony. We've seen these gulls a lot in New Zealand, and hadn't thought a lot about it. But they turn out to be endemic to New Zealand, and endangered at that. 

But the best thing? Unlike the albatrosses, that take like forever to incubate, the guls' chicks had already hatched! Cute as a button, even though I know they'll grown up to be annoying gulls. 

Posing like a grown up gull.

The colony as a whole was loud and smelly, as you'd expect from sea gulls. The chicks range widely in age. The youngest we saw was a very fluffy and shy day-old (maybe even hours?) next to an unhatched egg. But others were a lot bigger and bolder, screeching away. Very cool to see that many, and that close up!

Fluffy little chick