ENGLISH FEEDS Nature & Wildlife: Kakapo - Meet The Lovely Owl Parrot Sirocco (Dana Boyle)

Prologue: This invited entry is brought by Dana Boyle. She works on the conservation of the perhaps, finest parrot in the world, whose populations are minimal right now (Critically Endangered, with less than 200 living individuals). I met Dana while in Macquarie Island (Southern Ocean) where she was working monitoring presence of rabbits as part of the erradication program. She is an excellent field expeditioner, and quite tough indeed to patrol antarctic environments continuously for months. I groan only after some hours of field work hehehe. Enjoy it...  LRP.

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Kākāpō are one of the strangest but loveable birds you can come across. They are giant flightless parrots whose defensive mechanism is to freeze on the spot if danger approaches, this works for them because their feathers look like moss and ferns and they blend into the bush very well! Their numbers got as low as just 51 left before they were moved to offshore islands to protect them from introduced pests such as cats and stoats that were quickly sending the kākāpō to extinction. Today there are more than 125 kākāpō but ongoing conservation efforts are needed to ensure that they survive.

This kakapo is called Simbad (New Zealand)

 One of the most famous kākāpō is a boy called Sirocco. He was born on March 23 1997, and he has even starred on the BBC programme ‘The last chance to see’ with Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine  . . He managed to get up close and “personal” with Mark on film, much to the delight of Stephen Fry and other onlookers...

Sirocco and Mark Carwardine got close friends. This encounter
has been broadcasted worldwide (New Zealand)

Sirocco is a little different from other Kakapo because he was sick as a small chick and had to be handraised. This caused him to be imprinted on humans, and when he lived on Codfish Island he loved to come and hang out at the hut and visit everyone at night. He also had a great game he would play where he would hide in a bush and when someone would walk outside to go up to the toilet he would jump out and scare them! He especially loved to get unsuspecting volunteers on their first night on the island. He would sit on the shelf outside and peer in through the window at everyone, hoping somebody would come out and play with him or give him a treat.

Sirocco hiding in the camo tent, got you! (New Zealand)

Sirocco now lives the high life and travels around New Zealand so the public get a chance to see a rare kākāpō.  He is the official spokesbird for Conservation and even has his own facebook page and twitter account so you can stay up to date with what is going on in the life of Sirocco and other New Zealand birds.

Dana and Sirocco caught chatting about their things on
 a fresh night (New Zealand)

Here is one last fascinating fact: Sirocco taught us that kākāpō can swim. In 2007, when visiting Maud Island, he saw the ranger's family running and jumping off the jetty and decided to join them. He paddled back to shore, shook himself off and seemed completely unworried by this event.

Epilogue: As we see we can learn a lot from interactiong with the very animals we want to protect, but with extintion these leasons are lost. The Kakapo Recovery Program is a new hope for this magnificent bird. This is partially thanks to the involvement of local participants such Dana and Jack whose local expertise in the field is quite valuable. LRP

Feel welcome to pose any questions / thoughts about the Kakapo and Dana's amazing work in the wild, and we will see to respond...

Text: Dana Boyle (Sources: Local). Edited by Luis R. Pertierra

Images: Dana Boyle (New Zealand, South Island 2007-2014)