Duds And Studs

Kakapo are doing better:

Fertility rates of kakapo on Codfish Island are growing as dud males are weeded out of the breeding mix.

..."You have your duds and your studs, and your duds are usually put on other islands. It is like a stud farm operation I suppose, but it just takes a while (for the breeding season) to come around again," he said.

Kakapo breeding coincided with the fruiting of rimu trees about every three years, but the amount of eggs this year was less than the last season because of a lack of fruit believed to be caused by the large snow fall in September, he said.

Late last year, the Hoiho Penguin faced a viral threat:

The Department of Conservation is fighting a virus that is killing yellow-eyed penguins on the Otago Peninsula.

The avian diphtheria has already killed 40 chicks and DoC is trying to stop it spreading.

“They get these cheesy sores around their bill that makes it hard for them to eat and swallow and they end up dying often from kidney failure,” says David Agnew from DoC.

...“They are very vulnerable to this avian diphtheria within the first two to three weeks of life. And so they're just hatching at the moment so this is an extremely vulnerable time,” says Sue Murray from The Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust.

The next few weeks will be critical for the endangered Hoiho.