Baby Kaka

Before we get down to the kaka, here are a couple of photos I wanted to post.
Apologies for the quality of this, it was taken on my phone. Here are Ali and Jenny enjoying hot chocolate at L’Affaire au Chocolat in Berhampore. It was jolly good!
Sophie is an excellent cook and made these little iced sponge cakes for tea one night.

Today I visited the Sanctuary mainly to get a look at a kaka chick. There were several tuatara sunning themselves outside their burrows. Here is one in a place I haven't seen them before.

To give you an idea of how well camouflaged and hence difficult to see they are here is a normal angle shot with the tuatara in the centre.

Before the unveiling of the chick adult kaka were their usual noisy and boisterous selves.

Kaka chicks start life as tiny fluffy white babies but by the time they leave the nest at about two months age they look very like an adult kaka. The one we saw was about five weeks old and has lost most of its juvenile down. The Sanctuary Conservation Manager, Raewyn Empson, temporarily removed it from the nest it shares with mum and three siblings.

He or she (it will need to be bigger before it can be accurately sexed) was pretty easy going but got quite agitated at one point. It was the first time it had left the nest.

This is the lower lake from above

with some kawau lurking about.

The tui were also vociferous. Here is one feeding on flax flowers.