On Wednesday 03 July 2024, some of the Cape Bird Club members and I went to SANCCOB to look at how they save penguins and other sea birds. It was very wet and rainy there, so we got soaked.
The penguins in the Home Pen do breed but they can’t keep their eggs. The eggs must be destroyed because SANCCOB is not allowed to breed penguins in captivity. So, they take the eggs away and replace them with dummy eggs, then when the baby penguin is supposed to hatch, they take the dummy egg away and replace it with a rescued baby chick, if they have one. There was a Home Pen for some penguins that will never go back to the sea, because they have crippled flippers or had feet amputated. I loved watching the penguins swim and play in the water. They swim sooo fast!
When everybody was leaving, I went out into the rain and looked through the window of the Paediatric Unit and saw a very cute and fluffy baby penguin chick being fed.
Getting ready to feed the chick see the raindrops on the window which obscured the view!
Photographs by Siv Sivertsen, Zachariah Kaspersen and Liz Munro.
Report by Kayleigh Sivertsen (10 years old).