Kakapo study of world interest

Press, 25 June 1981, Page 17

Kakapo study of world interest

The more the Wildlife Service learns about the kakapo . the more remarkable the ! bird seems. The discovery of I a large colony three years i ago in a remote area of , Stewart Island has helped [ scientists greatly in their ; knowledge of the bird, and so , improved their chances of ■ saving it from extinction. There are three kakapo chicks on Stewart Island ' being supervised by the Wild- | life Service. All three have I now left their nests, but are . living only a few metres : from them and are depend- ! ent on their mothers still. Without successful control of 1 wild cats in the area it is unlikely that the chicks would have survived.

The chicks are now larger than their mothers and are completely feathered. They hang around the nest site waitng for the mothers to regurgitate food into their perpetually open beaks. Their fathers seem to play no part in child rearing, perhaps exhausted after the prolonged and complicated mating ritual of “booming.”

Wildlife Service officers on Stewart Island have been amazed at the energy and total dedication of kakapo ' females for their offspring.“ They are even more remarkable than we thought,” says the Wildlife Service kakapo director, Don Merton. “I have never seen , any bird remotely like it.

They certainly deserve to be saved from extinction.

“Every night, no matter how wet, windy and cold (and it is almost invariably all three on southern Stewart Island) the mother sets off on her tiny little legs (six centimetres long) and trudges for miles in an absolutely straight line. Up steep hills, through dense scrub, over raging torrents they go, never deviating, until they come to a patch with berries. "When they have eaten as much as they can carry, they turn around and go straight back to their chicks, and regurgitate some of it,” he says. "They will do that twice a night, for at least three months, and in the morning retire into the branch of a tree where they can keep half an eye on their chicks while resting.”

The Wildlife Service has taken photographs of the kakapo chicks, the first taken this century. Copies have been sought by naturalists, biologists, and conservationists all over the world. With the consent of the Department of Lands and Survey, which controls the nature reserve with the kakapo, and the help of Wildlife Service officers, the natural history unit of Television New Zealand has obtained some unique film footage which shows a kakapo chick in its vulnerable ground-level nest being fed by its mother.

By

OLIVER RIDDELL