The biggest berry bloom in New Zealand’s forests in decades has set off a mating frenzy among the critically endangered Kākāpō, the world’s beefiest parrots.
With the face of a Muppet and the physique of a Furby, the Kākāpō is an all-around preposterous creature. It’s nocturnal and lime green, and, as science-fiction writer Douglas Adams wrote, it “flies like a brick.” The animals produce a strong, fruity musk, can weigh as much as a house cat, and can potentially live for 90 years or more.
At the beginning of 2026 only 236 Kākāpō remained in the world, and to the chagrin of their human conservation team, the birds rely primarily on a single fruit to set the mood for love. The animals mate prolifically only when the rimu tree—a towering conifer that can live for a millennium—produces a bumper crop of bright-red berries, which happens every two to four years.
On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
During the berry-backed courtship rituals, male Kākāpō use their stumpy little legs to scrape and stomp out earthen amphitheaters called booming bowls, which amplify their courtship song—a resonant, low-pitched call that carries for miles. “Rather than hearing it, you kind of feel it in the chest,” says Andrew Digby, science adviser for the Kākāpō team at the New Zealand Department of Conservation.
Kākāpō on her nest.
Andrew Digby/New Zealand Department of Conservation
Nearly all female Kākāpō of reproductive age have bred this year, Digby says, producing an impressive 248 eggs and counting. About half of the eggs will be fertile. Fewer will hatch, and fewer still will survive long enough to fledge. As of mid-March, scientists had tallied 70 living chicks.
Recent population gains wouldn’t have been possible without a handful of Kākāpō “superbreeders” like Blades, a Kākāpō Don Juan of unknown age who, after fathering 22 chicks since 1982, has been banished to “Bachelor Island” for fears that he’ll flood the gene pool. “He was a victim of his own success,” Digby says. “He was too popular.”
Preparing to weigh a one-day-old chick.
Lydia Uddstrom/New Zealand Department of Conservation
Once the fortunate eggs hatch, the females will rear their chicks alone. Every night Kākāpō moms use beak and talon to climb into the rimu tree canopies, up to 100 feet above the ground, to harvest berries—about a pound’s worth per chick each day. Some females have reproduced for more than 40 years, creating strong “dynasties,” Digby says. One Kākāpō matriarch named Nora has participated in 13 breeding cycles since 1981 and became both a mom and a great-great-grandmother this season.
This year the New Zealand Department of Conservation set up a nest cam to let people watch Kākāpō supermom Rakiura hatch and rear foster chicks, fending off nest intruders that include shorebirds and bats. Although Rakiura is only 24 years old, she has successfully raised nine of her own chicks and fostered many more for less experienced females. Newly hatched chicks look like dandelion puffs, but within a few weeks they become “weird little dinosaurs with these huge, oversize feet,” Digby says.
One-day-old Kākāpō chick during a health check.
Lydia Uddstrom/New Zealand Department of Conservation
The team hopes enough chicks will survive this year to bring the world Kākāpō population to 300—a major milestone for a species that was teetering with just 51 individuals in 1995. The flightless birds were easy pickings for invasive predators, including house cats, dogs and weasel-like stoats—the fruity eau de Kākāpō is pungent enough that even humans can track them by scent. The Kākāpō found sanctuary on three predator-free islands where the Ngāi Tahu people act as kaitiaki, or “caretakers,” of the birds. “It’s a taonga species, a treasure to us,” says Tāne Davis, who has been the Ngāi Tahu’s representative in Kākāpō conservation for 20 years.
The Kākāpō population has outgrown these refuges, and the pressure is on to “restore the mauri, or ‘life force,’ of the habitat” on larger islands by removing the invasive predators there, Davis says. The 2026 breeding cycle represents a new era for the Kākāpō, Davis and Digby agree. At the Ngāi Tahu’s request, some of the chicks born this year won’t be named. “It’s about letting them have their lives back in the wild,” Davis says.
