There’s a penguin in the bathroom.

A cul-de-sac enfolded in the long stretch of unremarkable housing that makes up south Christchurch is about as far from a penguin habitat as you could imagine.

But this suburban bungalow is a haven for injured, sick and starving birds.

And after some TLC behind the anonymous front door, the penguins will return, healed and healthy, to their wild home, the rocky headlands and choppy waves of Banks Peninsula.

Sharkbait has been here for weeks. A jolly little blue, or kororā, he was at death’s door when he was found struggling on a beach in April, suffering from numerous, nasty shark bites.

His wounds expertly stitched by South Island Wildlife Hospital vet Pauline Howard, he was transferred to the Sockburn home of Thomas Stracke and Kristina Schutt.

They nurse him back to health, dabbing mānuka honey on the lacerations, and feeding him up.

As he grows stronger, Sharkbait is encouraged to swim. Stracke carefully carries the bird, tucked into a laundry basket, into their trim backyard.

His swim over, sharkbait waddles to the garage, floundering and wriggling over a step. He is seeking out the warmth of a re-charging battery pack from a drill - ideal for a nap.

Stracke and Schutt are intensive care nurses. For over a decade, they have worked opposite shifts so one of them can be home for their feathered charges. They are unpaid volunteers, and the work can be exhausting.

The only outward clue of their temporary guests is a macramé penguin, hanging in the window. The couple’s warm, spare bathroom doubles as their admission facility and ICU, drips hanging from the wooden walls of a sauna.

“When they come in, they're usually weak and cold,” Stracke says.

The first 48 hours are crucial - and if they survive that long, the couple will name the penguin.

Shortly after, they will be ready to move outside. Tucked away by the back-door, under a parasol, is a collapsible dog cage which makes a cosy nest for recovering birds. The penguins used to run-free in a fenced-off part of the yard, but the prevalence of avian malaria meant Stracke had to ‘mosquito proof’ their enclosure, with nets.

The birds usually arrive with the summer months - penguin breeding season. But as the effects of climate change accumulate, sick birds are arriving earlier in the year, and the chicks are much weaker.

New Zealand is a stronghold for penguins, with more species on our shores than anywhere else in the world. Thirteen of the world’s 18 penguin species have been recorded here, and nine breed in the region.

Without rescuers, ailing birds would certainly die. But it is a daily struggle for volunteers to get by, taking in the growing number of creatures swept up by the human expansion into their habitat, and the climate and biodiversity crises.

“With climate change and all the other things we do to them: dogs on beaches, set net fishing and bottom trawling, I'm pretty sure the yellow-eyed penguin doesn't have a chance on the New Zealand mainland for much longer. And every species is struggling.”

When Scott Bowman hit a harrier/kāhu with his car in Waimakariri, it changed his life. Department of Conservation (DOC) staff advised him to take it to a vet to be euthanised: “And I was like, nah. So, we hung onto it for a couple of days.”

The bird - who he named Harriet - survived long enough for Bowman to track down a local organisation that specialised in rescuing raptors. He was captivated by the rehabilitation and was there for her release back to the wild. “I just loved it. And it all stemmed from there.”

Bowman and his wife Tracy learned how to care for the creatures, and eventually obtained all the relevant DOC permits to catch, handle and release wildlife. For the last decade, as Oxford Bird Rescue Trust, they have been taking in injured birds of prey, saving thousands of harriers, falcons, hawks and owls.

They juggle their jobs – as a sales rep and rest-home cook – with the difficult work of curing the predatory birds. Often there are sleepless nights, hand-feeding baby owls.

The raptors are mostly hit by cars, scavenging on roadkill. “Often people ask us what they can do,” Bowman says.

Little owls - common in the South Island but not native - fall victim to cats.

Healing the birds can be a thankless task. They are feisty creatures, with strong, sharp talons. The birds are ‘sausage-rolled’ into a towel before they can be examined.

Once, a falcon he was transporting wedged a claw through the webbing between his thumb and index finger. He had to drive home, the bird hanging from his hand, where Tracy extricated him.

The couple tend to wounds and bone breaks, and feed up the birds on donated rabbits and rooster chicks. As wings and muscles strengthen, the birds start to fly around an aviary, strung with soft netting, at the Bowmans’ home, just outside Oxford. “They can’t hurt themselves. We use a very hands off approach, provide them with an environment that encourages them to fly,” he says.

Once a bird starts making laps of the aviary, Bowman knows it is time to let them go. After weeks of bad weather, the Bowmans have scheduled a very special release: it will be Scott’s last. Diagnosed with motor neurone disease in April, the disease is gradually stealing away his mobility. The rescue centre will have to close.

