Portobello School project: kororā monitoring using trail cameras

Last month a new project began in one of the beaches of the beautiful Otago Peninsula in Dunedin. Students and teachers from Portobello School went on an adventure with our scientist Hiltrun Ratz to set up a trail camera in an area where there was evidence of kororā activity.

The students will watch the videos recorded along the whole breeding season and log in their observations on a spreadsheet. They will be able to examine the number of individuals, what time they come ashore or go to sea, study their behaviour and observe chicks when they start exploring outside the nest!

If you are curious, you can watch some of the clips we uploaded on our YouTube page.

So far, these penguins have been doing a lot of running around outside the boxes, including mating.