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.
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!
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