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Related: About this forumNew Zealand: Landslide kills rare flightless parrot
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27714356BBC News
5 June 2014
New Zealand: Landslide kills rare flightless parrot
A landslide on a remote island nature reserve has killed Maggie the Kakapo, a critically endangered bird, reducing the size of the population to just 127.
Maggie's remains were found, buried deep in mud and debris, by rangers working for New Zealand's Kakapo Recovery Programme on Codfish Island off the country's South Island, TV3 News reports. The island is home to most of the kakapo breeding population and has been kept free of predators since 1977. The kakapo is perhaps the world's oldest living bird. It's also the heaviest type of parrot and can't fly.
"This is the first death attributed to the forces of nature since the programme began," says programme manager Deidre Vercoe. "And a reminder that they're wild birds living in a wild habitat." Vercoe says it is unfortunate to lose 36-year-old Maggie, a female with many years of breeding ahead of her. Kakapo can live for more than 60 years. Maggie's DNA has been collected and kept along with other samples, in the hope technology will one day allow it to be re-introduced into the future kakapo population, TV3 says.
Rangers fear the growth of the kakapo population may stall because it was a bad season for the low-hanging fruit on the birds' favourite evergreen rimu trees. There were 124 kakapo at the start of this year, which rose to 130 after six chicks hatched. After the death of Maggie and two other kakapo in recent months the population is back at 127.
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New Zealand: Landslide kills rare flightless parrot (Original Post)
theHandpuppet
Jun 2014
OP
And the demonstration, courtesy of Adams' collaborator Mark Carwardine
muriel_volestrangler
Jun 2014
#3
NV Whino
(20,886 posts)1. Oh damn, Maggie
This is why birds are supposed to fly.
longship
(40,416 posts)2. Douglas Adams on the kakapo.
The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, thought you know that it probably will not be.
And this:
It is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it's about to trip over something but flying is out of the question. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.
Then, there's its mating ritual, here explained (quite humorously) by Adams himself:
muriel_volestrangler
(101,622 posts)3. And the demonstration, courtesy of Adams' collaborator Mark Carwardine
narrated by Stephen Fry.
longship
(40,416 posts)4. Nice! Thanks.
Love Stephen Fry, too.