Source: Radio New Zealand
The males stay in one spot and attract the females through their boom and ching calls. Jake Osborne, DOC
On the small, bush-clad, Whenua Hou / Codfish Island preparations are underway. People and supplies are being dropped in by helicopter. Food hoppers are being filled. Transmitters are being checked. And come nighttime, a booming sound has begun to fill the air.
Anticipation is high, and building, for what may turn out to be the biggest kākāpō breeding season ever.
Follow Our Changing World on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts
Today there are 237 kākāpō. Alison Ballance
“The first male who was heard booming this year was Faulkner, in late November,” Alison Ballance said, having heard the news from Department of Conservation’s Kākāpō Recovery Programme members, who are keeping a close eye on developments. “Faulkner is 9 years old, coming on 10. So this will be his first booming season. And over the weeks that have followed, lots of other males have joined in now.”
Kākāpō are ‘lek’ breeders. The males stay in one spot and attract the females to them through their boom and ching calls. They also prepare a pathway and shallow depressions for the ladies to admire, says Alison. “The boys have been doing lots of housework, which is always good to hear. So the male kākāpō have been tidying up their track and bowl systems.”
The earliest mating can happen around Christmas Day, but most of the action takes place a week or two after, over the New Year.
Well known for The Kākāpō Files podcast released in 2019 during her time as Our Changing World host and producer, Alison’s association with kākāpō goes back much further than that – to her days working in natural history filmmaking.
It started in 1995, when she found herself filming kākāpō nests on Whenua Hou “That was a real high point for me in my life journey really, getting involved with kākāpō. But that point in time was a real low point for the kākāpō population.” At that time there were just 51 known birds.
1995 was also the year that the Kākāpō Recovery Programme began in its current form. In the 10 years running up to 1995 there had only been three kākāpō chicks that survived to adulthood. So the newly formed programme aimed to change those odds.
In the late 80s and early 90s every known wild kākāpō was uplifted and transferred to predator free offshore islands to try halt their decline. Whenua Hou became the new ‘kākāpō central’, and the most important breeding site for this attempted comeback.
Fast forward 30 years and today there are 237 kākāpō.
It has been a huge conservation effort, with continuous tracking and monitoring of the birds, and it gets stepped up even further when a breeding season happens to include artificial insemination, egg incubation, supplementary feeding and chick hand-rearing.
So a lot of work when breeding happens, but that’s not every year, says Alison. “The one thing you need to know about kākāpō is you have to be very, very patient…. because they only breed every two to four years, and the last time they bred was four years ago”.
Rium fruit carpet the forest floor and provide a plentiful food supply for growing kākāpō chicks Alison Ballance
Their breeding is tied to the rimu tree fruiting, called a mast. These birds are tuned in to the rimu cycle, and after careful years of study, DOC’s kākāpō recovery team is too. By counting the growing tips on the rimu branches a full year in advance, they can know if the parrots will breed. And, says Alison, the numbers stack up for this to be a bumper year “The previous biggest mast on record was 2019, when we did the first season of The Kākāpō Files. And the autumn count on Whenua Hou at that time was 47 percent. Well, this year the autumn count on Whenua Hou was 63 percent. So it’s by far and away the biggest rimu fruiting season on record.”
However, no one is willing to count their chicks ‘before they fledge’. “Unfortunately lots of things could happen,” says Alison, “The rimu fruit might not ripen, it often doesn’t. And in that case, chicks might starve.” Disease is always a concern too. The 2019 breeding season saw an outbreak of a fungal infection called aspergillosis which killed both adults and chicks. Plus, there’s the ongoing concern about the arrival of the highly pathogenic strain of bird flu that’s been sweeping the globe.
There is something new happening this year too, says Alison. Now, with the numbers up and the kākāpō spread across three breeding islands, DOC is keen to take a new ‘lighter touch’ approach on two of those islands. “They’re trying to do themselves out of a job really… In the last 30 years it’s been important to increase numbers as quickly as possible, but you can’t keep up this intensity of effort for this many birds.”
Kākāpō Atareta in her nest on two eggs during the bumper 2022 breeding season. Andrew Digby / Department of Conservation
Across this season Alison will be collaborating with [www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/kakapo-recovery/ DOC’s Kākāpō Recovery] Programme team members to get updates from the breeding islands – when the birds mate, when eggs are laid, how many chicks hatch safely, and whether they are healthy and growing – and she will be bringing them to RNZ audiences once again through the second season of The Kākāpō Files. She thinks this season, with its hands-off approach, will bring a ‘very different vibe’. And with 84 adult female kākāpō that could breed, 2026 has the potential to be real turning point for this iconic manu.
Follow and listen to the Kākāpō Files II on your favourite podcast app, or on the RNZ podcast webpage.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
