New database will keep tabs on reducing numbers of kea
Have you seen Atawhai? Beryl? Maybe Hopey or Windscreen? They all like mountains, flying and the colour green.
They are kea, they are endangered and they are all on the new online Kea Database.
Laura Young, Mark Brabyn and George Moon – or the Arthur’s Pass Kea Team as they like to be known – have worked on the database for some months. Now they are pleased to let it fly.
‘‘People like interacting with kea, they like taking photos with them, they like feeding them, even though they shouldn’t,’’ Young said. Encouraging people to become citizen scientists and to log kea sightings would promote interaction with the bird ‘‘in a more meaningful way’’.
Logging a sighting could be done online and required only the date, time, general location, ankle band colour, a description of the bird or birds and an email address. People could also send in pictures of kea they had seen.
‘‘We’d like it to be; you send us an image and we go from there. It’s early days though,’’ Moon said.
After only a couple of weeks of ‘‘soft launch’’, Moon said there were already 50 logged sightings.
As well as setting up the database, the team worked with the Kea Conservation Trust. Birds they encountered were fitted with a small ankle band, with a distinct colour and letter combo to differentiate them.
Moon said it was not all roses with the banded kea. The group had already seen logged birds die over the lifespan of the database.
‘‘It drives home that the birds actually are at risk.’’
The biggest threat to the birds was predation by stoats, ferrets and feral cats, Moon said.
Young said it would be lonely in the mountains without the parrot, and that sense of isolation was increasing as numbers decreased.
‘‘They’re just particularly noticeable by their absence.
‘‘Lots of people anecdotally report that they’re noticing fewer and fewer kea over the years.’’
Young said kea numbers were estimated at between 3000-7000, but it was difficult to get a precise number.
The database would help tell researchers where kea were, where they weren’t, and give a better picture of numbers.