One week in kakapo land is a long time!   Since Ruth's last diary entry when Jo, Phil, Ness and I arrived on the island the breeding season has accelerated exponentially as the birds really start to get into the swing of things. In the last week there has been a flurry of matings.

When we arrived here last week, daily triangulations of the breeding age females had just started.  This means every day the kakapo rangers head out and up the hill to radio track the girls and see where they are.  At this time of the year they are moving around a fair bit as they check out the various male's and their track and bowl systems.  We each have a collection of females that we are responsible for tracking for two weeks at a time ( for consistency ).  If one of our girls has moved it becomes very important for us to locate her.  All staff are in radio contact when we are up the 'hill' so we can help each other out tracking girls who might have wandered to other parts of the island.

As well as tracking the girls we are also checking track and bowls on a daily basis.  This could be the most important part of our day, walking up to a 'Snark' to check who has been at the bowl the night before.  If a female has been present for a good amount of time then we start looking for mating sign.  This is usually close to the bowl and quite distinctive, characterised by  a large amount of soft down feathers ( from the female ) pressed into the ground.  We'll collect as much of the mating sign as possible ( for DNA confirmation of parentage if need be ) and take some photos and then move onto the next bowl for some more hopefully!

This week finding mating sign has been a daily occurrence ( for some of us! ) and every day up the hill is more exciting than the last.  News travels fast and we find out who has visited who the night before on the radio.  Since the breeding season began with Lisa and Basil at Christmas time there have been 15 matings from 11 individual females.  This means we could be looking for 10 more nests very soon!  The combinations so far have been:

Sue and Blades

Ellie and Luke ( twice )

Solstice and Felix

Rakiura with both Whiskas and Barnard

Nora and Lionel twice

Margaret Maree and Merv

Cyndy and Sinbad

Aranga with both Blades and Lionel

Flossie and Whiskas

Heather and Nog ( maybe! )

One of the most exciting things about this year so far is that several young birds who hadn't previously bred have got in on the action early.  Aranga and Ellie are both hand reared birds ( and sisters ) who mated for the first time this season - both on the same night.  Their keenness makes us all particularly excited.  There are quite a few hand reared birds now so it's great to know they can behave the same as wild raised kakapo.  It's also really encouraging to see the females who bred last year are willing to breed again this year; Rakiura, Lisa, Cyndy and Sue are all in this group.

Watch this space for more exciting news!