Alison Ballance spends a week on Whenua Hou/Codfish Island, one of three kākāpō breeding islands. She follows rangers from DOC’s Kākāpō Recovery Programme as they go about their daily and nightly nest visits to check on the rapidly growing chicks. All but one of the 23 nests on Whenua Hou have just a single chick, as the rimu fruit has failed to ripen and kākāpō mums are relying on supplementary food to raise their chicks. During the week, the chick Queenie-A3 is found dead, and there is news from Pukenui/Anchor Island of another chick dying in a flash flood that swept through the nest.

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In this episode:

00:00 – Introduction
01:12 – Sick chick Pearl-B3
05:32 – Chick check at Suzanne’s nest
09:53 – Young male booming
11:18 – qPCR sex testing
14:11 – Chick check at Tiaka’s nest
17:44 - Dead chick Queenie-A3
20:16 - Nest controller and the ‘train station’
24:18 – Supplementary feeding
27:25 – Chick dies in nest flood
29:05 – Heather’s nest check & closing thoughts
33:42 - Update on Pearl-B3
35:22 - Closing credits…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details