Animal
Yellow-eyed penguin
The yellow-eyed penguin lives only in New Zealand. It has yellow eyes and a pale yellow band around its head. It nests hidden in bushes and forest near the sea.
The yellow-eyed penguin, or hoiho, lives only in New Zealand. It is a tall, heavy penguin with yellow eyes and a pale yellow band of feathers running around the back of its head. It hides its nest under bushes and trees near the shore, out of sight of other penguins. It is endangered: on the South Island and Stewart Island its breeding pairs fell by about two-thirds between 1999 and 2019.
Megadyptes antipodes, the hoiho, is endemic to New Zealand, breeding on the south-east coast of the South Island, Stewart Island/Rakiura and its outliers, and the sub-Antarctic Auckland and Campbell Islands. It nests in concealed sites in coastal forest and scrub and feeds mainly on the seafloor. BirdLife International assessed it as Endangered for the IUCN Red List (assessed 2020, published 2020), with 2,600 to 3,000 mature individuals and a decreasing trend.
Photo: Christian Mehlführer, User:Chmehl, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
Meet the hoiho
The yellow-eyed penguin has yellow eyes.
A pale yellow band goes around its head, from one eye to the other.
The yellow-eyed penguin is a tall, heavy penguin, about 65 centimeters long and about 5 kilograms. It is the biggest penguin that breeds on New Zealand's main islands.
Its eyes are yellow, and a pale yellow band of feathers runs from each eye around the back of its head. The sides of its head and the front of its neck are light brown, its back is slate blue and its front is white. Its Māori name is hoiho, which means 'noise shouter', after its loud call.
New Zealand Birds Online describes a tall, portly penguin (about 65 centimeters, 5 kilograms), the largest penguin breeding on the New Zealand mainland, with a pale yellow, uncrested band of feathers across the nape and around the eyes, a black forecrown flecked with yellow, light fawn-brown sides of the head and foreneck, a slate-blue back and a long, slender red-brown and cream bill. Males are larger than females; juveniles lack the yellow band.
It is the only living member of the genus Megadyptes. The Department of Conservation gives the Māori name hoiho as meaning 'noise shouter', after the shrill call made at breeding sites; pairs give a loud, tremulous bray, often as a duet.
Quick facts
- Group
- Bird
- Length
- 0.65 m
- Weight
- 5 kg
Forest by the sea
Yellow-eyed penguins live only in New Zealand.
They nest in forest and bushes close to the beach.
Yellow-eyed penguins live only in New Zealand. They breed on the south-east coast of the South Island, on Stewart Island and nearby islands, and on the far-southern Auckland and Campbell Islands.
Yellow-eyed penguins choose hidden spots under dense plants, in coastal forest and scrub. Some also nest among farm fields, in windbreaks of planted trees or on exposed cliffs. Adults stay near their home coast all year.
IUCN lists breeding on the South Island's south-east coast, Stewart Island and its outliers, and the Auckland and Campbell Islands, up to 75 meters above sea level; adults are sedentary and generally forage within 50 kilometers of their colonies, while juveniles may travel north as far as Cook Strait. Mainland birds and the sub-Antarctic birds form two genetically distinct populations with very little movement between them.
On the mainland, New Zealand Birds Online names four breeding regions (the Catlins, Otago Peninsula, North Otago and Banks Peninsula). Breeding sites match the former extent of cool coastal hardwood forest, and today include mature forest, regenerating scrub, pasture, exotic windbreaks and exposed cliffs. Nests are usually hidden from other penguins by vegetation, though that is not thought to be required for success (IUCN).
Continent
Its habitat
Where can you find this animal?
- Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
New Zealand only: the south-east coast of the South Island (the Catlins to Banks Peninsula), Stewart Island/Rakiura and its outliers, and the sub-Antarctic Auckland and Campbell Islands, up to 75 meters above sea level.
Places: New Zealand.
Source: iucn-red-list · checked October 2026
Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Counts of GBIF records of wild observations (human and machine) and preserved specimens. Records include introduced populations, vagrants, escaped or released animals and misidentifications, so a country with records is not necessarily part of the native range.
Wild sightings have been recorded in New Zealand, Australia, Pacific Ocean, Southern Ocean, Arctic Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean.
