Kakapo

Description

The kakapos are large, and round, the males measure at the adulthood up to 60 cm and weigh between three and four kilograms. The females smaller and are less brilliantly coloured than the males. The kakapos carry on the green back of the feathers olive barred of black, which enables them to be melted in the vegetation. Their stomach, their neck, and their face are yellowish with a great variability between the individuals.

Their leg S vigorous enables him to traverse important distances. Contrary to the other birds of ground, the kakapo can accumulate a broad quantity of body grease to store energy. Incompetents to fly, they carry wing S proportionally too short for their size and do not have the marked bone being used as skittle (the Sternum) on which come to be attached the muscles of the flight in the other birds. They however use their wings for balance, to support, plane and slow down their fall when they leap of the trees. As the feathers do not require necessary solidity and rigidity to fly, they are exceptionally soft, which justifies the scientific name habroptilus .

The kakapos have a facial disc of fine feathers, which makes them resemble a Hibou, from where the name of parrot-owl that the first Europeans to be established gave him. Delicate “moustache” surrounds them light blue Bec, which they use to feel the ground. The end of the feathers constituting the tail becomes often damaged through being trailed on the ground.

Habitat

Kakapo lives the Forêt S of New Zealand, since the level of the Mer up to 2000 meters of altitude. He lives mainly with ground but can climb in the Arbre S. Nocturne, he takes refuge in holes during the day.

Formerly common in all the Archipelago, its surface of distribution is reduced to rare island S septentrional, become reserves today: Codfish , Maud and Little Barrier .

Ethology

The kakapo, night and solitary, can live more than 60 years. It can travel several kilometers in one night on a wide territory of some 20 hectares for the males and 40 hectares for the females. The male is able to collect the air in a thoracic bag in order to produce a detonation which can be heard with several kilometers! In period of reproduction, each male can thus thunder all during the night. It reproduces irregularly, approximately every two years, according to the abundance of food. Its sexual maturity occurs only at age the seven years.

Exclusively vegetarian, it nourishes bud S, Bulbe S, cone S, Feuille S, Fleur S, Fruit S, Graine S, Pollen and roots of many plants, according to the availabilities.

History of a catastrophe

Like the dodo of Mauritius, the population of the kakapo quickly has fall with the arrival of the men. The New Zealand not having sheltered a Mammalian Predatory during million years, the kakapos had lost the capacity to fly and had become very vulnerable, incompetents to attack or flee. Their only predator was a giant eagle, the giant Aigle of Haast, extinct for a long time, from which they were protected thanks to their Camouflage.

The population started to decline some thousand years ago, whereas the first Polynésie NS drove out the kakapo, destroyed its habitat and imported a species of Rat. The situation worsened in 1845, when Europeans unloaded and started to cut down this tasty bird. Their colonization was accompanied by the destruction of important surfaces to build farms and introduction of concurrent species (stag S) or predatory (Chat S, Chien S, Furet S). The kakapo was underprivileged by its musky odor, whereas its camouflage appeared ineffective against the mammals, which use especially the their sense of smell to drive out. Many kakapos were killed during the rush towards the Or the years 1860 and 1870. In 1889, the kakapo was regarded as the oldest parrot, which increased the interest that the collectors carried to this so strange bird. Because of these multiple causes, the decline was massive: several hundreds of thousands, the population was almost destroyed at the beginning of the 20th century; in 1995, about fifty kakapos survived on some islands sanctuaries, which makes of it the rarest parrot in the world.

Protection

Species extremely threatened, the kakapo figure on the list of the species of Appendix I of the QUOTE ( Convention one International Trade in Endangered Species off Wild Fauna and Flora, i.e. Convention on the international business of the species of fauna and flora savages threatened of extinction, called of Washington) and is the subject of a protection plan on behalf of the Department of New Zealand conservation.

References

Bonds

Kakapo recovery programs

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