Kākāpō - Night Parrot

Television (Full Length) – 1982

Flightless and nocturnal, the kākāpō is the world's heaviest parrot. By the 1970s the mysterious, moss-coloured bird was facing extinction, "evicted" to Fiordland mountains and Stewart Island by stoats and cats. Thanks to innovative night vision equipment, this film captured for the first time the bird's idiosyncratic courtship rituals, and the first chick found in a century. Marking the directing debut of NHNZ veteran Rod Morris, it screened in the Feltex Award-winning second season of Wild South, and won acclaim at the 1984 International Wildlife Film Festival.

On a June night, Snark finally emerges for the first time. But the night he has chosen to come forth is the wrong night … in the wrong century. It’s no longer a land of birds out here [for the] young night parrot.
– Narrator Peter Hayden