New Zealand’s Kakapo
Legendary conservationist and Birds on the Brink advisor Mark Carwardine recalls a poignant and personal relationship with one of New Zealand’s most iconic birds – Sirocco the Kakapo
Conservationist Mark Carwardine reveals a poignant and personal relationship with one of New Zealand’s most iconic birds
Evolution designed the Kakapo – the nocturnal ‘Owl Parrot’ of New Zealand – in the good old days before there was anything to eat it. Until just a few hundred years ago there were no terrestrial mammals in New Zealand. There were a few species of bats, which are mammals of course, but – and this is the point – there were no predatory land mammals.
So, the Kakapo and all the other birds could run amok. Life was good. But it was too good to be true. When the Maori and Europeans arrived, they brought with them a multitude of animals – some on purpose, and some by mistake. Suddenly, the country was full of hungry ferrets, Stoats, Weasels, rats, cats, dogs, Hedgehogs and possums. These mammals couldn’t believe their luck – they found a smörgåsbord of tasty (and mostly flightless) birds with no idea that anything could possibly want to hurt them, let alone eat them.
In fact, if you were trying to design a vulnerable species, you’d be hard pushed to come up with something better than the Kakapo: it’s incredibly tame and trusting; it spends most of its time on the ground; it’s lost the power of flight, because it had nothing to fly away from (flying is hard work and consumes lots of energy; so if you don’t need to do it, why bother?); and it has lost the ability to worry, because there was nothing much to worry about.
I had my most memorable encounter with a Kakapo on Codfish Island, a cartographic speck off the extreme southern end of New Zealand, while filming for the BBC TV series Last Chance to See. This 1,400-hectare (3,460-acre), bush-covered, predator-free nature reserve, a few miles off the wild west coast of Stewart Island, is the Kakapo capital of the world.
The Kakapo in question was called Sirocco, one of just 210 Kakapo alive today; like others of his kind he was a beautiful mottled green colour and full of life and bluster. Born on Codfish in 1997, the son of Zephyr and Felix, he was the smallest chick of his brood and partially hand-reared from the tender age of just three weeks. That, in a nutshell, was his problem. No one had actually explained to him that he was a Kakapo.
During the encounter in question, Sirocco climbed up my leg, using his beak and claws like mountaineers use axes and crampons, then made his way up my back, and finally was rocking backwards and forwards on my head like a demented dachshund. His soft, musty-smelling feathers were rubbing against the back of my hair and his claws were digging into my neck. It really hurt. He ripped a mole off my neck, pierced one of my ears and scratched my cheek.
But the film clip became a bit of an internet sensation and Sirocco has an ever-increasing fan base worldwide. He’s a lovable rogue – and a compelling ambassador for his kind.