Meeting Abstract

P2.23  Sunday, Jan. 5 15:30  Characterizing Behavior States of Little Penguins in Wellington Harbour, New Zealand O’REILLY, K.M.*; ZHANG, J.; DENNIS, T.E.; Univ. of Portland, Oregon; Univ. of Auckland, New Zealand; Univ. of Auckland, New Zealand oreilly@up.edu

Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor) are well known throughout New Zealand and southern Australia for their habit of returning to nesting colonies in nightly penguin parades. What is less well known is how they behave before returning to land. Using small, lightweight GPS tracking devices and temperature-depth recorders (TDR), we identified three behavioral states in a sample of eight Little Penguins during the guard stage of nesting at Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington Harbour, New Zealand. Immediately after leaving the colony, penguins rested on the water, drifting slowly with fairly straight tracks. Commuting commenced around 5:30am with fast, straight trajectories. Finally, feeding was identified by sharp turning angles, slow speeds, and the loss of GPS signals, indicating diving behavior when coupled with recordings from TDR. Behavioral Change Point Analysis and K-means Clustering were effective methods to analyze data from tracking devices attached to Little Penguins, providing insight to their off-colony activities.