After a six week diversion we are back to the South Island and this week is the turn of the Yellow-eyed Penguins of Roaring Bay. Roaring Bay is near Nugget Point in the Catlins of New Zealand’s far south. We were based at nearby Kaka Point for a few days with the aim of visiting a number of sites for bird and landscape photo options. The Yellow-eyed Penguins of Roaring Bay were at the top of my list having only seen mainland Yellow-eyed Penguins previously on the Otago Peninsula. My best photo opportunities have been from the Subantarctic Islands but that is a bit further to travel.

The hide at Roaring Bay is easily accessed from a parking area just before the Nugget Point car park. It is a short walk with signs requesting that people keep off the beach after 3pm to avoid disturbing returning penguins. Further signs sensibly advise silence to avoid disturbance but were obviously unintelligible to a visitor, presumably from the Donald Trump School of Self-importance, who had to arrive late clattering a tripod down and then start yelling and pushing his way in front of people before starting to take photos with his lens cap on. 

We had four penguins arrive braving the washing tub of surf rolling in onto the rocks causing the roaring sound for which the bay is named. It was great to watch them timing their landing with the surf and then hopping over the smooth boulders before resting briefly prior to struggling uphill to their roost sites.

Photographically it is quite a difficult scenario as it is late in the day with little light and an elevated site looking down onto the shore. Using the 500mm f4 lens with 1.4x teleconverter gave me a 700mm focal length which on the D500 gives an angle of view equivalent to a 1050mm lens which let me frame up a reasonable number of pixels onto the birds in the surf and at the boulder margin. ISO 800-1600 gave me a shutter speed of 1/800 to 1/1000 which was enough to freeze subject motion and with the lens held firmly against the window ledge of the hide camera shake was not an issue. I tried a few with lower ISO and 1/30 shutter speed to try and record some of the water movement but this is obviously a low yield option requiring some panning with the penguin which can be moving in multiple planes.

All photos with Nikon D500 and 500mm f4VR lens with TC14 apart from photo of Roaring Bay with iPhone 5SE