Up Close & Personal

The kakapo is a bird full of surprises.

It's a parrot that looks like an owl, or a giant budgie. It cannot fly, although it has large wings. It walks and jumps and is an excellent climber. It is nocturnal and can be found feeding on the ground or 20m up a rimu tree. It “skraarks” loudly like other parrots but you might mistake other calls for a braying donkey, a grunting or squealing pig, a booming bittern; and it also produces a nasal metallic noise called “chinging”. A feature most people notice, is that the males in particular, have a distinctive musty odour.

"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, though you know that it probably will not be." - Douglas Adams, British author, 1990.

If you are lucky enough to see a kakapo, it will be the whiskered, owl-like face peeking out from the bushes that surprises you first. This is the distinctive face that led to the alternative name of 'owl parrot'.

Once out in the open, the kakapo will reveal its large size, and the startling mottled moss-green body feathers that provide perfect camouflage in New Zealand's native forest. The softness of the feathers are represented in the second part of the scientific name – Strigops habroptila.

A closer encounter will reveal another surprise - the thick, musty kakapo smell. The smell is so strong and distinctive that it betrays the presence of the bird to dogs, cats and other predators from a great distance, and was a primary cause of its rapid decline.

People become captivated by the un-birdlike behaviour of the bird. Its waddling gait, its curiosity, wide range of calls, and its comic antics meant that, in historic times, the kakapo was occasionally kept as a pet by early settlers.