kororā Archives - Rakino Island

King’s Birthday Weekend 2025

We set off to Rakino with a number of tasks to undertake; a rubbish audit, water testing with Bert, and penguin sign construction. We ended up achieving the first two tasks, making some progress on signage, and taking on a few extra jobs besides. All to the good; a roaring northerly extended our stay by a couple of days and we didn’t mind at all.

You can read about the rubbish audit here https://www.rakino.org.nz/2025/06/08/rakino-waste-audit/ and I’m confident Bert will report on the stream and pond testing in due course.
The penguin signs are a work in progress, so hopefully Matariki long weekend will see them installed, FINALLY.

The coolest thing that happened to me was sighting a live little blue penguin for the first time ever on Rakino. Usually I just document dead kororā, so I was really happy to finally see a young’un, hunkered down under a rock ledge in the vicinity of Maori Garden Bay. There are plentiful penguin tracks around the coast currently, with many double tracks heading out into the tide, indicating parents off fishing for the day. Please, dog owners, ensure your dogs are within sight and under control at all times.

I also got to photograph a kākā at John and Carolyn MacKenzies. Accounts over the weekend are of up to five of them skraarking around overhead, which is pretty exciting for a kākāphile like myself.

**A young female kākā with an admiring audience of tūī, and a solitary bellbird.**

A couple of weekend downers; the moth plant infestation has reached epic almost out of control proportions, and the pods are beginning to split. Land owners with moth plant are going to be removing seedlings for years to come, as will their neighbours. Here are the rules for moth plant on Rakino and Waiheke.. https://www.tiakitamakimakaurau.nz/protect-and-restore-our-environment/pests-in-auckland/pest-search/Araser

**Granddaddy vine which we collected a black sack of pods from.**

The second bummer was the burgeoning bloom of clay sediment out into Maori Garden Bay which exacerbated as the rain intensified. This was particularly heartbreaking for me, as it is in the same area as our little blue penguin sighting, and also the numerous penguin tracks we had seen the previous day. It’s unacceptable to cause this level of environmental damage on Rakino, and should have been anticipated and mitigated.

**Sediment in the stream prior to the bloom out into the bay.**

Generally an excellent week spent hanging out though, some tasty pizza dinners cooked by Kate as she refines her offerings in anticipation of the Bay Belle floating pizzeria, https://www.instagram.com/baybellenz/
and many sociable evenings spent with all our island friends. I can’t tell a lie though; the rubbish audit was way too much fun.

Penguin Presentation Anzac Weekend

We have been trying to get Karen Saunders from Waiheke Native Bird Rescue to visit Rakino for a few years now, but despite the proximity to Waiheke, getting to Rakino can be difficult. Everything needs to align; the weather, Karen’s workload of avian patients, audience numbers on Rakino, a suitable venue, and availability of transport. Many thanks to Waiheke Local Board for providing the funding to cover transport costs!

After a few false starts and postponements we finally achieved a visit this Anzac Weekend. The Frecker’s generously allowed the Boatshed as a venue, Karen duly arrived via Sea Shuttle on a reasonably blustery Saturday, and the Rakino community came down to listen to and watch Karen’s engrossing audio visual presentation.

Rakino has a number of kororā burrows and installed nesting boxes, but we don’t really know what the population is. On an early morning low tide you can generally see their tracks in the sandy areas around the island. Woody Bay and Maori Garden Bay are regular spots to see evidence of their presence. They are also occasionally spotted on road, and as they are smelly little critters, their scent will give their occupancy away.

**Kororā tracks in the sand at Māori Garden Bay.**

**Smelly evidence of a penguin rocky roost/ burrowing area..**

We learned from Karen that the biggest threats to kororā are loss of and damage to habitat, threats to their food supply, and uncontrolled dogs. Karen and her team deal with the consequences of our neglect at Waiheke Native Bird Rescue, where they have the time & cash consuming task of nursing and rehabilitating injured and malnourished kororā back to health.
https://nativebirdrescue.nz/

The one thing we can do to protect kororā immediately is to keep our dogs indoors at night when little blue penguins are on island, and to be aware of where their burrows are. To that end, we have signage ready to be installed in the penguin zones that are easily accessible by dogs, (thank you Waiheke Local Board!) and a long term plan to have a penguin survey done on Rakino. Karen told us that on Waiheke, the areas with penguin burrows where dogs are excluded have more than 8 times as many penguins as areas where there are burrows, but dogs are not excluded. That’s an astonishing statistic.

