The first erect-crested penguin is back!

At 13:08 hrs on 9 September 2026, the first Erect-crested penguin of the season stepped back into frame on the Anchorage Bay study platform, live on TawakiCam. After months of empty rock and quiet surf, it’s the moment the whole team – and quite a few of you watching from home – has been waiting for.

It’s a small thing to look at on screen: one bird, stepping out of the water and up onto a familiar patch of platform. But it marks the start of the breeding season for one of the least-studied penguin species anywhere in the world. Over the coming weeks we expect more birds to follow, pairs to reunite at last year’s nest sites, eggs to be laid in October, and by late October the males to head back out to sea for their long incubation shift while the females take the first stint ashore. All of that starts here.

This year, we didn’t have to spot the returning bird ourselves – one of you got there first. Just 15 minutes after the penguin appeared on stream, a sharp-eyed viewer hit the “Report the 1st Penguin!” button and claimed the win in our season-opening competition. A Tawaki Project T-shirt is already on its way to them. Thanks to everyone who had the stream open and was watching closely enough to catch it – that’s exactly the kind of attention that makes a project like this work.

Since then, the numbers have kept climbing: as of this week, four Erect-crested penguins have been seen back on the platform. Each one is a bird that’s spent the winter somewhere out in the Southern Ocean – some go remarkably far – and has now found its way back to this same stretch of coastline on a remote subantarctic island.

The competition isn’t over yet. The “Report” button has moved on to the next milestone: the first breeding pair reuniting on the platform. That’s not just two birds standing near each other – we’re looking for a returning bird finding its actual mate from previous seasons and settling back in at their nest site together: staying close, calling to each other, getting on with the business of being a pair again. Keep watching TawakiCam – the next T-shirt winner could be you.

Follow the season as it unfolds at tawaki.cam.