Kakapo Kakapo The kakapo (Māori: kākāpō) or "night parrot", also called owl parrot ("Strigops habroptilus"), 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, a large grey beak, short legs, large feet, and relatively short wings and tail. 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
Kakapo of the birds had died and the fifth died after about four years. In the next 12 years, regular expeditions found few signs of the kakapo, indicating that numbers were continuing to decline. Only one bird was captured in 1967; it died the following year. By the early 1970s, it was uncertain whether the kakapo was still an extant species. At the end of 1974, scientists located several more male kakapo and made the first scientific observations of kakapo booming. These observations led Don Merton to speculate for the first time that the kakapo had a lek breeding system. From