23/05/2026
Since the last update, our Golden Girls have all been progressing through rehabilitation — each in their own very different way.
Rose has by far been the simplest case of the three. She was not affected by the pool debacle that caused so many of our penguins to lose their waterproofing, so her waterproofing has remained excellent. She has been spending lots of time swimming, is fit, healthy, fully waterproof… and has even been starting to get a little bit pudgy.
The only problem is that Rose doesn’t like being alone in the pool. Whenever she’s swimming by herself, she circles the edge of the pool calling for other penguins to join her. Unfortunately, because so many of the others have still been struggling with waterproofing, she hasn’t been getting quite as much company as she would like.
Rose is such a gentle, placid little penguin that for a while we genuinely wondered if she might have sustained a head injury. We have since concluded that no — that is simply her personality.
While she is incredibly mild-mannered, we have now seen her give the occasional fledgling a stern word when they have annoyed her too much. More importantly, however, we have also seen that she has excellent predator awareness.
One day, when a bird flew overhead above the enclosure, the moment the shadow passed across, Rose instantly vanished into a burrow completely out of sight. Exactly the response we want to see from a penguin preparing to return to the wild.
Onyx has also been doing well. Her waterproofing has been steadily improving as she has worked hard at preening — carefully getting all of her feathers back into place and coating them properly with preen oil. Her foot injury has now healed, and she has finished her medication, so overall she has been doing very well. She has simply needed more time to continue rebuilding her waterproofing and fitness before she’s ready for the ocean again.
Our most complicated case, however, has definitely been Sapphire.
Sapphire has been badly affected by the de-waterproofing debacle. After already arriving into care with severe feather damage and trauma from whatever had happened to her previously, losing her waterproofing again appears to have deeply affected her psychologically.
Every time we have placed Sapphire in the pool, she has been visibly happy and excited to get into the water, but then almost immediately, she has also become stressed. As soon as she has begun swimming, she has started looking worried. As soon as another penguin has begun struggling in the water or “turtleing” around the pool, Sapphire has panicked and immediately demanded to get out.
What has confused us is that physically, her feathers often haven’t actually looked that bad when she came out. She has been making progress with her waterproofing. But Sapphire has behaved as though she could feel the water seeping through into her down feathers, and she has become increasingly desperate to leave the pool. She has always been one of the first penguins to get out of the pool, swimming directly into the net to tell us she is done.
Naturally, we have been extremely concerned. We worried she might not have been preening properly due to stress, or worse, that she might have been over-preening which can permanently damage feathers until the next moult cycle. Keeping Sapphire in rehabilitation for another full year for a repeat moult was never going to have been emotionally manageable for her, so this possibility has been heartbreaking.
For what has felt like an eternity we have watched anxiously, hoping she would improve. But every day she remained one of the first penguins wanting to leave the water. It has genuinely seemed as though she has become frightened of swimming.
Eventually, we realised the problem had not been physical at all.
Sapphire is an exceptionally intelligent and experienced penguin. She remembers that the last time she was in the water, something terrible happened to her feathers. She didn’t understand what the danger was, but she knew that the pool had once caused harm, and that it might happen again.
So every time she has entered the water, she has been torn between desperately wanting to swim and fearing the unknown danger she believed might return. Whenever she has seen another penguin struggling in the pool, she has become convinced the “danger” was back and immediately wanted out.
Once we understood that this had been psychological trauma rather than failed waterproofing, we knew there were ways we could help.
We have started Sapphire on a very mild sedative to help take the edge off that panic response, and we are very pleased to report that it appears to have been helping. She has still been cautious, but she has no longer been spiralling into full panic the way she was before. She has been able to stay in the pool for longer periods, which has in turn allowed her to build more fitness and improve her waterproofing further.
That extra confidence in the water is exactly what we have been hoping to continue building for her.
We have felt so bad for Sapphire (and all the others) that they have been put through this unnecessary setback in their rehabilitation.
Rest assured we have been doing everything we can to get them back out into the ocean where they belong as quickly as possible.
Thank you for following their journey and supporting us through all of the highs and lows.
A special thankyou to the people who have adopted Sapphire, Onyx, and Rose. Thankyou Rebecca, Georgia, Teresa, Marianne, Ruth, Drift & Tumble, Lesley, Ted, Mia, Cheryl, Marion, John, Jenny, Julie, and Rebecca