Discover Top Posts Tagged with #eudyptula

The Great ACT-NSW-NZ Trip, 2023-2024 - Taiaroa Head, Otago Peninsula

After OPERA @purrdence and I headed even further up the Otago Peninsula, to the Royal Albatross Centre on Taiaroa Head. The head is on the eastern side of the harbour entrance. The other tags on the maps are my iNaturalist sightings elsewhere around Dunedin, and Purrdence's from her previous trip.

The albatross I'll cover in their own post, but the area also has Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor), Red-billed Gulls (Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae ssp. scopulinus), Otago Shags (Leucocarbo chalconotus ssp. chalconotus), and no doubt a bunch of other seabirds I don't have the skill to photograph or ID.

No doubt the birds appreciate the protections set up around the head, to keep predators, vandals, and other threats away. But that doesn't stop the seabirds harrassing each other. For example, the first penguin to come ashore in the evening was instantly chased back into the sea by the gulls, and this continued until enough penguins came ashore together to harrass the gulls right back.

do you have a favourite penguin!

Oh yes, absolutely!!!

Fairy or Blue or Little Penguin (Eudyptula spp.), family Spheniscidae, order Sphenisciformes, found in coastal areas of New Zealand and southern Australia

This is the smallest penguin.

They nest in burrows at or near the coast.

This species has been split into 2 species, E. minor and E. novaehollandiae was split off in 2016.

photographs by JJ Harrison

#penguin #eudyptula #spheniscidae #sphenisciformes #seabird #ocean #bird #ornithology #australia #new zealand #animals #nature

Fairy Penguins (Eudyptula minor) swimming in Sydney Harbor

by Scott Portelli

#little penguin #fairy penguin #Eudyptula minor #eudyptula #spheniscidae #sphenisciformes #aves #chordata #uploads #wildlife: australia #penguins #seabirds #birds

Eudyptula minor

By J. J. Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0

Etymology: Good Diver

First Described By: Bonaparte, 1856

Classification: Dinosauromorpha, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoromorpha, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostaylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Neognathae, Neoaves, Aequorlitornithes, Ardeae, Aequornithes, Austrodyptornithes, Sphenisciformes, Spheniscidae

Status: Extant, Least Concern

Time and Place: From 12,000 years ago until today, in the Holocene of the Quaternary

Little Penguins are known from the coast of Australia and New Zealand

Physical Description: Little Penguins are some of the most adorable penguins alive today, and the reason is clear: they’re smol! Little Penguins range in size between 40 and 45 centimeters in length, and none weigh more than 2.1 kilograms. They are a blue-grey on their backs and white on their bellies and necks. They have very small flippers, which can be entirely blue or blue only in the center with white banding around it. They have short little tails and small feet, which are formed into lightly orange flippers. Their beaks are short and round, and either light in color or dark depending on the population. The juveniles tend to be a somewhat duller color than the adults, but usually very similar overall.

By Magnus Kjaergaard, CC BY 3.0

Diet: Little Penguins feed mainly on fish that form schools in the pelagic zone of the ocean (rather than closer to the coast). They’ll also feed on cephalopods and crustaceans.

By Francesco Veronesi, CC BY-SA 2.0

Behavior: These nocturnal penguins will capture their food via pursuit-diving, mainly swimming around schools of fish in tighter and tighter circles until finally - woosh! - they dive into the middle and grab as much food as they can. In shallower water, they do pursue the fish more directly. They can dive as deep as 50 meters underwater, sometimes more - including 69 meters deep. They go up to 62 kilometers away from the nesting and sleeping colony sites, though they can usually only go a fraction of that in a single day and longer distances are reserved for multiple day trips. Females tend to forage more than the males. They feed alone, though they do forage in groups. They are extremely noisy in their colonies, making a variety of trills, brays, growls, grunts, yelping, trumpeting, and wailing sounds to one another. They do not migrate, but do stay near the breeding colony extensively during the moulting and nesting season. Juveniles will leave the colony for a large amount of time, but do eventually return to breed where they were born.

By Phillip Island Tourism, CC BY-SA 4.0

Little Penguins begin breeding in July and continue through December, though it varies from colony to colony and from year to year. They tend to stick to one nest site for their whole lives and are also fairly monogamous, though they do divorce from their partners around 76% of the time. If they are unsuccessful in raising any chicks one year, the next year they are more likely to divorce than not. The nests are made in a little bit far apart from one another in the colonie, usually a burrow in the sand lined with plant material. Usually two eggs are laid in the nest and are incubated for a little more than one month by both parents. The chicks hatch extremely fluffy and greyish-brown; they then molt to look dark brown and grey another month later. At this time young birds will form creches together for two more months, hanging out and learning from each other. They then fledge and become juveniles two more months later. They become sexually mature at two to four years of age, and can live for up to 20 years (though shorter is more common). The chicks and nesting colonies tend to feed at dusk.

