Yellow eyed penguins

I've never seen a yellow eyed penguin, and if I did it would probably try to kill me. The Sunshines have just come back from New Zealand and told me all about these penguins, so I thought I'd pass it on.

Yellow-eyed penguins are presumably an endangered species, largely because they hate each other, so it's not easy for two YEPs to get near enough to each other to make eggs. I exaggerate - they have been known to toddle along the beach together in groups of four to six, but this represents a massed gathering. They are territorial, so the sight of another YEP on your territory is enough to make you put the nest on the market and move out. Nesting within sight of another YEP is not good.

This wasn't so much of a problem when there were a lot of trees about, so long as they were trees big enough for a YEP to hide behind, but now that the trees have been felled there's no hiding place for an anti-social penguin who would rather be in its own little hermitage. Still, they are penguins and as such must be loved. Perhaps the hope for the future lies in a race of short-sighted yellow eyed penguins who make friends before they realise they're getting on very well with another YEP, and nobody's killed anybody yet.

Moles are even worse, by the way, those things are so territorial and aggressive it's a wonder there are any baby moles at all. But not on Mistmantle, of course. Mistmantle is different.