We also learned about the times of year when they are particularly vulnerable to threats. This is over the summer months, which coincides with high population times on island. They are very vulnerable at nesting time, but also when they are moulting, and cannot go out to sea.

The presentation was followed up with a tuition on trail cam usage. Waiheke Local Board have also provided funding for a trail cam, which is to be set up on an occupied nesting box. We’re anticipating capturing some images of kororā which will be captivating for the Rakino community.

My anticipation is that the Rakino community now have tools and knowledge to protect our resident penguin population from the threats that imperil them, and the understanding that if we lose our little blue neighbours we’ve lost them forever. We are also hoping we can get Karen back again for another visit, and I expect a number of Rakino-ites will be visiting the Bird Rescue Center in the future.

**Engrossed audience, photo courtesy of Laura Mahon.**

Spring Tide on Rakino September 2024

A low spring tide on Rakino is my favourite time, because there are places you can winkle into that are generally inaccessible on foot, if you are feeling intrepid. Having never attempted a to reach the northern end before, Saturday September 21st offered up a perfect alignment, low tide, brilliant sunshine, no wind.

A keen rock-pooler, I’m the first to admit that sometimes Rakino rock pools can be spartan. Rock oysters and pupu abound, but chitons, limpets, and anemones do not. If I found a common brown sea anemone I would be overjoyed. Therefore, you cannot imagine my overwrought hysteria when we stumbled upon some small colonies of jewelled sea anemones lurking in a hidden puddle. It was in sharp contrast to the previous days overwrought hysteria, but more of that shortly…

Jewelled sea anemones

Heading northwards involved a fair amount of whining and griping from me, rock jumping, bare foot scrambling, dodgy rock hand holds, and at times heading in the chilly sea in order to get around a minor piece of rocky headland, in spite of the retreating tide. This was not made easier by the discovery of part of a shed cray exoskeleton, promptly named Reggie, and carried for a couple of hours over the rough terrain, with no breakage. I also managed to not drown my phone. There were caves, holes in rocks, plenty of kelp, rocky beaches, and splendid isolation.

No sooner did I say ‘we might get to the bottom of Pat’s place!’ than we literally ran into a stone wall. We could not go around into the raging tidal surges, and we could not go up the sheer clay cliffs which were reminiscent of Suvla Bay on a good day, so we had to admit defeat and turn back. This was a wise move as the tide was on the turn. Luckily turning tail is always faster than heading into the unknown..

The previous day had been markedly different. We arrived on the island with a senior coastal engineer, a representative of Auckland Council who has the not too arduous task of visiting all the inhabited gulf islands with council assets in order to ascertain council’s response to the challenge of a changing climate, and gather feedback from residents with regard to the long term resilience of those assets. Unfortunately it was torrential rain, a howling gale, and a near empty island, but we managed to wrangle up a few hardy Rakino-ites for him to talk to. The feedback was great, and after a short but interesting meeting we wandered around to Home Bay, so he could look at the council administered assets there.

Imagine our distress and embarrassment when we stumbled upon a scene of marine carnage; the beach littered with dead fish, three eagle rays with their wings hacked off, and saddest of all, a kororā, dead on the barge ramp. I do not wish to see this again, and if you are the holiday home owner responsible for the tradies that left this mess because of their callous disregard for our island marine life, please do the rest of us a favour and hold them to account. Set netting is legal, but leaving it unattended for a length of time in an area rays and penguins frequent is despicable. Thankfully Lez gave the idiots a well-deserved earful.

***Drowned kororā on the Home Bay barge ramp***

I managed a late afternoon rock scramble south of Woody Bay on Sunday. The kelp looked lush, and good habitat for marine critters, enticing for some summer snorkeling adventures.

***Kelp at the bottom of the saddle between Woody and West Bays.***

***Tassels of Neptune’s necklace bordering a rock pool.***

Monday and Tuesday were spent getting a bit of late season planting done, thank you to John MacKenzie and the Rakino Island Nursery for supplying the trees. They will either get tough or die, but it was so damp after the torrents of Friday I think they’ll be fine. The flax, kowhai, and whau flowers are ripening and the tui were thwocking each other out of the sky as they pre-emptively scoped out food sources, vantage points, and territory, springtime business as usual.
Simon spotted a couple of these slinky critters in the grass under the trees, elusive moko skinks, most likely a breeding pair. I’m happy they are surviving the predations of Kingfishers and pukeko.