By Mark Nairn, CC BY 3.0

Ecosystem: Little Penguins live mainly in sandy and rocky coasts, usually near the bases of cliffs and in sand dunes. They will spend most of their time in temperate to sub-arctic marine waters, many miles offshore. They are preyed upon by cats, dogs, rats, foxes, lizards, snakes, ferrets, stoats, seals, and some other ocean predators. They are mostly affected by introduced mammalian predators at this time.

By fir0002, GFDL 1.2

Other: While Little Penguins are, overall, doing alright and are even common in terms of population management; however, a number of human-created threats are affecting certain colonies and bringing many of them to the verge of collapse. Uncontrolled hunting by domesticated dogs and cats are major causes of colony destruction, as are oil spills, fishing interactions (including being caught in nets), human interference and development, as well as cullings by humans attempting to manage populations of other birds. As such, Little Penguins are of major interest for ecological groups in order to preserve their populations in light of these threats. Fossils of this species are known from its current range from the recent ice age.

~ By Meig Dickson

Sources Under the Cut

Eudyptula

Eudyptula minor, by fir0002, GFDL 1.2

Genus Name: Eudyptula

Status: Extant

First Described: 1856

Described By; Bonaparte

Classification: Dinosauria, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Neognathae, Neoaves, Aequorlitornithes, Ardeae, Aequornithes, Austrodyptornithes, Sphenisciformes, Spheniscidae, Spheniscinae

Referred Species: E. minor, E. novaehollandiae, E. albosignata

The Little Penguin, Eudyptula (Good Little Diver), is the smallest genus of penguin, known by quite a few common names, from Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and the Chatham Islands. There are two definite species - E. minor, the Little Blue Penguin, and E. novaehollandiae, the Australian Little Penguin. These animals are also known as Fairy Penguins, and Kororaa by the Māori people. The oldest known fossils of the genus come from about 0.126 million years ago, meaning that this penguin type diverged from its relatives fairly recently. E. albosignata was long thought to be a distinct genus, prior to mitochondrial DNA studies revealing that it was a subspecies of E. minor. Still, it is called the White-Flippered penguin, and is a distinct morph from the main Little Penguin type.

By JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0

E. minor, the Little Blue Penguin, is the smallest species of penguin. It grows to be about 33 cm in height and 43 cm long. It lives in along the coasts of southern Australia, New Zealand, and colonies are even known from Chile and South Africa, but it is uncertain whether or not those are just accidental colonies. There are probably around 350,000 to 600,000 individuals of the species worldwide, though they are threatened in certain areas (and certain species are also threatened.)

By JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0

It’s head and back are blue in color, with grey to white feathers covering the underside of the body. They have dark grey to black beaks, and pale silver to blue grey or hazel eyes. They have pink feet with black soles and webbing. They live about 6.5 years, but in captivity they can even live up to 25 years long. For the most part, they live in nesting colonies, and are diurnal, spending most of the day swimming and foraging at sea. During the breeding season, they leave their nest at sunrise, forage throughout the day, and return to their nests after dark - they plan their whole day by the cycle of moon and sun light. They also preen their feathers to keep themselves waterproof by rubbing tiny drops of oil onto every feather from a gland above their tails.

They eat small fish, cephalopods, and crustaceans, diving and swimming far out tos ea to get them. Sardines also feature greatly in their diets, and they were affected ecologically by the sardine morality events in the 1990s. Their dives typically don’t go any deeper than 2 meters, and they dive for only about 21 seconds at a time, but some can dive up to 20 meters deep and remain submerged for an entire minute. They are a predator to parasites and are also a host to mites that feed on their preening oil.

By Glen Fergus, CC BY-SA 2.5

The females mature at 2 years of age, and the males at 3 years; they mate monogamously for one breeding season, but switch burrows when eggs aren’t being tended to. They do, however, keep to the same nesting colony throughout their lives. The nests are close to the sea, in burrows or in caves and rock crevices. The mated pairs share duties during child-rearing, including incubation and taking care of the chicks. They are also the only penguins that produce more than one clutch of eggs per breeding season, but this happens infrequently. The breeding season also varies depending on the colony location; Eastern Australians lays their eggs from July through December, where in South Australia they lay eggs between April and October.