Source: gbif · checked October 2026
Range maps show where scientists say an animal lives, often country by country. An animal may live in only part of a country shown, and sightings records can include animals that wandered far from home.
Hunting on the seafloor
Yellow-eyed penguins dive down to the seafloor.
They catch fish and squid there.
Yellow-eyed penguins hunt mostly on the bottom of the sea. They catch fish that live near the seafloor, such as sprat, opalfish, silversides, red cod and blue cod, along with squid and other small sea animals.
They feed between about 2 and 25 kilometers from shore and dive about 40 to 120 meters deep. Many penguins return to the same favorite feeding spots again and again, even in different years.
Yellow-eyed penguins forage over the mid-shelf, mostly 2 to 25 kilometers offshore, diving to 40 to 120 meters for bottom-dwelling fish such as sprat, red cod, opalfish, ahuru, silversides and blue cod, plus cephalopods and crustaceans (New Zealand Birds Online). IUCN notes that 87% of dives follow the seafloor, that dives occasionally exceed 120 meters, and that individuals revisit preferred foraging sites between trips and years.
The diet is changing: red cod was important in the 1980s, while blue cod DNA has now been found in every faecal sample from mainland birds studied, and the Department of Conservation describes blue cod as a less suitable food. The species seems very sensitive to disturbance of its seafloor feeding grounds.
Did you know?
Yellow-eyed penguins hide their nests in the bushes.
Yellow-eyed penguins hide their nests under plants, out of sight of other penguins.
Nests are usually surrounded by vegetation that hides them from other penguins (IUCN).
A loud voice
This penguin has a loud call.
Its name, hoiho, means 'noise shouter'.
Yellow-eyed penguins are noisy at their nests. Partners call together in a duet, a loud braying sound with a shaky edge. In this page's photo, the penguin has thrown its head back with its bill wide open.
Like other penguins, it has a white belly and a dark back, and it swims with flippers. Its feet are pink on top and dark underneath.
Adults give a contact call at sea and on land, and an extended courtship call near nest sites, most often as a duet: a loud bray like that of crested penguins but higher pitched and more tremulous (New Zealand Birds Online). The photo shows a bird with its head thrown back and bill open, perhaps calling (the photographer's file name says 'crying').
The chest, belly, front of the thighs and underside of the flippers are white, the back and tail slate blue, and the feet pink above and blackish brown below. Adult plumage pattern makes the species unmistakable in its range, even during the moult.
A nest under the bushes
The parents build a nest of twigs and grass under the bushes.
The mother lays two eggs. Both parents keep them warm.
Pairs can be seen at their nest sites as early as July or August. Both parents build a shallow bowl of twigs, grass and leaves under thick plants. Two eggs are laid from mid-September to mid-October, three to five days apart.
Both parents keep the eggs warm, and the chicks hatch in November. At first a parent stays with the chicks all the time; later the chicks are left alone in the nest during the day while both parents fish. The young penguins leave from February to April.
Both sexes build a shallow bowl of twigs, grass and leaves in a well-concealed site. The two eggs, bluish-green when laid and becoming white, are laid 3 to 5 days apart (mean lay date 24 September on Otago Peninsula), with no replacement clutches (New Zealand Birds Online). Incubation by both parents starts after the second egg, so the eggs hatch together, mostly in early November; the incubation period of 39 to 51 days is the most variable of any penguin.
Chick rearing has a guard phase, with the chicks constantly brooded, and a post-guard phase, when chicks are left alone by day. Fledging runs from mid-February to mid-March (IUCN) or to April (New Zealand Birds Online). Poor food years bring fewer breeding attempts, slow chick growth and lighter fledglings.
Shy neighbors
Yellow-eyed penguins like to nest out of sight.
They can be upset when people come too close.
Yellow-eyed penguins are easily disturbed. When visitors get too close to nests, the chicks may grow up lighter and be less likely to survive.
At sea, sharks, barracouta, fur seals and New Zealand sea lions catch them. On land, stoats, ferrets and cats attack small chicks, and dogs can attack adults.
Unregulated human disturbance at breeding areas harms energy budgets, fledgling weight and survival (IUCN), while carefully regulated viewing and low-level research visits have no measurable impact (New Zealand Birds Online). How close a person comes predicts how likely a penguin is to act defensively.