It is hoped a wildlife sanctuary will take in Oscar, a completely blind Little Owl that lives in their sitting room.

The morning of the release - Queen’s Birthday - is bright and frosty. A tumble the previous day has left Scott unsteady on his feet, leaning heavily on his stick as he crosses the muddy field to the aviary. A harrier swoops close by. It’s Bungwing, who spent six months with the couple, learning to fly after mending a broken wing. He returns regularly for an easy feed.

Inside the aviary, Bowman swiftly and silently captures the swamp harrier. She has intense yellow eyes -the deeper the colour, the older the bird. A health check reveals the bone has knitted together, and she is a healthy weight.

The Bowmans drive 90 minutes south to the Hinds dairy farm where the bird was found by Moetu Kahu-Wright. He, and his partner Sinead, will watch the release with their children River, four, and 6-year-old Aleiha.

Within seconds the harrier explodes out of the cage, soaring off into a nearby field where she lands, and settles in the grass. Scott believes she is waiting for a mate close by. “Hopefully, they can be reunited.”

Leaving the farm, he breaks down and is comforted by Tracy.

In a cramped building in the grounds of Christchurch’s Willowbank Wildlife Reserve, Pauline Howard has been on her feet all day.

On the table in front of her, a sedated swamp harrier lies prone, breathing from a gas mask. It is shuddering, suffering the effects of poisoning after eating a pest felled by lead shot. Howard X-rays the bird for fragments, and then gently tapes tiny pink booties to its claws. The toxins cause paralysis, clenching their talons, and the bandages prevent sores developing.

At Howard’s feet are half a dozen cages, filled with all kinds of stressed and injured birds. Another poisoned bird - a disorientated and skinny kea called Gabrielle - is vomiting bile into an enclosure outside. “If she was in the wild, she’d be dead,” Howard says.

Across the yard, two endemic black-billed gulls/tarāpuka quietly snuggle in an aviary, one recovering from a badly broken beak, the other hit by a car. In the waiting room, a kererū nurses a fractured wing in a cage. Next to it, a gecko with crushed toes is nestled in a container.

They are kept company by Sharkbait - cared for by Howard while Stracke and Schutt take a much-needed break in their native Germany. After tending to the stricken raptor and kea, Howard takes Sharkbait for a plunge in her clamshell paddling pool.

Until recently, the pool was a salve for a magnificent northern giant petrel. Starving, with an injured bill and kidney failure, the bird spent weeks with the hospital, before succumbing to an infection.

Howard buzzes from one task to the next, checking on patients, mixing ‘sardine smoothies’ and scribbling notes on a window - her admissions list. She’s about to get even busier - taking on the Bowman’s aviary and their rehab work.

She is the hospital’s only paid staff member - but until last year was unpaid, working two jobs. It survives on volunteer time - and donations. Top of Howard’s wishlist is an outdoor patio heater to keep creatures warm while they get some fresh air.

Over the summer, the centre was overwhelmed with suffering creatures, taking in native birds, occasionally mammals, and reptiles. They usually see 400-500 critters in a year - but by early June had cared for 334.

A fire at the Christchurch Wastewater Treatment Plant sparked a botulism outbreak among local birds.

To begin with, the survival rates were good as rescuers administered fluids and fed the birds. But cooler temperatures weakened the birds, which began to die off.

A second fire at a Kaiapoi tool factory spilled oil into the nearby Cam River, coating dozens of native scaup. Howard had never dealt with an oil spill. “Initially, it was giving them fluids and heating them up, because a lot of them were very cold. We noticed that no matter what we did they were starting to die. So then we tried to wash the oil off.”

Because the toxic wastewater couldn’t be washed into the drains, Howard and her team spent long hours soaping and rinsing the diving ducks clean in containers, with water heated to 40 degrees celsius, and taking blood samples.

The heartbreaking scenes saw some volunteers drift away. “It was just too busy and too stressful.”

DOC Science Manager Ash Murphy says institutions support the recovery of threatened species and play an important role in raising public awareness - and without their work, there would be “a real gap.”

DOC ensures the rehabilitators are authorised through appropriate permits under the Wildlife Act and inspected annually. “By setting conditions in authorities DOC is able to reduce the risk of poor animal welfare outcomes,” Murphy says. “When processing an application DOC rangers and technical advisors engage with the applicant to establish what skills they have and what resources they need to be effective. We design conditions in any authority accordingly.”