The kakapo, the world’s only flightless parrot, was once deemed a biological paradox – too heavy, too slow, and too appealing to predators to survive. Yet, this unique New Zealand native is now defying its grim prognosis, teetering towards survival after an unlikely conservation effort.
Over three decades, dedicated work has seen the nocturnal and reclusive bird’s population soar from a mere 50 to over 200, marking a significant victory for biodiversity. This year offers particular promise, with an abundance of the strange parrot’s favourite berries sparking an unusual enthusiasm for mating.
Conservationists are now anticipating a record number of chicks in February, a development that could cement the kakapo’s escape from what was once thought to be inevitable extinction. Living exclusively on three tiny, remote islands off New Zealand’s southern coast, sightings of these rare birds in the wild are exceptionally uncommon. However, one kakapo has recently captured global attention, achieving internet fame through a livestream of her underground nest, where a chick was expected to hatch this week.
Smelly parrots the size of small cats
The kakapo is a majestic creature that can live for 60 to 80 years. But they’re undoubtedly weird to look at.
Birds can weigh over 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds). They have owllike faces, whiskers, and mottled green, yellow and black plumage that mimics dappled light on the forest floor.
That’s where the flightless parrot lives, which has made its survival complicated.
“Kakapo also have a really strong scent,” said Deidre Vercoe, the operations manager for the Department of Conservation’s kakapo program. “They smell really musky and fruity — gorgeous smell.”
The pungent aroma was bad news for the parrots when humans arrived in New Zealand hundreds of years ago. The introduction of rats, dogs, cats and stoats, as well as hunting by people and destruction of native forest habitats, drove species of the country’s flourishing flightless birds — the kakapo among them — to near or complete extinction.
By 1974, no kakapo were known to exist. Conservationists kept looking, however, and in the late 1970s, a new population of the birds was discovered.
Reversing their fortunes hasn’t been simple.
Birds wait years or decades to breed
One reason the kakapo population has grown slowly is that its breeding is, like everything about the birds, peculiar. Years or even decades can pass between successful clutches of eggs.
A breeding season only happens every two to four years, in response to bumper crops of fruit from the native rimu trees the parrots favour, which last happened in 2022. A huge food source is needed for chicks to survive but it’s not known exactly how adult birds become aware of an abundant harvest.
“They’re probably up there in the canopy assessing the fruiting,” said Vercoe. “When there’s a large crop developing, they somehow tune into that.”
That’s when things get really strange. Male kakapo position themselves in dug-out bowls in the ground and emit sonorous booming sounds followed by noises known as “chings,” which sound like the movement of rusty bedsprings.
The deep booms, which on clear nights can be heard across the forest, attract female kakapo to the bowls. Females can lay up to four eggs before raising their chicks alone.
Since January, admirers of the birds have had a rare glimpse into the process through a livestream showing the underground nest of 23-year-old kakapo Rakiura on the island of Whenua Hou, where she has laid three eggs, two of them fertile. So precarious is the species’ survival that the eggs have been exchanged for fake replacements while the real ones are incubated indoors. They will be returned to the nest just before they hatch.
Native birds are beloved in New Zealand
Perhaps the only thing stranger than the kakapo is the lengths to which New Zealanders have gone to save it. Quadrupling the population over the past three decades has required their relocation to three remote, predator-free offshore islands and the micromanaging of the parrots’ every romantic entanglement.
“We do what we can to make sure we don’t lose any further genetic diversity,” Vercoe said. “We manage that carefully through having the best matches possible on each island.”
Each bird has a name and is monitored by a small backpack tracker; if a bird vanishes, they’re nearly impossible to find. With the kakapo still critically endangered, there’s little prospect of conservation efforts ending anytime soon, although those working with the birds are easing their hands-on management each breeding season.
The painstaking work to preserve the species might seem odd to outsiders, but the parrot is just one of many spirited and strange avians in a country where birds reign supreme. The only native land mammals are two types of bat, so New Zealand’s birds, which evolved eccentrically before human and predator arrival, have become beloved national symbols.
“We don’t have the Eiffel Tower or the pyramids, but we do have kakapo and kiwi,” Vercoe said. “It’s a real New Zealand duty to save these birds.”
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