At sea, sharks, barracouta, fur seals and New Zealand sea lions take yellow-eyed penguins. On land, introduced ferrets, stoats and cats take small chicks, dogs can attack adults (including while they moult ashore), and pigs prey on them on the main Auckland Island and in the Catlins (IUCN; Department of Conservation).
Did you know?
Yellow-eyed penguin eggs start out blue-green.
Yellow-eyed penguin eggs are bluish green when they are laid and turn white later.
Eggs are bluish-green when laid, becoming white (New Zealand Birds Online).
One of the rarest penguins
There are very few yellow-eyed penguins.
People trap predators, plant trees and help sick penguins get better.
The yellow-eyed penguin is endangered and is thought to be one of the rarest penguins in the world. On the South Island and Stewart Island there were about 741 breeding pairs in 1999 but only about 265 in 2019, a drop of about 65%. Poor breeding seasons with too little food, diseases and predators caused the fall.
Fishing nets, people disturbing nests and a warming sea are other dangers. The Department of Conservation, the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and volunteers trap predators, fence and replant nesting areas and care for sick and hurt penguins in rescue centers.
BirdLife International assessed Megadyptes antipodes as Endangered (criteria A2ade+4abde) for the IUCN Red List (assessed 21 August 2020, published 2020): 2,600 to 3,000 mature individuals, with a suspected very rapid decline over three generations (about 30 years) from disease, introduced predators and fisheries bycatch. The Department of Conservation counted 741 northern breeding pairs in 1999 and 265 in 2019 (233 in 2020); about 570 pairs were estimated on the Auckland Islands in 2017, and Campbell Island was last estimated at about 400 pairs in 1992.
Threats include gillnet bycatch, diphtheritic stomatitis and blood parasites in chicks, food shortages, disturbance and warming seas, which models suggest will reduce productivity and survival. The Department of Conservation, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust and Fisheries New Zealand have a recovery strategy for 2019-2029 (launched in 2018, says New Zealand Birds Online; the Department of Conservation dates the strategy and its five-year action plan to 2020). Predator trapping, fencing, replanting and rehabilitation centers continue.
IUCN Red List
How is the yellow-eyed penguin doing in the wild?
- Least Concern
- Near Threatened
- Vulnerable
- Endangered (this animal)
- Critically Endangered
- Extinct in the Wild
- Extinct
Endangered
At very high risk of disappearing from the wild.
A penguin's history
Long ago, a smaller kind of penguin lived where hoiho live today.
After it was gone, hoiho came from far-off islands to live there.
Scientists have found that until about 500 years ago, yellow-eyed penguins lived only on the far-southern Auckland and Campbell Islands. A smaller relative, the Waitaha penguin, lived on New Zealand's main islands.
The Waitaha penguin is thought to have been hunted to extinction after people arrived. Then a few yellow-eyed penguins from the south settled on the mainland, and their descendants are the hoiho of the South Island today.
New Zealand Birds Online summarizes recent research: up to about 1500 AD, M. a. antipodes was confined to the Auckland and Campbell Islands, while the mainland held the smaller Waitaha penguin (M. a. waitaha) and the Chatham Islands an even smaller form, Richdale's penguin (M. a. richdalei). Both are thought to have been harvested to extinction after human arrival.
The loss of the Waitaha penguin let straggling sub-Antarctic yellow-eyed penguins establish on the mainland, and the earlier loss of large marine mammals is believed to have helped them spread. Today the hoiho is a flagship species for nature tourism in the southern South Island.
Did you know?
Yellow-eyed penguins have favorite places to fish.
Many yellow-eyed penguins go back to the same feeding spots on the seafloor trip after trip, and even year after year.
Individuals revisit preferred foraging sites on later trips and between years (IUCN).
Amazing facts
-
The hoiho's name means 'noise shouter'!
The Māori name hoiho means 'noise shouter', after the penguin's shrill call at its nest.
Hoiho means 'noise shouter', referring to the shrill call at breeding sites (Department of Conservation).
-
Yellow-eyed penguins hide their nests in the bushes.
Yellow-eyed penguins hide their nests under plants, out of sight of other penguins.
