"The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny- brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, though you know that it probably will not be." - Douglas Adams.
There is no other bird in the world even remotely like a kakapo. Its Latin name (Strigops habroptilus), means
owl-faced, soft-feathered parrot and the common
Maori name, kakapo means
night parrot.
It is different from other parrots in a
multiplicity of ways. It's the largest of the
species, for a start. It's the only
nocturnal member of the parrot family, and the only
flightless member. (Webster's short distance flights are really just hops or glides). The kakapo is also the rarest species of parrot in the world.
The flightless nature of the kakapo is a common evolutionary
trait amongst New Zealand native birds –
Aotearoa's island nature provided a
unique and
isolated evolutionary
habitat, with no land-based mammals (the only native mammals in New Zealand are winged – bats – or
marine – seals). With no competition for food and no predation by mammals, bird species were able to
forage freely for food on the ground, and many, including the
moa, the
kiwi and the kakapo lost the ability to use their wings for flight.
Appearance:
Kakapo (the Maori
language has no letter S, indicating plurality by the pronoun used, and in bicultural New Zealand it is considered very bad manners to pluralise Maori words by adding an S) have round, owl-like faces on sturdy legs and
bulky frames. They can measure up to 2 feet in length and weigh up to 8lbs. Though primarily ground-dwelling birds, they can climb trees, and use their wings as a kind of
parachute-cum-braking system to facilitate their
descent. Unlike some other flightless birds, it is not wing-structure, but the structure of the kakapo
sternum that makes it incapable of flying – it has almost no keel, and cannot therefore steer properly within air currents.
Plumage (brighter in the male) is a soft
moss green with black bars along the back and pale yellow, soft feathers on breast and belly. In addition there is a layer of down, and the birds have a uniquely structured ivory and pale blue
beak which they use to grind their food. Kakapo have grey "whiskers" on their faces, and they walk almost
horizontal, so that these touch the ground. Once, pure yellow varieties existed, but these are now extinct.
Breeding:
Kakapo are the only "
lek" breeding birds in
New Zealand, and the only parrot species
worldwide to breed in this manner. This means that at the beginning of the breeding season (December) the males gather together in a small area and begin a
competitive display to attract mates. Once gathered, they draw in huge quantities of air to inflate a
sac in their
thorax, swelling like
porcupine frogs, and then use it to emit low,
resonant booming sounds – the
announcement that they are ready to mate.
Douglas Adams describes the sound as:
"like a heartbeat: a deep powerful throb that echoed through the dark ravines. It was so deep that some people will tell you that they felt it stirring in their gut before they could discern the actual sound, a sort of wump, a heavy wobble of air."
The
ritual is usually enacted on a
hilltop, with low
vegetation, where each bird constructs a bowl in the earth with tracks radiating from it – this track and bowl system is also
unique among parrots - the male settles in the bowl, and begins to
broadcast his booms, interspersed with an occasional high
metallic call (known, dear noders, as a
ching). The females, who
roam widely during the
summer will often travel for miles to mate with the most
impressive boomer. After mating, the female
incubates her clutch of two-three eggs and raises the chicks alone until they
fledge.
The males continue their
display throughout the breeding season, seeking as many mates as possible. It is possible for females to lay two
clutches within a season, but breeding is still very slow, since seasons are not
annual but take place every two to four years, depending largely on availability of food. Kakapo are strict
herbivores, eating only fruits, seeds, leaves, stems and roots, primarily of native plants.
Habitat
Kakapo are
solitary, wandering birds with large ranges that they travel across alone (up to 30 miles for a female bird with young to feed) in
lowland forests and
grasslands. They have a warning
skraaark noise where ranges overlap to indicate their presence, and steer clear of each other, except during the mating season.
Life Cycle
Kakapo are the longest lived of any known bird, with
lifespans of up to 60 years - or maybe longer: no known kakapo have died of old age, despite having been discovered up to 25 years ago. They hatch after 30 days and leave the nest at three months, but do not reach breeding age until six or eight years old.
Endangered status
Currently there are only 86 known kakapo in
existence. Every one of them has a name.
Since the arrival of the Maori, the kakapo
population has been in
decline. Maori hunted the birds, destroyed their
habitat and introduced predators like the
kiore (the
Polynesian rat). The situation worsened considerably with the arrival of European settlers who not only increased the
decimation of habitat, but brought even more dangerous predators along with them - ferrets, cats, stoats, rats, and dogs. Kakapo, evolved to protect themselves from the sight-oriented birds of prey which were their only
predators before the arrival of humans, have only one self-preservation
strategy:
camouflage. When threatened, they become
absolutely still, and can
merge into their background. This was
effective for thousands of years, but is
useless against predators who hunt by smell – especially considering that the kakapo have a very strong, sweet,
musky odour clearly identifiable even to
human noses.
Kakapo were prized as a
delicacy, being a tasty and full-flavoured meat. Their
feathers were used for Maori cloaks,
down stuffed pillows and mattresses, and being large, previously unknown and hailed as the oldest form of
parrot they were frequently hunted as
trophies by
European settlers and
tourists alike. The kakapo was simply too good a target, and by the 1930s (less than a century after European
settlement) they were extinct on New Zealand's North Island. Human predation stopped soon after this, but the
feral cats, stoats and other animals the Europeans had brought with them continued to
annihilate the population.
From the 1950s, active protection measures have been put in place, with the Departmant of Conservation, The Royal Forest and Bird Society and Comalco New Zealand (an
aluminium producer) working in partnership to establish the Kakapo
Recovery program.
This has involved moving the kakapo to predator-free islands off the coast of mainland New Zealand, from
Fjordland in the South Island and
Stewart Island. There has been an intensive breeding program undertaken, including heavy supplementing of food to encourage more regular breeding seasons. Breeding of the last remaining Fjordland kakapo, known Robert Henry, has been particularly concentrated on, to try to
maintain the
diversity of the species (Fjordland birds are marked differently from Stewart Island birds). Luckily, despite being, at 38, the oldest known male, Robert Henry appears to continue to be a
desirable mate and has sired several surviving chicks.
Since 1999 the kakapo population has risen from 62 to 86, a positive step on the
route to establish a
self-sustaining, unmanaged population of the bird – but that is still a long way off.
Sources:
http:/www.kakaporecovery.org.nz
http:/www.doc.govt.nzConservation
http:/www.kakapo.net/
Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See (Ballantine, 1990)