Chatting to me mates last night the story goes this king penguin was cruising around in the surf at Coronation beach IN THE LINE UP, the size of a big dog and 3500km of track.
Next day its on the beach at the spot X standing 1m hieght all the local dogs went and had a good sniff .......Calm were called they come and inspected it, as ive been told ..........spun out ......and left it there to return to see it mauled by a fox which took its head off.
Those who saw it WERE totally blowen away....
This is the furthest recorded northern sighting of such an animal ?.
Any pics anywhere???
I'd be fascinated to see for one...
I've seen emporer penguins when i was doing some research "down south" and they were amazingly tame, so i imagine the kings (just slightly smaller) would be too. We played a game of soccer out on the sea ice and the big birds would just waddle on through the middle of the game. Think they thought we were kicking a giant egg.
yep the locals sure dont like "blow-ins" turning up there. Beware all you tourists of what can happen at "Spot X"!!
What upsetting is the slant ........ITS DEATH could have been associated with the activities of a HUMAN........sicko....
Let it be known the people in this area at the time made every effort to inform authorities. This bird apperared to be in exellent/ok health.
The authorities CALM.......?Animal protection (do gooder crew) Just left it there ,exhausted ,lost and basically signed its death wish...........
Very disappointing this occured. (As expressed in the local paper all this week).
That was one mixed up bird. I saw it in the shallows when a wave came in and it ended up dumped onto its back on the sand
. what self-respecting sea bird would do that. He paddled around people in the shallows about 3 feet away from them. no fear. Probably not right in the head due to heat and lack of food. RIP Happy Feet 
I've spent time working around King Penguins on Macquarie Island. All their enemies are in the water, so even when they are nervous about the presence of people they will not retreat to the water. This one's navigation was not up to scratch, he was always going to be weeded out of the gene pool. I don't think much could have been done to help the poor fellow.
I can't help feeling disappointed with calm, clearly the bird was way out of its territory with absolutely no future here. After such a long journey they should have caught it and at least attempted to get it to sea world or what ever, rather than leave it to an unknown fate.
For the stats buffs...
According to a twitcher of note we have a record (and the people who saw the bird viewed something rather incredibly rare: only 4 previous visits to Aus since 1973)
Bill Ramsay writes:
"I am pretty sure it is the most northern sighting {of a King on Aus mainland}. The only mainland records I have are Port MacDonnell (2004), Lake Tyers (1980), Bussellton (1979) and Port Fairy (1973). I listed the Port MacDonnell bird as fourth mainland record and have nothing more since other than the Geraldton bird. "
s
