Page 76 - BBC Wildlife - August 2017 UK

to extract their DNA, blood samples are needed. So first “THE KAKAPO,WHICH FEEDS ON BERRIES,
the kakapo must be caught.
Nocturnal by nature, the elusive birds spend their SEEDSAND OTHER PLANTMATTER,ASSUMED
days snoozing under bushes, up trees or in hollowed-out
stumps. To help protect them, all the birds have been THE ROLE OF A BLUE-BEAKED RABBIT.”
fitted with radio transmitters. All Digby has to do is head
to a high point, hold at arm’s length his receiver – a
spindly device that looks like an old-fashioned TV aerial Above: kakapo tracks and bowls. The lovelorn lotharios settle down, puff
are nocturnal
– and then hone in on the bird’s signal. themselves up then boom and ching from dusk to dawn.
creatures.This
image was taken The kakapo’s story is an emotional rollercoaster. The
ONE OF A KIND on Codfish birds used to be widespread on New Zealand’s North
When rudely awoken, kakapo often ‘skraaak’ loudly. It’s a Island, a specially and South islands – until humans arrived. First came
tiny taster of the parrots’ anarchic vocal range. The feathered protected reserve the Maori, then the Europeans, bringing with them cats,
(no unauthorised
ventriloquists can also bray like a donkey, boom like the rats, dogs and stoats. The invasive predators decimated
landing is
bassline of a house-music anthem and make a chinging permitted) and the kakapo and by the early 1970s the species was feared
noise that sounds someone having an asthma attack. the centre for extinct. Hopes were raised – then dashed – a few years
Like so much native New Zealand wildlife, the kakapo kakapo recovery later, when a search party found 18 kakapo hiding in
in New Zealand.
is completely unique. Save for a few species of bat, there Fiordland, only to realise they were all male.
are no endemic land mammals here, so birds, reptiles But then a second population of around 200 kakapo
and insects have evolved to fill their ecological roles. was found offshore, on Stewart Island. Critically, the group
The kakapo, which feeds on berries, seeds and other included females, but the birds were in grave danger
plant matter, assumed the role of a blue-beaked, tree- because the island was also home to feral cats. So, along
climbing rabbit. It’s also the world’s heaviest parrot, with a handful of the male Fiordland birds, the Stewart
Island kakapo were relocated to safe, predator-free islands.
the only one that can’t fly, and the only one to operate
Stephen Belcher a communal lek-based mating system. Sadly, their decline continued. In 1995 – with just 51 birds
left – the kakapo reached an all-time low.
During the breeding season, males show off to females
in leks, in specially constructed display areas called
Conservationists realised the charismatic parrot
76 BBC Wildlife August 2017