DoC hopes first kakapo chick heralds bumper breeding season

By ANNE BESTON

The first of what is expected to be a bumper crop of kakapo chicks has hatched on an island sanctuary.

The tiny chick, temporarily named F1 after its mother, Flossie, is the first hatched in three years and raises the world population of New Zealand's native parrot to 63.

Conservation Minister Sandra Lee said it was hoped the chick's arrival would be the start of the best breeding season yet.

"This chick, and the others following it, stand the best chance ever of making it to breeding age due to the intensive effort that has been put into kakapo over the past decade and into making Codfish Island/Whenua Hou [near Stewart Island] an island sanctuary," she said.

Eighteen females are sitting on 53 eggs, and three females that have mated are yet to lay. One bird, Bella-Rose, has laid four eggs, the largest-known hatch for a kakapo and all the more impressive because she has not laid an egg since 1981.

Department of Conservation spokesman Paul Jansen said that in previous years, between three and 15 eggs had been laid each season. Usually only about half the eggs laid by kakapo were fertile.

One of the reasons for this year's high count was an abundant fruiting of rimu trees - rimu seeds are a kakapo delicacy.

But pest eradication on Codfish Island/Whenua Hou has also helped kakapo in their survival struggle. Possums were wiped out in 1984 and rats in 1999.

The kakapo is listed as one of the world's critically endangered species. It was thought to be extinct until a population was discovered on Stewart Island in 1976.

The Comalco-sponsored Kakapo Recovery Programme began in 1990. Under the programme, every nest is filmed to ensure the mother is getting enough food and does not abandon it.

Kakapo (night parrot) are solitary, sleeping during the day and wandering through the forest alone at night to feed. Their owl-like, bewhiskered faces, waddling gait and comic antics endeared them to early settlers, some of whom kept them as pets.

But the bird's defence mechanism of "freezing" when under threat by predators was woefully inadequate when faced with possums, rats and dogs and their numbers fell dramatically after the arrival of Europeans.

nzherald.co.nz/environment