Crossword clues for kakapo
kakapo
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Kakapo \Ka`ka*po"\, n. (Zo["o]l.) A singular nocturnal parrot ( Strigops habroptilus), native of New Zealand. It lives in holes during the day, but is active at night. It resembles an owl in its colors and general appearance. It has large wings, but can fly only a short distance. Called also owl parrot, night parrot, and night kaka.
Wiktionary
n. A large flightless parrot, (taxlink Strigops habroptilus species noshow=1), with greenish plumage, that is nocturnal and native to New Zealand.
Wikipedia
The kakapo ( Māori: kākāpō or night parrot), Strigops habroptilus ( Gray, 1845), also called owl parrot, is a species of large, flightless, nocturnal, ground-dwelling parrot of the super-family Strigopoidea endemic to New Zealand.
It has finely blotched yellow-green plumage, a distinct facial disc of sensory, vibrissa-like feathers, a large grey beak, short legs, large feet, and wings and a tail of relatively short length. A combination of traits make it unique among its kind; it is the world's only flightless parrot, the heaviest parrot, nocturnal, herbivorous, visibly sexually dimorphic in body size, has a low basal metabolic rate and no male parental care, and is the only parrot to have a polygynous lek breeding system. It is also possibly one of the world's longest-living birds. Its anatomy typifies the tendency of bird evolution on oceanic islands, with few predators and abundant food: a generally robust physique, with accretion of thermodynamic efficiency at the expense of flight abilities, reduced wing muscles, and a diminished keel on the sternum. Like many other New Zealand bird species, the kakapo was historically important to the Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, appearing in many of their traditional legends and folklore. It was hunted and used as a resource by Māori, both for its meat as a food source and for its feathers, which were used to make highly valued pieces of clothing. It was also sometimes kept as a pet.
The kakapo is critically endangered; as of June 2016, the total known adult population was living individuals, as reported by the Kakapo Recovery programme, most of which have been given names. Because of Polynesian and European colonisation and the introduction of predators such as cats, rats, ferrets, and stoats, the kakapo was almost wiped out. Conservation efforts began in the 1890s, but they were not very successful until the implementation of the Kakapo Recovery plan in the 1980s. As of April 2012, surviving kakapo are kept on three predator-free islands, Codfish (Whenua Hou), Anchor and Little Barrier islands, where they are closely monitored. Two large Fiordland islands, Resolution and Secretary, have been the subject of large-scale ecological restoration activities to prepare self-sustaining ecosystems with suitable habitat for the kakapo. The New Zealand government is providing the use of these islands to kakapo conservation.
Usage examples of "kakapo".
Adams and Carwardine spent the next year traveling the world and seeing endangered animals, like flightless kakapo parrots in New Zealand and baiji river dolphins in China.
I became increasingly morose over the next two or three days, because it became clear to us as we traipsed up and down endless hills in the rain, that we were not going to find a kakapo on Little Barrier Island.
When one of the rangers who was working in an area where kakapos were booming happened to leave his hat on the ground, he came back later to find a kakapo attempting to ravish it.
Stewart Island, in the south, where one or two kakapos are still found, is inhabited and no longer even remotely safe.
Any kakapos that are found there are trapped and airlifted to Codfish Island which is just nearby.
They've been used to trap the kakapos on Stewart Island so that they can then be airlifted to Codfish Island and here to Little Barrier Island by helicopter.
It's not very pleasant, but that's how the island was originally, and that's the only way kakapos can survive - in exactly the environment that New Zealand had before man arrived.
If you ask anybody who has worked with kakapos to describe them, they tend to use words like `innocent' and `solemn', even when it's leaping helplessly out of a tree.
I asked Dobby if they had given names to the kakapos on the island, and he instantly came up with four of them: Matthew, Luke, John and Snark.
On the one hand they regarded protection of the kakapos as being of paramount importance, and that meant keeping absolutely everybody who was not vital to the project away from Codfish Island.
Although tracker dogs are rigorously trained not to harm any kakapos they find, they can nevertheless sometimes find them a little too enthusiastically.
Arab had himself tracked many of the twenty-five kakapos that had been found on Stewart Island and airlifted by helicopter in soundproof boxes to Codfish.
You know that we didn't want you to come here, and that we didn't want to track kakapos and risk disturbing them, but as it happens .
Add those to the fourteen birds on Little Barrier and we have a total of only forty kakapos left altogether.
As we tread our way carefully back along the ridge to the helicopter I ask Don what he feels the long term prospects for the kakapos really are, and his answer is surprisingly apposite.