Source: Radio New Zealand
Ten-year-old kākāpō Marian incubating three eggs in her nest on Anchor Island. Kākāpō Recovery Programme DOC
Conservation lovers glued to a black and white livestream from a remote island off the coast of New Zealand on Sunday can safely claim to be the only people to have seen a critically endangered kākāpō lay an egg in real time.
The images beamed to the world from a large cavity beneath a rātā tree on Whenua Hou/Codfish Island showed 23-year-old Rakiura laying her second egg of the season, the product of a dalliance with Kōmaru a week earlier.
Kākāpō Cam shows Rakiura just after she laid her first egg of 2026. SUPPLIED/DOC
The pair are among just 236 of the flightless parrots alive.
More than than 20,000 people have tuned in to watch Rakiura in her nest since the feed went live on 23 January.
Kākāpō only breed every two to four years and this year’s season could the best yet following a bumper mast, or mass fruiting of rimu berries.
They are predominately based on Whenua Hou, three kilometres west of Stewart Island/Rakiura, with two other breeding populations on Fiordland’s Pukenui/Anchor Island and Te Kākāhu/Chalky Island.
Department of Conservation (DOC) ranger Jake Osborne told RNZ’s Kākāpō Files podcast that monitoring technology allowed experts to keep an eye on the eggs and learn more about the elusive parrot’s nesting behaviour.
Kākāpō technology project lead Jake Osborne working on the Kākāpō Cam set‑up. SUPPLIED/DOC
While Rakiura has returned to the same nest in each of the past seven breeding seasons, the only way to confirm she would commit this year was to wait to see if she would lay her first egg there.
He said DOC staff and volunteers were able to watch that happen on 22 January.
“We’ve all been quite thrilled to be able sit and watch her in her natural nesting behaviour and for the first time we think for anyone alive today, [watch her] lay a couple of eggs. It’s pretty cool to see in full high definition,” he said.
Kākāpō technology project lead Matt Robertson working on the Kākāpō Cam set‑up. SUPPLIED/DOC
Rakiura’s livestream did not go live until the following day, though the footage of her first egg can be seen here.
She laid another egg on on 25 January.
Kākāpō have been known to lay five eggs but Rakiura has more commonly had two to four egg clutches, usually laid about three days apart.
After mating with Kōmaru on 15 January, she was artificially inseminated on 21 January.
Osborne said getting the monitoring and streaming equipment to the remote island sanctuary was no easy task and involved a lot of effort and trial and error.
“It’s one thing to get a camera to work, it’s another thing to keep the camera working in an environment like that, with a stable connection to get enough power to run it all night and all day requires a lot of solar power, some pretty big batteries, some computers, routers, all sorts of things that let us monitor it remotely,” he said.
Osborne said Rakiura’s nest is down a dark valley, making solar power impossible, so the equipment is powered from a hill top 300 metres away.
This year’s live stream set up involved four solar panels, 26kg of batteries, 300m of cable, satellite internet, routers, voltage converters and more.
Kākāpō have also been transferred to Pukenui/Anchor Island and Te Kākāhu/Chalky Island in southwest Fiordland, Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari in Waikato, North Island, and Coal Island/Te Puka-Hereka. Once abundant, by the late 1800s the birds had come under attack from humans and pests.
An early bid to preserve the kākāpō saw several hundred relocated to predator-free Resolution Island in Fiordland, then wiped out when stoats arrived just years later.
By the mid-1900s, only a few birds survived in the most isolated parts of the country, according to a DOC history of efforts to save the world’s heaviest parrot.
By the late 1970s, multiple expeditions had turned up just two dozen of the birds in Fiordland, all male, but the discovery of a large population on Rakiura Stewart Island in 1977 has formed the basis of conservation efforts since.
The birds were initially evacuated to three offshore island sanctuaries, Codfish Island/Whenua Hou, Te Hoiere/Maud Island and Te Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier Island to stem attacks from feral cats which were decimating the colony.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
