Kakapo hunt ready to begin

Researchers will camp out, listening for the kakapo's distinctive booming. Picture / Fotopress

A mission to find a critically endangered New Zealand bird in the wild is being given a one-in-five chance.

Search teams were yesterday waiting for the weather to improve before starting on a survey of 30 sites in remote and rugged South Island bush for a male kakapo that would boost efforts to save the species.

Only 86 of the flightless parrots are known to exist. They all live in protected island sanctuaries such as Codfish Island, near Stewart Island.

No kakapo has been seen alive on the mainland since 1984, but there have been signs that they may still exist in Fiordland and teams are now following up on those reports.

Two male kakapo, Tawbert and Biscuit, were identified in Fiordland in the 1980s.

"I would give us a one in five chance of coming up with a bird," said Department of Conservation (DoC) kakapo team leader Paul Jansen. "They are in the mating season so it gives us the best chance ... "

In the mating season, the kakapo make a distinctive "booming" call to attract a mate, which searchers hope will lead them to their targets.

Mr Jansen said four or five teams of two would aim to camp for two fine nights in each of the 30 locations.

Yesterday, recent snow and high winds made conditions unsuitable to start the search. Wind makes it difficult to pick up the kakapo's booming.

Mr Jansen said finding a male could add crucial difference to the increasingly similar kakapo population.

Inbreeding was believed to be a cause of low fertility among remaining kakapo. They breed only every two to five years and about 58 per cent of eggs do not hatch.

Meanwhile, a team of New Zealand researchers have had their ground-breaking work on kakapo published in the prestigious Royal Society of London journal, Biology Letters.

The team, from DoC and Auckland and Canterbury Universities, discovered they could fix the imbalance in the gender of kakapo chicks by the amount of feed given to the females.

In 1995, only a third of kakapo chicks were female, but now there are 41 females out of the population of 86.