What's off to the left of the screen? (we finally got a peek!)

In the last post, Rakiura stood up, hesitated for a moment… and then disappeared off to the left of the screen.

If you’ve been watching the nest cam for a while, you’ll know that moment well. The slow shuffle. The second thoughts. And then — gone.

Off to the left.

It’s become such a familiar part of the story that we almost stop thinking about it.

Left is just… where she goes.

But tonight, for the first time, we got to see what’s actually there.

Ranger Theo walked us through the forest to the entrance of Rakiura’s nest — the place that sits just beyond that invisible edge of the camera frame.

And it turns out… it’s not quite what you might expect.

 

Thanks Ranger Theo from Department of Conservation #Kākāpō Recovery Team for giving us this insight!

Where is she going?

Which brings us back to the questions that many new viewers ask when the nest suddenly becomes empty.

What does she eat?

How long will she be gone?

Where is the baby daddy?

 

 When we last looked, rakiura was in her nest cavity, sitting.

The next time we looked she was still sitting.

A female kakapo Esperance in her nest with egg (2016 season). Photo: Andrew Digby / DOC

 

Then she dug a hole

Then she chewed the roof.

Then she fed the chick...

Then she looked off to the left of the screen.

Now she slowly gets up, she moves towards the left of the screen then she loops back and sits down again.

She looks like she is trying to go back to sleep but then, suddenly, she gets up again and creeps slowly over to left, her exit, and vanishes silently out into the night...

 Where did she go? What does she eat?

Out into the native New Zealand forest to find food.

Rakiura is raising the chicks alone. She is responsible for getting their food and her food and working out the best time to leave them.

Just outside her nest cavity, the same one she has successfully raised many chicks in over the last 7 or 8 mast seasons there is a wealth of food.

The forest is protected from invasive predators so is verdant and lush – it has most of everything she needs to keep her and a few chicks well provisioned.

Rimu is plentiful here – the dominant fruiting tree and even though it’s not ripe yet – there is plenty of food for her to find. Water is also plentiful in this damp green haven.

We also know that even if she did start to loose condition of the chicks were not getting enough to eat, she know where there is a special little snack box 100 metres or so from her nest supplied with food that will supplement her if she needs it.

 

 

Rimu fruit (Photo: DOC conservation blog). 

How long will she be gone?

She may be gone quite some time.

 Kākāpō chicks quickly build up their resilience in the cool southern air and the weather is starting to turn. One of the many unique things about these birds is they are not spring breeders. They don’t even have their eggs until relatively late in the summer and the bulk of chicks hatch just as autumn starts.

 

Unfortunately this is another thing in the long list of things that puts the very existence of this ground dwelling nocturnal parrot in peril. On the mainland, at this time of the year, the introduced predators are looking to stock up for winter and a fluffy defenceless chick alone in a burrow on the ground is like a McDonald’s drive through for a long line of mammalian predators.

 

Kākāpo chick vulnerable in a nest while mother is out feeding Credit: Deidre Vercoe, DOC

Here on Whenua Hou though it’s safe for her to go out. She’ll poke around along the forest floor, making ‘chews’ of various leaves – either grinding them up and spitting out the fibre in cuddy balls or just grinding on long leaves still attached to the plants. Stripping off all the fleshy nutritious parts and leaving  a telltale stringy sign of her evening stroll as she passes by.

In the mid 1900s when many investigative trips were taken into the dwindling wilds of New Zealand to assess how many of these birds were actually left out there – it was often only these tell tale signs that gave any indication that kākāpō might be about.

 

Where is the Baby Daddy?

The short answer is: he isn’t here.

 Kākāpō fathers are not involved in raising chicks. The male responsible for fertilising the eggs is likely somewhere else entirely — probably on a high ridge or hilltop — carefully maintaining what might best be described as his bachelor pad.

This is called a lek.

Kākāpō are the only parrots , in the world, to use a lek and bowl breeding system. Males gather at traditional display sites, and meticulously clear trails that lead to a shallow bowl-shaped depression they have dug into the ground. Then they sit. For months, producing deep resonant booming calls that can travel long distances through the forest at night.

These calls attract our ladies who plod over the, afore mentioned, long distances to see what all the fuss is about.

When they get their they wander along the trails judging each males work, listening to his calls and then decide which one (or ones!) she likes best.

