Kakapo male Bunker after his first health check at Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari. Photo / Petrus Hedman
Kakapo male Bunker after his first health check at Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari. Photo / Petrus Hedman
Waikato’s newest feathered residents, kākāpō males Bunker, Ōtepoti, Motupōhue and Māhutonga, all 4years old, have settled in well after one month in their new home at Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, near Cambridge.
This is good news for the Kākāpō Recovery Programme because it means the team can start preparing for another small group of up to six male kākāpō to join them soon.
Bunker, Ōtepoti, Motupōhue and Māhutonga were relocated from Whenua Hou Codfish Island near Rakiura Stewart Island last month and are the first kākāpō to live on the mainland in almost 40 years.
DoC kākāpō operations manager Deidre Vercoe said the four birds are fitted with backpack-style transmitters and GPS units to track their location and activity levels without disturbing them.
“From this data, we learned that following their long journey from Whenua Hou, Motupōhue was the first bird ready to start exploring after just a brief spot of rest and relaxation.
Māhutonga and Motupōhue are two of the four kākāpō now living at Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari. Photo / Danielle Zollickhofer
“Bunker, Ōtepoti and Māhutonga took a more measured approach and remained close to their release sites for the first few days before venturing into their new surrounds,” Vercoe said.
“One month on, we can see that after some serious initial exploration of the maunga, all four have settled into separate but consistent locations, which may well become their more permanent home ranges.”
At the health check-up, DoC and Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari rangers found Bunker, Ōtepoti, Motupōhue and Māhutonga all in good condition with only a small percentage of expected weight loss.
“This was well within the range we were expecting at this stage. Samples were also collected that will provide insight into their preferred diet in this new habitat. This information, along with transmitter and GPS data, helps us learn how the birds are adapting, and if they can thrive in this new environment,” Vercoe said.
DoC expected the birds to lose a small percentage of weight when they were relocated because they were in a new place, so they are going to use extra energy exploring and finding food.
Mahutonga after the first one-month mark health check. Photo / Daniella Whitaker
That’s why the four kākāpō had to meet minimum weight criteria before being selected for the transfer to ensure they have a bit of a buffer. Kākāpō are vegetarians and their diet usually includes ferns, shoots, roots and forest berries.
Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari biodiversity team leader Dr Janelle Ward went along to the health check-up of Bunker and said she is very happy with how the birds are doing.
“[Bunker] is very sweet. He is a very patient bird and there was no protest [about the check-up], he didn’t run away. It was like he knew what it was all about.”
The kākāpō are located through their transmitters and GPS units, but Ward said the birds “generally move away” when people are coming.
“Some make a massive runner ... others hide in burrows ... or climb up some trees ... They are more agile than you think.”
Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari covers an area of 3400ha that is separated into different enclosures and surrounded by 47km of predator-proof fence. Thirty-eight kilometres of those had to be “kākāpō-proofed” with 400 millimetres of thin stainless steel, which prevents the birds from climbing out.
Ward said the kākāpō-proofing had worked so far and some birds have had “interactions with the fence”.
While visitors are able to explore the main mountain enclosure where the kākāpō are, the agile but chunky parrots are “masters of camouflage”, so visitors to the sanctuary haven’t reported a kākāpō sighting yet and are also unlikely to come in contact with one, Ward said.
“We don’t want people to get their hopes up. Even if they came past a kākāpō ... [the birds] usually stay very still, so people might not know they just walked past one ... In the summertime, the birds may start booming, so people will hopefully be able to hear them.”
Sanctuary Mountain covers an area of 3400ha, with 47km of predator-proof fence. Photo / Danielle Zollickhofer
While it’s still early days and the data collected last week is still being worked through, Ward said she was already surprised by a few findings.
“They travelled quite a bit [around the sanctuary], some of them explored nearly half the mountain. The [DoC] kākāpō team told us the birds settled into their favoured areas already and once they settled, they didn’t move that far away [from there]. I thought the kākāpō would take more time to settle.”
Sanctuary Mountain and DoC were now preparing for the release of the next group of birds. DoC expects to have a timeframe confirmed soon and hopes to relocate them within the coming months.
