Deirdre Vercoe
speaker
22 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 19 Jan
Deirdre Vercoe’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Kakapo are a really unusual parrot.
They're the only lek breeding parrot in the world.
So they don't form peer bonds, but the males advertise and compete for females.
And they do that with that beautiful booming sound that you just heard.
And they're making that sound from some thoracic air sacs that are kind of inflated in their chest.
So they've got this big spongy boom sac and it has the most beautiful whiskers.
They're the best dressed bird in the forest in New Zealand, I think.
Yeah.
They're exactly like a dappled forest light, so they're very camouflaged.
It's very hard to see them when you're in the forest, but yet they have very forward-facing eyes.
They've got kind of that wise owl look to them, big beak, beautiful whiskers.
They do have reasonably big wings, even though they can't fly, but they've got very strong, sturdy feet, and they can climb right up into the tops of the canopies.
And then they're very agile, actually.
Once they're up there, 20, 30 metres off the ground,
moving through the trees at speed.
There are quite a few things out there that could bring kākāpō to harm and definitely drove them to that brink of extinction.
So stoats are enemy number one, feral cats, rats potentially could take young chicks or eggs from nests.
So we've been able to double the population over the last 10 years and we're heading in the right direction.
236 kākāpō as of today, which is still a critically small number, but
Some quite good population growth, so that does bring a few challenges and one of those challenges is where to put them next.
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