They mate and then she leaves again to plod back to her home range.

In a few days she will find a place she thinks suitable and she will lay a series of 2 – 4 eggs. Maybe even five! 

(note I said a place she THINKS suitable… I am likely to discuss the validity of her choices later in the series!).

From that moment onward the entire job of raising the chicks belongs to the mother.

Which is why Rakiura disappeared into the forest tonight.

She has dinner to find!

 

Post Script: next Time – if the father’s aren’t helping raise the chicks… what are they doing?!

 

Post -  Post Script: Updates on the kākāpō breeding season – currently there are more chicks hatched this season than the total amount of founding population in 1989. This is a HUGE milestone!

 

 

Meet Rakiura: The Star of the Nest Cam

 Actually, before we talk more about why she’s raising the kids alone, it’s probably time to properly introduce the bird at the centre of the story.

If you’ve been watching the Whenua Hou nest cam for any length of time, you’ll already know her. She’s the large mottled presence who creeps quietly and slowly in and out of the nest cavity, rearranges the chicks with gentle determination, and occasionally peers directly into the camera as if to remind us to talk more quietly as the chicks are sleeping!

She is generally almost silent … except when she suddenly is NOT and at that moment, if you are the foolish thing that stepped near her nest, you get to hear a noise that sounds like something that might come out of a T. rex.

Her name is Rakiura.

You can’t tell from the live cam (except for a scant few magical minutes later in the afternoon on a rare day when the sun is so bright it manages to beam through the dense forest and shine enough on the leaf litter at her entrance that it tricks the infrared into switching off and we are all instantly mesmerised by the glory of the nest in colour – hardly daring to take a breath lest we blow it all away…) but she is a glorious array of verdant mottled greens. 

 

Moss, fern, and forest floor all blended into one remarkable bird.

Rakiura is a female kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus), one of the most endangered birds in the world. Kākāpō are large parrots.

She is named after the Māori name for the island all but one of the ‘founder birds’ came from (we’ll talk about founder birds later in the series).

 The species is named after owls.

In typical European colonist fashion, they took a quick look, saw something vaguely reminiscent of something they knew from the ‘home country’ and quickly named it after that…then killed it and sent its skin to whatever museum in Europe would pay them some money.

I know. That got dark quick – it really did and we’ll get to that part of the story in another blog post too.

A Bird Like No Other

There are currently 236 unique kākāpō officially recorded in the living population. Every living kākāpō today descends from a tiny remnant population that conservationists managed to save from extinction in the late twentieth century.

I say unique because practically everything about them is unique.

• Only flightless parrot
• Only nocturnal parrot
• Only parrot to use a lek and bowl breeding system
• Only species where all members are tracked with live transmitters
• Only entire species where every member has a personal name
• Only parrot to use a “freezing” strategy for defence
• The heaviest parrot 
• The strongest smelling parrot
• Ground nesting parrots
• Unpredictable breeding triggered by infrequent (and often unreliable) mass fruiting of podocarp trees.
• Slow breeders
• Thought to be the longest living bird
• Unusually reliant on their sense of smell   

They are also famously friendly — and unfortunately very bad at recognising (and getting out of) danger.

Why Being Unique Became a Problem

Unfortunately, most of these unique traits have led the kākāpō to become one of the rarest birds in the world. The very features that supported it being the most common bird across a pre-human New Zealand, very quickly led to its downfall.

They nest on the ground, freeze when there is danger and have a strong distinct odour – this is great when the only land mammal is a tiny bat. When humans arrive and bring weasels, stoats, cats, possums, dogs, ferrets, rats, mice, possums and hedgehogs…it’s only great for them. What had been an effective survival strategy suddenly become a fatal one.

The Slowest Breeders in the Forest

Kākāpō reproduce very slowly. They only breed during the mast years – the seasons that podocarp trees, like rimu, produce enormous quantities of fruit.

These mast seasons happen irregularly – perhaps every 2 to 4 years.  When they happen food becomes abundant across the forest, and the number of native insects and birds can rise quickly.

However, that same food boom for our precious native creatures translates into a food boom for the introduced pests as well. Pest numbers skyrocket as they feast on, not only all the extra food but also the extra insects and birds.

