The 2019 kākāpō chicks are becoming independent and birds sent to be scanned for aspergillosis are getting clean bills of health. This episode was first released on 19 March 2020.
The 2019 kākāpō breeding season successfully weathered the aspergillosis crisis, with 72 chicks reaching the milestone of 150 days. Seventy of those juveniles are still alive, although two juveniles subsequently died from late cases of aspergillosis.
Since September 2019 the kākāpō population has remained steady at 211 birds.
This is a huge increase from the 148 birds that were alive in December 2018, when kākāpō on Whenua Hou and Anchor Island began their breeding marathon.
One of the juveniles was fathered by the Fiordland male Sinbad, via successful artificial insemination. A further three Fiordland juveniles were fathered by his brother Gulliver, and their sister Kuia also produced three juveniles.
Kākāpō did not breed in 2020. The kākāpō team at the Department of Conservation has just been surveying rimu trees on the southern kākāpō islands and determined that there will be no breeding there in 2021 either.
As each juvenile from the 2019 breeding season reaches its first birthday it receives its new name, which replaces its chick code. Queenie-3-A-19 (Queenie's third egg from her first clutch in 2019) was named Alison, after Alison Ballance (Queenie was named after Alison's mum).