Nests are usually surrounded by vegetation that hides them from other penguins (IUCN).
-
Yellow-eyed penguin eggs start out blue-green.
Yellow-eyed penguin eggs are bluish green when they are laid and turn white later.
Eggs are bluish-green when laid, becoming white (New Zealand Birds Online).
-
Yellow-eyed penguins have favorite places to fish.
Many yellow-eyed penguins go back to the same feeding spots on the seafloor trip after trip, and even year after year.
Individuals revisit preferred foraging sites on later trips and between years (IUCN).
Words to know
- endemic
- living naturally in only one place in the world
- hoiho
- the Māori name of the yellow-eyed penguin
- seafloor
- the bottom of the sea
- sub-Antarctic
- the cold region just north of Antarctica, with many small islands
- predator
- an animal that hunts and eats other animals
- rehabilitation
- caring for a sick or hurt wild animal until it can go back to the wild
Discovery challenge
-
What color are a yellow-eyed penguin's eyes?
What color are an adult yellow-eyed penguin's eyes?
What iris color gives the adult Megadyptes antipodes its English name?
- Yellow
- Blue
- Green
Show the answer
Yellow
Yellow!
Yellow, with a pale yellow band of feathers around the head.
Yellow; juveniles have a paler eye and lack the yellow band.
-
In which country do yellow-eyed penguins live?
In which country do yellow-eyed penguins live?
To which country is the yellow-eyed penguin endemic?
- New Zealand
- Brazil
- Iceland
Show the answer
New Zealand
New Zealand.
Only New Zealand, including its far-southern islands.
New Zealand: the South Island, Stewart Island and the Auckland and Campbell Islands.
-
Where does a yellow-eyed penguin make its nest?
Where do yellow-eyed penguins usually nest?
What kind of nest site do yellow-eyed penguins usually choose?
- Hidden under bushes and trees
- On floating ice
- In a crowded open colony on bare rock
Show the answer
Hidden under bushes and trees
Hidden under bushes and trees near the sea.
In hidden spots under dense plants in coastal forest and scrub.
Well-concealed sites under dense vegetation, out of sight of other penguins.
-
What does the name hoiho mean?
What does the Māori name hoiho mean?
According to the Department of Conservation, what does hoiho mean?
- Noise shouter
- Snow walker
- Fish thief
Show the answer
Noise shouter
Noise shouter, because it calls loudly.
'Noise shouter', after its shrill call at nesting places.
'Noise shouter', referring to the shrill call made at breeding sites.
Places where you might see it
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For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Locate New Zealand's South Island, Stewart Island and the sub-Antarctic islands.
- Compare a hidden, solitary nest with an open penguin colony.
- Explain why introduced predators are a danger to ground-nesting birds.
- Describe how people watch wildlife without disturbing it.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- Why might a penguin hide its nest from other penguins?
- How could planting coastal trees and shrubs help yellow-eyed penguins?
- Why should visitors keep their distance from nesting and moulting birds?
Try at home or in class
- Build a model nest bowl from twigs, grass and leaves in a shoebox, then cover it with leafy branches to see how well it hides.
- Make a 'quiet watching' plan for a nature walk: how far to stand, how to move and how long to stay.
Key vocabulary: endemic, hoiho, seafloor, sub-Antarctic, predator, rehabilitation
Where these facts come from
- GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF Occurrence Search , Global Biodiversity Information Facility (CC0 1.0 (backbone); occurrence counts are facts derived from records under CC0, CC BY and CC BY-NC)
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species , International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN terms of use (no redistribution of Red List data or range maps))
- Megadyptes antipodes (BirdLife International, assessed 21 August 2020, published 2020) , IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
- Megadyptes antipodes: range, population, habitat, threats and conservation text , IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
- Megadyptes antipodes: IUCN Red List global assessment record (BirdLife International 2020), IUCN checklist on GBIF , GBIF
- Yellow-eyed penguin | Hoiho , New Zealand Birds Online
- Yellow-eyed penguin/hoiho , New Zealand Department of Conservation
- File:Yellow-eyed Penguin crying MC.jpg (Curio Bay, New Zealand, 23 February 2008, Christian Mehlführer) , Wikimedia Commons
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file: Public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA only (credited on each page))
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated November 1, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.