From http://www.factzoo.com/birds/little-penguin-little-blue-fairy.html

The eggs are white or lightly mottled brown, and they incubate for 36 days. The chicks are then brooded for 18 to 38 days, and they fledge after 7 to 8 weeks. The chicks are fed at dusk, and the birds all come to shore to defend against predators that might try and pick off the babies. Sadly, these birds are threatened by human development, interference, and fishing; as well as pollution and predation from non-natural predators introduced by humans.

E. m. albosignata, by R. Roscoe, CC BY-SA 3.0

The white-flippered variant of E. minor, E. albosignata or E. minor albosignata, is similar in size to E. minor, but has white markings on its flippers and are more grey in color. They also differ in behavior: they are nocturnal, and stay with the colony during the day, and then leave during darkness and return before dawn. They lay eggs from July to December, laid in burrows under the tree brush, as well as in dunes. They incubate their eggs from 33 to 39 days, and the chicks fledge after 50 to 65 days. They feed on fish and cephalopods, and utilize pursuit diving to catch their food.

E. novaehollandiae, From https://leesbird.com/spheniscidae/

E. novaehollandiae, or the Australian Little Penguin, is considered a completely distinct species; and its main range is in Australia, though it also exists in New Zealand. It is distinguishable by having brighter blue feathers, and different vocalizations, and they behave differently as well: they swim together in large groups after dusk and walk along the short to reach nesting sites, probably as a strategy to avoid predators. They also double brood - laying another clutch after the first has fledged.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudyptula

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_penguin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-flippered_penguin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudyptula_novaehollandiae

Shout out goes to @unmadebed!

get your mutt working with smtp gmail + 2fa (eudyptula restart)

I recently decided to restart the eudyptula challenge, because my life is too easy and I miss the passive aggressive pithy comments that take weeks to arrive from supposedly impossible to anger scripts.

However, it's been way too long and once again I remember that the setup of the surrounding environment takes more time than a lot of the coding effort.

Case 1 - no html email can be used

Gmail's web client automagically adds html to the message and there doesn't appear to be an easy way to turn that off. A lot of high level linux nerds hate html and the linux kernel mailing list rejects it anyway so at least it accurately reflects the stubborn and awkward nature of kernel development.

Whatever - I used to use mutt for commandline email, but google has since changed it's requirements and we gotta change the config. Also using two factor authentication presents another pain in the ass but it's not too bad (just use an app password instead of the regular password)

tl;dr - if you screw it up, it'll look like this

[2016-04-24 09:49:42] 7< 535-5.7.8 Username and Password not accepted. Learn more at [2016-04-24 09:49:42] SASL authentication failed

Use this config

set ssl_starttls=yes set ssl_force_tls=yes set imap_user = 'YOUR GMAIL ADDRESS' set imap_pass = 'YOUR 2FA PASS' set from='GMAIL ADDRESS' set realname='YOUR NAME' set folder = imaps://imap.gmail.com/ set spoolfile = imaps://imap.gmail.com/INBOX set postponed="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/Drafts" set header_cache = "~/.mutt/cache/headers" set message_cachedir = "~/.mutt/cache/bodies" set certificate_file = "~/.mutt/certificates" set smtp_url = 'smtps://<GMAILADDRESS BEFORE @ SYMBOL>@smtp.gmail.com:465/' set smtp_pass = 'YOUR 2FA PASS' set move = no set imap_keepalive = 900

I actually generated a second app password for the smtp_pass param as I ended up trying a whole combination of features from various articles i found over the past 5 years.

The notable changes are 1. smtps protocol instead of smtp in the url 2. only including the first part of the email in the url (some articles recommend putting the entire email in) 3. using 2fa app passwords instead of the gmail account pass

For posterity and future googlers, this setup works for me on April 2016.

now let's get frustrated!

#programming #eudyptula #smtp

At the beginning of March last year (2014) I read about something called The Eudyptula Challenge. It's website describes it as: ...a series of programming exercises for the Linux kernel, that start from a very basic "Hello world" kernel module,...

#eudyptula #linux kernel

Little Penguins - The smallest penguins on the world

Commonly known as Little Penguin, Fairy Penguin, and Blue Penguin, Eudyptula minor (Sphenisciformes - Spheniscidae) is the smallest penguin in the world; this flightless bird stands at an average height of 30 cm and has a weight of 1.1 to 1.2 kg. Like the chicks in the photo, juveniles have a dorsal plumage that is a brighter light blue than the indigo-blue of the adults.

The Little Penguin is found throughout the southern coast of Australia and as far north as the South Solitary Island off the coast of New South Wales. They are also native to the coasts of New Zealand.

References: [1] - [2] - [3]

#nature #animals #little penguin #eudyptula minor #eudyptula #australia #fauna #wildlife #birds #penguin #aves #sphenisciformes #spheniscidae #zoology #ornithology #blue #original