Kākāpō ranger diary March 2011
Welcoming new kākāpō chicks!
Kākāpō chick aged two months in 2009
Things on Codfish Island are getting exciting! We have five chicks so far, one chick nearly out of its egg and five more waiting to hatch later this month! Rakiura is doing well with two chicks and they are growing up so fast, gaining weight every day, and looking nice and healthy.
Ellie is another mum doing well with one little chick in her nest and Suzanne is waiting for her little one to come out of its egg, which should be any time soon! We have two chicks down at the hut where we are handrearing them.
At this stage we are still deciding whether to try to foster them to a kākāpō mum or keep on handrearing them, but the main thing is they are doing well and gaining weight as they should be.
Every night a ranger goes to a nest that is being nestminded by a dedicated volunteer, where the chicks are weighed and given a little health check. The rangers also make sure the chicks are on the right track and that their mums are feeding them enough.
For most of the nests things are going well but unfortunately we have had to pull a chick from Solstice as she just wasn't able to feed her enough (the rimu fruit has failed but they can also be fed the supplemenatry food via their mums).
So their is a slight lack of sleep among the troops on the island (currently 21 of us) but everybody seems to be coping fine and it's quite nice to be walking the island at night weighing chicks in their nest (once the mum has departed to feed), and seeing the other wildlife - bats, petrels and other seabirds - which seem to make the island more busy and alive at night time, than during the day.
We are all hoping the kākāpō mums are able to keep raising their chicks in the nest and that they will be able to raise them on the island instead of us hand rearing them.
Of course only time will tell how the season will progress but, either way, it's great to see the kākāpō population increasing again this year.