Broad-billed parrot sketch actually shows that the wings are not particularly short. They appear broad, as they commonly are in forest-adapted species, and the alula appears large, a feature of slow-flying birds. Its sternal keel was reduced, but not enough to prevent flight, as the adept flying "Cyanoramphus" parrots also have reduced keels, and even the flightless kakapo, with its vestigial keel, is capable of gliding. Furthermore, Hoffman's account states that it could fly, albeit with difficulty, and the first published illustration shows the bird on top of a tree, an improbable position for a flightless bird. The broad-billed parrot may have
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