Dear Mme. Krause and class,

Hi everyone, I saw these penguins and wanted to show you pictures.  These are rare yellow eyed penguins.  The brown fuzzy one is a chick only 8 weeks old and the adult is a male who was just looking after his chick waiting for the mom to come home with food.  The mom will eat the fish she gets from the ocean and regurgitates it for the chick.  As the chick gets older then the food will change and become chunkier – this is controlled by something called enzymes that change the chunkiness (my mom helped with this part because I couldn’t remember the word).  The other picture is of two penguins coming back in from feeding at sea.  They can bring a kilo of food (2.2 pounds) at a time which is a lot for a little penguin to carry in their gut because they only weigh 6-7 kilo’s.  

Yesterday we went to a blowhole called “Jack’s Blowhole”.  This is where water comes through caves from high tide and when high tide gets really high the water is blown up into the air.  We had to walk 15 min in from the sea to see it and we saw a lot of sheep and two were in our way in the path.  We walked along cliffs and through sub tropical rainforest to get there.  It was so cool.  We also went to see a waterfall which was cool, too.  After that we went down the road to a petrified forest that is 160 million years old from the Jurassic period.  I’ve also included pictures of the blowhole, waterfall and the petrified forest which looks like a bunch of rocks by the sea.  A volcano erupted and covered the forest and cooled down.  There are rocks that look like pieces of wood.  

I miss you all so much but am having a great time.

Will

These are the pictures.

Yellow eyed penguin chick – their eyes do not turn yellow until later (this chick is 8 weeks old)

The adult yellow eyed penguin

Jack’s Blowhole near Jack’s Bay

Purakaunui Falls

Petrified wood

Petrified forest