Kakaman

Forest and Bird, Issue 280, 1 May 1996, Page 42

Kakaman

HEN BRENT Bevan arrives on his motorbike in Minginui, the local kids call out "Kakaman!" The University of Waikato masters student has been studying the large threatened parrot of Whirinaki since August 1994. The project was instigated and largely funded by the Forestry Corporation which was concerned about what appeared to be kaka-induced dieback of the corporation’s trees in the adjacent pine forests. Most of the research into kaka has to date been carried out on the South Island subspecies and birds on offshore islands. Whirinaki and Pureora are the only kaka strongholds — in fact the only breeding populations — remaining of the North Island birds. Bevan studied kaka diet and home range size, following the birds with transmitters. The birds feed on the fruit only of podocarps and almost exclusively from the big, ancient emergent trees. They also take insects from under the bark of

the dead and rotting trees. Both of these dietary requirements depend on the existence of old-growth forest. The birds also feed on honeydew from beech, and sap from tawa (and now pine) trees by stripping the bark and tapping holes into the cambium — hence the pine damage. Bevan has found that the pine damage is less than was first thought. And, as a consequence of having a pine forest alongside a natural forest, not much can be done about it anyway. He also found that nesting success in the population he was following was poor, and that the only two birds that fledged, died — probably while feeding on the ground — the victims of rats, stoats, cats or dogs. Bevan’s observations only reinforce the predictions of other kaka researchers that habitat loss, competition and predation from introduced pests have put mainland kaka on a downhill slide to extinction.