Kākāpō chicks rise after rare berry bloom

Love Island: Rare berry bonanza spurs Kākāpō baby boom

By Elizabeth Anne Brown edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier

The biggest berry bloom in New Zealand’s forests in decades has set off a mating frenzy among the critically endangered Kākāpō, the world’s meatiest parrot.

With the face of a Muppet and the physique of a Furby, Kākāpō is an all-around absurd creature. It is nocturnal, lime green and, as science-fiction writer Douglas Adams wrote, “flies like a brick.” The animals produce a strong, fruity musk, can weigh as much as a house cat and can potentially live for 90 years or more.

As of early 2026, only 236 Kākāpōs remain in the world, and to the dismay of their human conservation team, the birds rely primarily on a single fruit to set the mood for love. This means that the animals only mate prolifically when the rimu tree – a towering conifer that can live for a millennium – produces a large crop of bright red berries, which happens every two to four years.

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During the berry-backed courtship rituals, male Kākāpōs use their stubby little feet to scrape and stomp out earthen amphitheatres called “booming bowls,” which amplify their courtship song—a resonant, low cry that carries for miles. “Instead of hearing it, you kind of feel it in your chest,” says Andrew Digby, scientific adviser to the Kākāpō team at the New Zealand Department of Conservation.

Almost all female Kākāpōs of reproductive age have bred this year, Digby says, producing an impressive 240 eggs and counting. About half of the eggs will be fertile. Fewer will hatch, and fewer still will survive long enough to fly. As of March 3, researchers have counted 26 live chickens.

These population increases would not have been possible without a handful of Kākāpō “super breeders”, including Blades, a Kākāpō Don Juan of unknown age who, after fathering 22 cubs since 1982, has been banished to “Bachelor Island” for fear he will flood the gene pool. “He was a victim of his own success,” says Digby. “He was too popular.”

When the lucky eggs hatch, the females will raise their young alone. Each night, Kākāpō mothers use their beaks and claws to climb 100 feet to the rimu tree to harvest berries—about a pound’s worth per chick each day. Some women have reproduced for more than 40 years, creating strong “dynasties,” he says. A Kākāpō matriarch named Nora has participated in 13 breeding cycles since 1981 and will be both mum and great-grandmother this season. This year, Kākāpō supermother Rakiura can be seen on a nest cam as she hatches and raises two chicks, fending off nest intruders that include shorebirds and bats. Although only 24 years old, Rakiura has successfully raised nine of her own chicks and fostered many more for less experienced females. Right now, the chicks look like dandelions, but within a few weeks they’ll be “weird little dinosaurs with these huge, big feet,” says Digby.

The team hopes enough chicks will survive this year to bring the world’s Kākāpō population to 300 – a major milestone for a species that teetered with just 51 individuals in 1995. The flying birds were easy pickings for invasive predators, including domestic cats, dogs and weasel-like weasels for the K puss to track them – the frugivorous bird can even track them. by scent. The Kākāpōs found sanctuary on three predator-free islands belonging to Ngāi Tahu, whose tribesmen act as guardians, or caretakers, of the birds. “There is one taonga species, a treasure for us, says Tāne Davis, who has been Ngāi Tahu’s representative in Kākāpō conservation for 20 years.

Kākāpōs have outgrown these small refuges and the pressure is on to “restore mauri, or vitality, of the habitat” on larger islands by removing the invasive predators there, Davis says.

The 2026 breeding cycle represents a new era for Kākāpōs, Davis and Digby agree. At the request of Ngāi Tahu, some of the cubs born this year will not be named. “It’s about letting them get their lives back in the wild,” says Davis.

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