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North Island Kaka

Nestor meridionalis

Photo by remkinloch
Published on Project Noah
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Field Notes

Description:

An Endangered large olive brown parrot with a silvery grey head, endemic to NZ. It can measure up to 45cm in length and weighs around 400-500g. When viewed at a distance, or at rest, it appears relatively drab but up close and in flight the spectacular orange red face feathesr and bright red underbody and wings are visible. It has a large, sharp, overshot top beak, used for eating fruit, berries, seeds flowers and invertebrates, it also uses its tongue to collect honey nectar from the native NZ beech trees. It makes a 'ka-kaa' sound, for which it was named, as well as a more elongated screech. In flight its wings appear stubby and it flights while screeching, so even from a distance is easy to identify.
There are two species, North Island and South Island, separate by the geography of NZ but this species

Habitat:

It usually lives high in the bush canopy of the podocarp and beech forests of NZ's native forests. Nest sites are in hollowed out trees, well above the forest floor but they are still heaving predated by introduced mamamals (rats, stoats and weasels). For this reason, males often outnumber females about 5:1 where good predator control is not undertaken, due to the females being killed while on the nest. The 55ha Mt Bruce reserve where these birds live has a wild population of 200 but could support 600 adult birds.

Notes:

Pukaha Mt Bruce was established in 1962 as a reserve to breed and release endangered native birds into predator controlled environments. Kaka were absent from this bush for around 50 years and the first re-release of captive bred birds was made in the 1990's. Daily feeding, by rangers with appopriate food, of the wild birds is made and a dozen or more freely come down to the visitor centre for this feeding. Until recently all birds, including wild born chicks, were ringed but numbers are so great now that this part of the programme has been discontinued. All of these photos were taken of these wild birds visting the feeding station at Mt Bruce. It would definitely be the best place in NZ (and therefore the world) to see wild kaka up close and personal.

Species ID Suggestions

Comments (8)

Thank you all for the congratulations on this spotting. Very excited to have SOTD with one of my first postings!
Congratulations and thanks for sharing such good news - great spotting !
Congratulations on your SOTD Rach, welcome to PN. Great images and information.
Congratulations remkinloch, this very special bird has earned you your first Spotting of the Day! "The endangered North Island Kaka (Nestor meridionalis septentrionalis) has disappeared from much of its former range. It is one of two subspecies of the New Zealand kaka, first described by German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1788. The genus Nestor contains three other species: the kea (N. notabilis), the extinct Norfolk kaka (N. productus), and the also extinct Chatham kaka (N. sp.). They belong to the New Zealand parrot superfamily (Strigopoidea), which is separate from all other parrots". Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/projectnoah/photos/pb.10150120463815603.-2207520000.1493332256./10158625831130603/?type=3&theater Twitter: https://twitter.com/projectnoah/status/857722281774260224
Fantastic spotting remkinloch, welcome to Project Noah!
Hello remkinloch and Welcome to the Project Noah community! We hope you like the website as much as we do. There are many aspects to the site and community. The best way to get started is to read the FAQs at http://www.projectnoah.org/faq where you can find all the tips, advice and "rules" of Project Noah. You, like the rest of the community, will be able to suggest IDs for species that you know (but that have not been identified), and make useful or encouraging comments on other users' spottings (and they on yours). There are also "missions" you can join and add spottings to. See http://www.projectnoah.org/missions . A mission you should join is the http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/2166986003 to chose the best wild photo of 2017,only the spottings added to that mission are eligible.Note that most missions are "local". Be sure not to add a spotting to a mission that was outside of mission boundaries or theme :) Each mission has a map you may consult showing its range. We also maintain a blog archive http://blog.projectnoah.org/ where we have posted previous articles from specialists from different geographical areas and categories of spottings, as well as wildlife "adventures". So enjoy yourself, share, communicate, learn. See you around :)

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