Ko¯kako on Mt Pirongia marks milestone

Three ko¯ kako chicks living in a canopy in Pirongia Forest Park are the first banded birds of 2021, marking a milestone for the Waikato restoration society.

Pirongia te Aroaro o Kahu Restoration Society band the chicks in the vicinity of the Sainsbury Rd pest control area and band their second set of chicks for the summer.

Coloured plastic rings on the bird’s legs help the society identify them in the future and the combination of colours determines their parents, age and gender.

Clare St. Pierre, the Society’s chairperson, said ecologists Dave Bryden and Amanda Rogers located the nest but found the parents had no bands on their legs.

‘‘This means they were hatched on Mt Pirongia but weren’t recorded,’’ she said.

‘‘We’re absolutely thrilled to see nesting success for a pair of unbanded ko¯ kako here, which are obviously the offspring of some of those first ko¯ kako we translocated just three years ago.’’

Rogers said the ko¯ kako breeding success means the population is now in its third generation and growing.

The number of ko¯ kako breeding pairs have more than doubled in the last year.

‘‘We are now monitoring nine breeding pairs, seven of which are within the area where mammalian predators are controlled annually by the society.’’

So far, five monitored nests have been successful this season, resulting in 11 fledglings.

The benchmark for a sustainable population long term is 500 birds. Mt Pirongia currently has about 60.

In the 1990s the last surviving ko¯ kako were removed from the mountain to stop them dying out, but almost 20 years of targeted pest eradication programmes over 1300 hectares has been transformed into a safe haven for a variety of native birds.