KEY POINTS:
Every single egg is precious," says Luis Ortiz-Catedral who is heading the relocation of endangered kakariki from Little Barrier Island to Motuihe Island in the Hauraki Gulf.
"Kakariki are tiny, fragile creatures, they're taonga."
Ortiz-Catedral, who comes from the second-largest city in western Mexico, is in his element. From the time he was a boy - despite a brief flirtation with turtles - he has been in love with parrots. But whereas in Mexico they are big, bright, chunky and hard-to-find, New Zealand kakariki or native parakeets are smaller and more graceful, with long tails and, before the arrival of humans, had colonised the entire country.
"Flocks of thousands," says Ortiz-Catedral, looking dreamy at the thought.
Now it is his dream to reverse the near-extinction by repopulating the islands of the Hauraki Gulf with kakariki.
If this seems like an ambitious plan for a 30-year-old PhD student, it is. Add in the fact that he travelled from Guadalajara, Mexico, to do the job and it becomes breathtaking. But that's the way things happen in conservation, where scientists and volunteers work around the globe chasing their passions - in this case bringing flocks of small green parrots - not much bigger than budgies - with flashes of blue on their wings, crowns of bright red and pale blue beaks, back to Auckland.
This latest relocation entailed 14 experts, dashing about Little Barrier Island, erecting what ornithologists call "mist nets" so fine that the 31 birds (16 males and 15 females) fly into them as though they are a wisp of cloud. Their destination, via three helicopter trips from Little Barrier was Motuihe Island, just 15 kilometres from downtown Auckland.
Motuihe is the perfect place for relocation says Ortiz-Catedral. He speaks in flawless, grammatical english punctuated with a smile that reveals a gleam of white teeth. "It has been predator-free since a DoC eradication programme and volunteers have replanted hectares of new bush. Already saddlebacks have been released and thrived."
Being predator-free matters to the kakariki, which reacted badly to humans with their accompanying rats, cats and dogs. They nest in hollow logs, sometimes on the ground, and used to fly in flocks so dense people could whack them out of the air with sticks. "They even used to catch them under their hats!"
Unsurprisingly they are now on the "almost extinct" list.
ORTIZ-CATEDRAL comes from a very different culture. Mexico concentrates on creating national parks or biospheres where endangered birds and animals can take their chances on survival, rather than individual species as we do here. "It's more of a landscape approach to conservation, In Mexico there are 130 national parks. In New Zealand it's species-specific."
His siblings, three brothers and two sisters, are scattered over the world. "I was the one bringing pets home all the time: budgies, three cockatiels and an Amazon parrot, turtles and fish. I was always chasing butterflies and looking under the rocks.
"If you knew me as a kid, you knew I'd be a biologist."
The parrot obsession began in earnest when he was a student and also working as a volunteer helping a well-established research group study the breeding biology of the rare lilac-crowned Amazon parrot: "How many chicks out of a clutch of say, three eggs, would survive?"
It was hard, exacting, work. And the biggest problem: a lack of parrots.
This time he wanted to study parrots in a temperate environment, preferably in the southern hemisphere. The sheer volume of kakariki in New Zealand excited him - not to mention their robust constitutions and prolific breeding habits. "New Zealand has more species of parakeets than any country in the world," he says.
When his supervisor at Massey, Dianne Brunton, associate professor of the ecology and conservation group, heard from the young Mexican she was enthusiastic. Ortiz-Catedral arrived in 2004 to do a masters degree, based on the red-crowned New Zealand kakariki.
His research proved what he originally thought: kakariki lay more eggs than most other parrots, sometimes two clutches in a season. Male birds feed the young (especially if the female starts another nest) and many chicks survive past fledgling stage. When conditions are good the birds, which feed on everything from seeds and leaves to insects and carcasses, multiply exponentially.
As Ortiz-Catedral says, "In one island in the Kermadec group there are around 10,000 kakariki. Even Tiritiri Matangi, which was repopulated 30 years ago, has about 800."
"What I wanted to establish was whether the oldest and largest chicks would grow faster, and how well the smallest and quietest would compete for food," he says.
Results were surprising: larger and stronger male birds do well except when conditions turn tough, at which point their higher metabolism is harder to support. They need more food. Many die.
Ortiz-Catedral's next step, the basis for his PhD thesis, was more ambitious. By then he was flatting in Auckland and busing or hitching a ride to Massey's conservation campus with the other student scientists in their jeans and merino tops.
"We're a very international crew," he says. My colleagues are from Malaysia, Germany, Switzerland. I'm very surprised [there aren't more New Zealand PhD students] because you get the opportunity to go to really remote areas of New Zealand."
The three-year project was to relocate kakariki from Little Barrier to three sites: Motuihe and Rakino islands and Tawharanui Regional Park - the first relocation to the mainland since an unsuccessful 1990 attempt to establish kakariki in the Waitakeres.
"The exciting thing is the uniqueness of this project," says Ortiz-Catedral, which he says is the largest to date in the world.
"Only in New Zealand could you do such a thing."
BUT even with the mist nets, the helicopters, the expert scientists, the Maori blessing, the politicians and Ortiz-Catedral himself, the project had problems.
First it rained on Little Barrier, meaning fewer birds than expected flew into the nets. Despite careful handling while they were measured and tested, nine or so died in the aviaries or en route to Motuihe.
But the 31 that did make it are now safely in the regenerating bush, most of them with tiny radio transmitters on their tails. And, for three months, while their batteries last, they will carry on Ortiz-Catedral's research.
Why did so many die? Not sure, says Ortiz-Catedral. "Possibly it was stress." Some birds were hard to get out of the mist nets, meaning they struggled for up to five minutes. Possibly they were frightened by the helicopters. More likely, says Ortiz-Catedral they were "too old, unhealthy, or too skinny to cope with translocation".
At least they did not die in vain. Each tiny, 80g corpse has been sent to Massey's diagnostic laboratories in Palmerston North for pathology testing. Every one is mourned.
As Ortiz-Catedral says, "If we find what killed these animals we will be able to avoid that in the future. And if, over the next months, we have a lot of losses we'll send them for pathological analysis too."
Meanwhile, for Ortiz-Catedral and his team, the job is just beginning. Twenty birds from Little Barrier have still to be netted, measured, tested and relocated to Motuihe; 50 will go to Tawharanui, 30 to Rakino, many of them with radio transmitters that will tell the scientists exactly what they eat, where they nest - and most important, where they go.
If Ortiz-Catedral's dream comes true they will head for other islands in the Gulf, possibly Rangitoto, Tiritiri Matangi, Kawau - or even Parnell - "just a jump" away for kakariki.
"Though we don't want them to go to Parnell," he says, shaking his head. "The cats would get them."
