The Kakapo

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

My interest in the kakapo, indeed my knowledge of the kakapo’s existence, began when I read Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. I was immediately enchanted by this fat bird that cannot fly and I think you will be too. So I invite you to sit back, take a couple of minutes, and read about the kakapo.

The kakapo is the only flightless, nocturnal parrot, and weighing in at up to 8 lbs (3.5 kg) it is also the world’s fattest. They are solitary birds with moss-green feathers that can live for over 60 years. Kakapos have a very unusual breeding system, whereby the male , in order to attract females, digs out a series of shallow trenches in the earth with a bowl-shaped indentation at the center. He then sits in the bowl and begins to make a low booming noise. The booming can be heard up to five kilometers away and during mating season, the male will boom an average of 1,000 times per hour for 6 to 7 hours per night. Once a female arrives, the male will perform a type of dance for her and if she is suitably impressed, they will mate. The male is not a monogamous creature however, and as soon as the female leaves he starts booming again. Apparently female kakapos are very appreciative of all this booming and dancing, as they have been known to walk several miles in one night, in an effort to reach a booming male. And locating the male is not always an easy task because the kakapo has chosen as it mating call a noise so low in tonality that it is often difficult to locate its source. Think of your sub woofer and how you can put it in any part of your room because the low bass noise seems to come from everywhere. This is what the poor female kakapo has to deal with; trying to pinpoint the origin of a noise that seems to be coming from everywhere.

Found only in New Zealand, there were once hundreds of thousands of kakapos, but the absence of predators meant the the kakapo did not develop many defensive mechanisms. The arrival of the first Polynesian people a few thousand years ago, had devastating effects on the kakapo population. The situation grew even worse about 150 years ago with the arrival of Europeans and the animals they brought with them, such as ferrets, cats, stoats, rats, and dogs. The kakapo was extremely vulnerable to these newly arrived mammals due to its lack of defensive behavior. Also during this time, much of the kakapo’s forest habitat was cleared for farming. For a number of years the kakapo population was further reduced as kakapos became a favorite meal of gold diggers, explorers and tourists. Although kakapo meat eventually stopped appearing as a featured menu item, the introduction of predatory mammals into the ecosystem continued to have long-lasting effects and their numbers greatly dwindled.

In the 1950s there was a resurgence of interest in the kakapo and from the 1950s to the 1970s, efforts were made to find the remaining kakapos. During this period, only 8 birds were spotted. In 1974, helicopters were introduced into the kakapo search and two areas were identified as the last kakapo strongholds. The remaining kakapos were moved to predator-free islands, where they live under the care of the Kakapo Recovery Programme. After a particularly successful breeding season last year, there are now 86 known kakapo in existence and there is cautious optimism that the kakapo will not be lost forever.

Just in case you are not sure why we should care about the fate of this fat parrot, I’ll leave you with the closing words from Last Chance to See:

Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment … If they disappear, so could many other species. And conservation is very much in tune with our own survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients for many industrial processes. Ironically, it is not often the big and beautiful creatures, but the ugly and less dramatic ones, that we need most.

There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.- Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See

Links to additional sources of information

• The Kakapo Recovery Programme: This is the website of the the organization running the Kakapo rescue programme. The site has a lot of information, including video and sound files and lots of pictures. It is regularly updated with the latest news on the kakapo colony.
• The Fabulous Kakapo: This website has not been updated in some time, but has tons of great background information.
• The Kakapo in the New Zealand Birds Gallery: The text on this page is historically interesting, as it was taken from a book written in 1957. The page also has a link to a sound file of the kakapo’s call.