A new Love Island? Berry Blooms Lead to Baby Boom for New Zealand’s Wackiest Parrot

Love Island: Rare berry bonanza boosts Kākāpō baby boom

A massive bloom of rimu berries has fueled a mating surge among the world’s heaviest (and strangest) parrots

By Elizabeth Anne Brown edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier

The biggest berry bloom in New Zealand’s forests in decades has sparked a mating frenzy among Kākāpō, critically endangeredthe strongest parrot in the world.

With the face of a Muppet and the physique of a Furby, the Kākāpō is an absurd creature in every way. It’s nocturnal, lime green, and, as science fiction writer Douglas Adams wrote, “flies like a brick.” The animals produce a strong, fruity musk, can weigh as much as a house cat, and can potentially live 90 years or more.

At the start of 2026, there are only 236 Kākāpōs left in the world and, much to the dismay of their human conservation team, the birds rely primarily on a single fruit to set the mood for love. This means that the animals only mate prolifically when the rimu tree, a towering conifer that can live for a millennium, produces a bountiful harvest of bright red berries, which happens every two to four years.

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During courtship rituals supported by berries, male Kākāpō used their stubby little feet to scratch and stomp on earthen amphitheatres called “booming bowls,” which amplified their courtship song – a resonant, low-pitched call that carried for miles. “Rather than hearing it, you kind of feel it in your chest,” says Andrew Digby, scientific advisor to the New Zealand Ministry of Conservation’s Kākāpō team.

Almost all female Kākāpōs of reproductive age reproduced this year, Digby says, producing an impressive 240 eggs. About half of the eggs will be fertile. Fewer individuals will hatch and even fewer will survive long enough to fly away. As of March 3, scientists recorded 26 chicks alive.

These population gains would not have been possible without a handful of Kākāpō “superbreeders,” including Blades, a Kākāpō Don Juan of unknown age who, after fathering 22 chicks since 1982, was banished to “Bachelor Island” for fear of flooding the gene pool. “He was a victim of his own success,” says Digby. “He was too popular.”

Once the lucky eggs hatch, the females will raise their chicks on their own. Each night, mother Kākāpō use their beaks and claws to climb up to 100 feet into the canopy of rimu trees to harvest berries, about a pound per chick each day. Some females have been breeding for more than 40 years, creating strong “dynasties,” he says. A Kākāpō matriarch named Nora has participated in 13 breeding cycles since 1981 and is set to become both mom and great-great-grandmother this season. This year you can Watch Kākāpō’s Supermom Rakiura on a Nest Cam as she hatches and raises two chicks, repelling intruders into the nest, including shorebirds and bats. Although Rakiura is only 24 years old, she has successfully raised nine of her own chicks and raised many more for less experienced females. Right now, the chicks look like dandelions, but within a few weeks they will become “weird little dinosaurs with these huge, oversized feet,” Digby says.

The team hopes that enough chicks will survive this year to bring the global Kākāpō population to 300 individuals, a milestone for a species that numbered just 51 individuals in 1995. The flightless birds were easy prey for invasive predators, including domestic cats, dogs and weasel-like stoats. Kākāpō fruit water is pungent enough that even humans can track them by scent. The Kākāpōs have found refuge on three predator-free islands belonging to the Ngāi Tahu, whose tribesmen act as tutor, or guardians, birds. “It’s a property species, a treasure for us,” says Tāne Davis, who has been Ngāi Tahu’s representative in Kākāpō conservation for 20 years.

The Kākāpōs have outgrown these tiny shelters, and pressure is on to “restore the Mauri, or vital force, of habitat” on the large islands in eliminate invasive predatorsDavis said.

The 2026 breeding cycle represents a new era for Kākāpōs, Davis and Digby agree. At the request of Ngāi Tahu, some of the chicks born this year will not be named. “It’s about getting them back to their lives in nature,” says Davis.