Kākāpō ranger diary 28 February 2009
New volunteer nest minder Christine Officer gives you an insight into life on Whenua Hou/Codfish Island.
Endless dedication
What surprises me most about life on Whenua Hou/Codfish Island, is the absolutely endless dedication that kākāpō rangers show to their work. Working tirelessly all day, and most of the night, the rangers are also living amongst 20+ willing volunteers - fielding questions from all directions, with a smile or joke never far from their lips.
Chris Birmingham with kākāpō
You can instinctly tell that these are special people, and very passionate about kākāpō and doing everything they can to help their plight for survival. After all, it takes an unselfish person to jump from a cozy sleeping bag into wet muddy boots at 3am, crawl through undergrowth and grovel into a nesting site to check the fertility of eggs, and weigh chicks. Now imagine doing that every night, after already a full days work, for a month on end.
Jason Malham, one of the kākāpō rangers on Whenua Hou/Codfish Island, fitted a pedometer to his hip last week to try to gauge just how many miles he was covering each day. A huge 29km in 36 hours was the answer! Considering the two directions one can travel on Whenua Hou/Codfish Island are up and down, this is even more impressive!
Breeding season update
The 2009 breeding season so far is progressing well. There have now been a total of 63 eggs laid. So far this season there has been a 75% fertility rate, which Ron Moorhouse (kākāpō scientist for the team) is pleased to tell me is 15% higher than the norm. Some of the fertile eggs have died during incubation which is always disappointing, but staff are optimistic that this season might result in a population increase of 30 or more.
For everyone on the island, the recent hatching of the first two chicks has been a particularly exciting event - with eager volunteers heading happily off each night to Cyndy's (the mother) nest, on their nest-minding duties.
At the end of the day though, it's the common feeling of protecting New Zealand's heritage that binds our actions here. It doesn't take a volunteer long though to realise, that the people involved in the recovery of the kākāpō are as special and unique as the birds themselves.
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