Bitten finger a small price to pay for keeping tabs on solitary kakapo

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KEEPING TRACK: James Fraser with a kakapo and his dog Percy.

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Sunning herself by a lake, kakapo Hauturu was blissfully unaware of the efforts James Fraser and his dog had made to find her.

One of only 124 kakapo in the world, 13-year-old Hauturu went missing last August when the radio transmitter attached to her back stopped giving out a signal.

Kakapo Recovery Programme manager Deidre Vercoe said each bird had a radio transmitter so it could be monitored. When Hauturu's signal failed, rangers were unable to find her.

Last week, DOC called in Mr Fraser and his english setter Percy, as the pair specialise in finding threatened birds.

Shortly before going missing, Hauturu had been moved to Anchor Island from Codfish (Whenua Hou) Island – where she usually stayed around the same area. However, since she had not been on Anchor Island long, she had not established a patch of her own.

Feeding stations set up around the island weigh the birds while they eat, and rangers figured out a bird that weighed the same as Hauturu had been feeding at one of the stations.

For four days, Mr Fraser and Percy circled a 15-hectare area, searching eagerly, but their efforts were hampered by a nesting native falcon.

"She was really really aggressive and would swoop at us."

On day five, Mr Fraser said the search area had a "gaping hole" in it, and it was time to brave the falcon.

They avoided her wrath, and it did not take long before Percy sat down, indicating that he had found Hauturu safe and well.

"It was very anti-climatic. She was one of the few birds that didn't run away when we found her."

Sitting in the sun and staring out at a lake, Hauturu let Mr Fraser put her into a bag. But while they waited for 40 minutes for a ranger to arrive with another radio transmitter, she became impatient and grumpy.

Before being released with a new transmitter, she managed to bite Mr Fraser's finger, but otherwise it was a successful trip.

"When there's so few of them of them in the world, it's a big responsibility. She's a female, of breeding age – if something goes wrong, there's even less of them."

Miss Vercoe said the injury and mortality rates for kakapo under the programme were very low, but rangers relied on being able to track the birds in order to protect them.

The batteries in the radio transmitters were changed every year, and she was unsure why Hauturu's had failed.

The World's Rarest Parrot

The kakapo is the heaviest parrot in the world. Males typically weigh 2.2kg Kakapo have a mean life expectancy of 90 years, and are mainly nocturnal and solitary Predators and pests meant that, by 1995, there were only 50 known kakapo surviving in sanctuaries

The Kakapo Recovery Programme

There are now 124 kakapo, of which 57 are female Fiordland's Anchor Island is home to 49 kakapo, while the rest live on Codfish (Whenua Hou) Island The birds are intensively monitored, and nests are carefully protected Chicks are hand-reared off the islands before being returned A breeding programme using artificial insemination is used to try to reduce infertility rates.

- © Fairfax NZ News