Those introduced pests do not breed slowly. Rats and weasels now present in New Zealand can produce 6 - 10 offspring every 8 -12 weeks…

It is a brutal ecological chain reaction.

 

Rakiura’s Home.

After that….let’s go to our safe place!

Rakiura lives on Whenua Hou / Codfish Island (her hatch island), it is near the Southern end of New Zealand. One of the main strongholds of the recovery programme. Now days humans work hard to keep it predator-free and a safe haven for her and her relatives to live their best life under the close watch (and yearly health and transmitter check) of the Kākāpō Recovery team.

The forest here is largely undisturbed, lush, damp and abundant with all the things that make New Zealand forest a taonga (treasure!). There are a number of podocarps (evergreen conifers) with rimu as the dominant fruiting tree – perfect kākāpō food. There are other podocarps here too such as miro, totara and southern rātā (the tree Rakiura lives under!).

An Experienced Mother

At 24 years old (she hatched during the 2002 season on the 19^th February) Rakiura is an experienced and successful mother. She currently has nine living offspring, three females and six males, across six breeding seasons.

Toitiiti (2008), Te Atapo and Tamahou (2009), Tutoko and Tia (2011), Te Awa and Taeatanga (2014), Tautahi and Mati-Mā (2019).

Deceased offspring: Mokopuna (hatched and died 2008), Tiaho (hatched 2009, died Mar 2016), Taonga (hatched 2011, died April 2014)

 She also has many grandchicks.

• Acheron - son of Tamahou. Hatched in 2019.
• Alison - daughter of Tutoko. Hatched 2019.
• Bravo - son of Te Atapo. Hatched 2019.
• Deans - son of Tamahou. Hatched 2019
• Gale - daughter of Tutoko. Hatched 2019.
• Hau - son of Tamahou. Hatched 2019
• Kōraki - son of Tutoko. Hatched 2019.
• Koru – father is Tutoko. Hatched 2019.
• Mackenzie - son of Tamahou. Hatched 2019.
• Marangai - son of Tamahou. Hatched 2019
• Olive  - daughter of Tamahou. Hatched 20 Feb 2022
• Quill - son of Tamahou. Hatched 2019
• Scotty - son of Tutoko. Hatched 2019.
• Tutū - son of Te Atapo. Hatched 2019.
• Uri - son of Te Atapo. Hatched 2019.

In the 2026 season she may even contribute a great grandchick to the official population as we know that Gale produced 3 fertile eggs and at least one male grandchick (Deans) has mated for the first time as a 7 year old this season – so the others may have as well.

 Rakiura is still young by the way. She produced 3 fertile eggs this year, one of which has hatched and was fostered as Rakiura’s experience was needed to hatch and raise high value chicks this season.  

Kākāpō females can produce fertile eggs from 4 years of age until well into their 50s and maybe longer.

We haven’t actually known a female kākāpō longer than 45 years and the first female we met was already an adult at that point so knowing her exact age is unfathomable. We can only know she was an adult at that point as she had a nest! This was a huge relief and turning point for what was to become the Kākāpō Recovery Team (up until that point they had been searching for decades and only found males on the mainland of New Zealand and believed the population was functionally extinct – more on that another time).

The oldest kākāpō we can be sure of the hatch year of is Zephyr – she was one of the chicks in that “first” nest found by the team on Rakiura/ Stewart Island in 1981.

The Nest

Records show Rakiura has used this particular nesting site during every breeding season since 2008, returning to the same hollow in the forest whenever the conditions are right for raising chicks. This behaviour is not common in kākāpō and has proved a marvellous opportunity for the recovery team to observer her nesting behaviours over many seasons providing valuable data on nesting and chick raising.

Over the years there have been modifications to keep her nest safe and dry. It also has a well-placed hatch for monitoring eggs … and transferring eggs and chicks in and out.  This has also made Kākāpō Cam possible – making all the kākāpō nerds deliriously happy!

And, like every female kākāpō who successfully breeds, she is doing it on her own.

Which brings us back to the questions that many new viewers ask when the nest suddenly becomes empty.

Where did she go?

What does she eat?

How long will she be gone?

Where is the baby daddy?

 

Post Script: Next time!

The Night the Internet Fell in Love With a Flightless Parrot

Somewhere on a remote predator-free island in southern New Zealand, inside a hollow at the base of a big rātā tree, a large green parrot is asleep.

