Twas the night before the day before the night before Christmas, all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a...........

.....well not quite, all over Whenua Hou at the moment plenty of creatures are stirring, kakapo especially!  December is often called the 'silly season' in the city and it is no different here on Whenua Hou, albeit for different reasons.  It's the time of year when we get extremely nervous waiting for all the boys to start booming, seeing where everyone ends up and most importantly keeping an eye on all the female's activities to make sure we don't miss the start of mating.  We've got Snarks at all the bowls capturing information every night telling us how long the boys are booming for and whether or not they have had any 'visitors'. Nudge nudge wink wink!

 We think it's going to be a good fruiting year here and so far it's all looking good.  The team here on the island have been cutting open rimu fruit every three days to check it's viability and how it is developing.  So far it looks on track.  The ripening of the rimu happens even less regularly than kakapo breeding and if it happens means we have the potential to assist in the production of some parent raised kakapo for the first time since 2002.  For us islanders that is the ulitimate; kakapo chicks raised by their mums is at the top of our Christmas lists!

Booming activity up on the tops is well underway, we have 19 booming males and the last few are just starting to get to work on their track and bowl systems.  The interesting thing this year is there have been a bit of competition for the premium bowl spots.  Some of the old timers like Waynebo have been evicted by the young bucks like Manu.  Competition is building up it would appear!  We are starting to hear lots of daytime booming from the keenest of the boys, a sure sign everyone is getting ready to go.  It seems that our transfer of seven 'studly' male kakapo from Anchor Island in April has paid off, six of them having established track and bowls and are booming away up on the hill.

All eyes are on Richard Henry kakapo too.  In his normal grandpa-ish fashion he is camped out next to his food hopper!  If only he knew how much we are all willing him to do something......come on mate, you can be the boom king!  His son Gulliver is thinking about so maybe Dad will get the message?

Aside from that its business as usual here, our feedout volunteers are on the hill every day and we rangers are keeping an eye on the kakapo movements and behaviours.  There is a television crew coming out to see what people who work on Christmas day do on Christmas day, so keep an eye on TV3 news and you might catch a peak of us going about our kakapo business.

Merry Christmas from us all down here