Kids into books: The Story of the Kakapo

Author: Philip Temple

Illustrator: Chris Gaskin

Publisher: Longacre Press, $14.95

Age Group: 6-10 years


Kairaki wandered for a long time before he found an empty range with plenty of food.

His new home was a high and wild place where the moonlight glinted on barren white rocks and hills rose up like the twisted roots around his old nest.

Kairaki explored every corner of his home range. He found out where the best fruiting trees were and which plants had the tastiest roots or richest bulbs.

As time passed he grew to know when his favourite food plants were at their best.

With his massive beak, he became expert at chewing and squeezing the juices from grasses and leaves. At grubbing out roots.

At picking berries, nipping buds, gnawing bark, plucking flowers. And very carefully stripping seeds from stalks.

Kairaki grew fat and glossy and handsome. As the years went by, it didn't bother him to live almost always alone.

Every winter the great westerly gales came, bending the tallest trees. The scrub on the hilltops was shaped by the force of the wind.

Deluges of rain flooded the creeks and washed away the last flowers and berries. It was the hardest time for Kairaki, when he could feed only on grass and tussock to keep himself alive.

In winter, Kairaki liked to roost on branches just below the ridge-tops, where he could catch most sun as he slept.

But when the gales came he was forced to seek shelter in whatever dry and sheltered hollow he could find. There he waited until the worst was past, fluffing out his feathers to keep warm.

Kairaki was now about ten years old. As a new spring and summer came, all his favourite food plants grew and blossomed better than usual.

He felt the urge to eat more and sensed that he would need more strength to survive the season of long twilights ahead.

Before the longest day, Kairaki left his home range and walked a long distance to a wide and open hilltop. He had been there two years before, attracted by eerie booming sounds in the night. He had seen other males dancing in the moonlight.

Females had come from the shadows to be with those males who boomed and danced the best. Now Kairaki felt it was his turn to mate.

From what he had seen and learned, he shaped dancing and booming places for himself and cleared tracks to join them.