 

The date is 23 Jan 2026.

Around the world many people immediately start to watch.

If that sounds slightly absurd, it is. But that is also exactly what has been happening during the current kākāpō breeding season, where a live nest camera has opened a tiny virtual hatch into the private life of one of the rarest birds on Earth.

I started watching at 6:30pm (a.k.a, 18:30, as we quickly learn to always refer to the 24-hour timestamp in New Zealand time in the top left corner of the live nest cam — a fundamental reference point for all viewers).

The camera is trained on the nesting cavity that belongs to a female kākāpō named Rakiura. She lives on one of the offshore islands where the species is carefully protected. The nest is deep in a tree cavity, the sort of place you would never normally see unless you were a Department of Conservation ranger checking on the bird.

Now anyone with an internet connection can peek inside.

At first glance, not much appears to be happening. Rakiura spends a lot of time asleep.

 

Yet the chat alongside the video rarely stops moving.

People call out timestamps (ts!) when something interesting happens.

“11:16 – she’s doing that yoga stretch again.”

“12:09 – I think I saw the egg!”

“14:40 – egg rolling”

Someone notices a feather flicking out when Rakiura lifts her head.

It turns out that when you are watching one of the rarest parrots in the world raise chicks in real time, very small things become very exciting.

And then there are the questions.

The chat fills with them.

What is she doing to the egg?

(She’s keeping the egg correctly oriented and ensuring even temperature and moisture exposure.)

When will the chick hatch?

(From lay to hatch is about 30 days.)
How long ‘til she has another egg?

(For kākāpō, the usual gap between eggs is about 2–4 days, with ~3 days being very typical.)

How many eggs will she have?

(Clutch size is usually 2–3 eggs, occasionally 4, rarely 5. If they’re all fertile… well, that’s a story for another post.)

Hasn’t she been away too long? The egg will get cold and die.

That last one was a biggy at the start – the first egg can be left for an almost unfathomable amount of time before it loses viability 12 – 24 hours.

I know. Inconceivable.

The longest Rakiura left her first egg during the early stage was around seven hours.

This is because before the second egg is laid the first egg enters a kind of pre-incubation pause. Development does not properly begin until the clutch is complete, so the egg can safely be left for extended periods.

Some viewers are just discovering kākāpō for the first time. Others have been following the recovery programme for years. A few have developed the kind of detailed knowledge that only comes from long hours reading research papers, searching social media posts and falling very far down the rabbit hole of conservation biology.

But the remarkable thing is not just the bird in the nest.

It is the growing and diverse community forming around it.

People are watching from places like Nelson, Rakiura/Stewart Island, Christchurch, North Island, Germany, Vienna, Ohio in North America, and Australia. One person might be checking in before breakfast. Another is awake at 1 a.m. halfway across the world. Someone else is quietly screen-capturing moments so they can re-watch them later.

All of them are waiting for the same thing.

The moment the mother bird wakes up, stretches her wings, and disappears out into the night (21:03:57 she is leaving, 21:03 and she’s gone, 21:03 She is going out for a feed, 21:03 Rakiura has left the building…).

Because this is the part that surprises many new viewers.

Kākāpō fathers do not help raise chicks.

There is no shared parenting. No partner returning with food. No relief shift at the nest.

The chicks you see on that camera, and every other nest that is currently monitored where kākāpō currently breed, are all being raised by a single mother.

And when Rakiura slooooowly (with the slowness of someone who thinks they can't be seen) creeps out of the nest and vanishes into the darkness of the forest, she leaves her babies alone.

For hours.

If it’s your first time seeing it, it makes you worry,

Hasn’t she been gone too long?
Will the chicks get cold?
What if something finds them?

Yet these strange strategies are the reasons kākāpō survived for millions of years.

And also the reasons they almost disappeared from the face of our current Earth completely…

To understand that, we have to step away from the nest camera for a moment and look at the extraordinary life of the bird itself…

 

Postscript: If by some madness you have found my blog but haven’t been tuning in to Kākāpō Cam: Rakiura the kākāpō – 2026 Nest live on YouTube… please do so now!

That will give me time to write the next post!

Photo of Rakiura's nest tree is from the Department of Conservation's website here. Photo of Rakiura sleeping in cavity is a screen shot of the live cam footage.