Parrot is one of the beautiful birds which made us happy in our childhood days. It’s colour always attracted everyone. In most of our childhood stories there were always parrots. This small, beautiful parrot is always special to us.
We will have seen parrot that flies, speaks but have you ever heard about a flightless parrot.
Kakapo, also known as owl parrot, is a species of large, flightless, nocturnal, ground-dwelling parrots of the super-family Strigopoidea, endemic to New Zealand.
Up to 64 cm in length, these flightless birds have finely blotched yellow-green plumage, a distinct facial disc, owl-style forward-facing eyes with surrounding discs of specially-textured feathers, a large grey beak, short legs, large blue feet, and relatively short wings and tail: a combination of traits making it unique among parrots.
It is the world’s only flightless parrot, the world’s heaviest parrot, and also is nocturnal, herbivorous, visibly sexually dimorphic in body size, has a low basal metabolic rate, and does not have male parental care. It is the only parrot to have a polygynous lek breeding system. It is also possibly one of the world’s longest-living birds, with a reported lifespan of up to 100 years.
The weight is 1.5–3 kilograms for males and 0.950–1.6 kilograms for females.
The kākāpō is a large, rotund parrot. Adults can measure from 58 to 64 cm in length with a wingspan of 82 cm. Males are significantly heavier than females with an average weight of 2 kg compared with just 1.5 kg for females. Kakapo are the heaviest living species of parrot and on average weigh about 400 gm more than the largest flying parrot.
Females are easily distinguished from males as they have a narrower and less domed head, narrower and proportionally longer beak, smaller cere and nostrils, more slender and pinkish grey legs and feet, and proportionally longer tail. While their plummage colour is not very different from that of the male, the toning is more subtle, with less yellow and mottling. Nesting females also have a brood patch of bare skin on the belly.
The Kakapo altricial young are first covered with greyish white down, through which their pink skin can be easily seen. They become fully feathered at approximately 70 days old.
Like many other parrots, kakapo have a variety of calls. As well as the booms and chings of their mating calls, they will often loudly skraark.
The kakapo has a well-developed sense of smell, which complements its nocturnal lifestyle. It can distinguish between odours while foraging, a behaviour reported in only one other parrot species.As a nocturnal species, the kakapo has adapted its senses to living in darkness.
Before the arrival of humans, the kākāpō was distributed throughout both main islands of New Zealand. Although it may have inhabited Stewart Island before human arrival, it has so far not been found in the extensive fossil collections from there.
The Kakapo is critically endangered; the total known population of living individuals is 248 as of 2023. All are named, tagged and confined to four small islands off the coast of New Zealand that have been cleared of predators.
Conservation efforts began in the 1890s, but they were not very successful until the implementation of the Kakapo Recovery Programme a century later in 1995.