The Kakapo – Strigops habroptilus - is one of the world's most critically endangered birds, living dangerously close to extinction for more than half a century.  It is the world's heaviest parrot, and the only flightless and nocturnal parrot.  After many years of holding on with just a few females in New Zealand's most extensive controlled breeding program, the future looks better for kakapo since 22 chicks hatched in 2002, bringing the total up to 84 birds. 

The Kakapo

Kakapo – Maori – meaning night parrot, is endemic to New Zealand. They are long-lived, with an average life expectancy of 95 years and the maximum at about 120 years.

Description

The Kakapo is a large, rotund parrot that cannot fly, It has short wings which it uses for balance, support, and to break its fall when leaping from trees. The upper parts of the Kakapo have yellowish moss-green feathers barred or mottled with black or dark brownish grey, blending well with native vegetation. Individuals may have strongly varying degrees of mottling and colour tone and intensity. The breast and flank are yellowish-green streaked with yellow. The belly, undertail, neck and face are predominantly yellowish, streaked with pale green and weakly mottled with brownish-grey. It has a conspicuous facial disc of fine feathers, resembling the face of an owl. The beak is surrounded by "whiskers". The mandible is mostly ivory-coloured, with part of the upper mandible being bluish-grey. The eyes are dark brown. Kakapo feet are large, scaly. The female is easily distinguished from the male: she has a narrower and less domed head, her beak is narrower and proportionally longer, her cere and nostrils smaller, her legs and feet more slender and pinkish grey, and her tail proportionally longer.

Call

The Kakapo has a variety of calls. As well as the booms and chings of their mating calls, it will often skraark to announce its location to other birds.

Food

The beak of the Kakapo is adapted for grinding food finely. It is generally herbivorous,  eating plants, seeds, fruits, pollens and even the sapwood of trees.

Breeding

Males loosely gather in an arena and compete with each other to attract females. Females listen to the males as they display, or "lek". They choose a mate based on the quality of his display; they are not pursued by the males in any overt way. No pair bond is formed.  Males and females meet only to mate. Each court consists of one or more saucer-shaped depressions or "bowls" dug in the ground by the male, up to 10 centimetres (4 in) deep and long enough to fit the half-metre length of the bird. The Kakapo is one of only a handful of birds in the world which actually constructs its leks. Bowls are often created next to rock faces, banks, or tree trunks to help reflect sound - the bowls themselves function as amplifiers to enhance the projection of the males booming mating calls. Each male’s bowls are connected by a network of trails or tracks which may extend 50 metres (160 ft) along a ridge or 20 metres (60 ft) in diameter around a hilltop. Males meticulously clear their bowls and tracks of debris. One way researchers check whether bowls are visited at night is to place a few twigs in the bowl; if the male visits overnight, he will pick them up in his beak and toss them away.

To attract females, males make loud, low-frequency  booming calls from their bowls by inflating a thoracic sac. They start with low grunts, which increase in volume as the sac inflates. After a sequence of about 20 loud booms, the male Kakapo emits a high frequency, metallic "ching" sound. Males boom for an average of eight hours a night.

Females are attracted by the booms of the competing males; they too may need to walk several kilometres from their territories to the arena. Once a female enters the court of one of the males, the male performs a display in which he rocks from side to side and makes clicking noises with his beak. He turns his back to the female, spreads his wings in display and walks backwards towards her. The duration of attempted copulation is between 2 to 14 minutes. Once the birds have mated, the female returns to her home territory to lay eggs and raise the chicks. The male continues booming in the hope of attracting another female.

She nests on the ground under the cover of plants or in cavities such as hollow tree trunks. She lays up to three eggs and incubates the eggs faithfully, but is forced to leave them every night in search of food. The eggs usually hatch within 30 days and the female feeds the chicks for three months. The chicks continue to remain with the female for some months after fledging.

Conservation Status - Critically endangered

In 2006, the Kakapo Recovery Programme presented a new management plan that would run from 2006 to 2016. The key goals of this plan are to increase the female population to at least 60 by 2016, increase genetic diversity, maintain or restore a sufficiently large habitat to accommodate the expected increase in the Kakapo population, and maintain public awareness and support.

The Kakapo Recovery Plan has been a successful programme, with the numbers of Kakapo increasing steadily. Adult survival rate and productivity have both improved significantly since the programme's inception. However, the main goal is to establish at least one viable, self-sustaining, unmanaged population of Kakapo as a functional component of the ecosystem in a protected habitat. To help meet this conservation challenge, two large Fiordland islands, Resolution (20,860 ha) and Secretary (8,140 ha), have been prepared for re-introduction of the Kakapo with large-scale ecological restoration activities.

During the 2008-2009 summer breeding season, the total population of Kakapo rose to over 100 for the first time since monitoring began, reaching 126 by February 2012. More than twenty of the 34 chicks had to be hand-reared because of a shortage of food on Codfish Island.

Birdwatching

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