Norfolk kākā

Extinct species of bird

The Norfolk kākā (Nestor productus) is an extinct species of large parrot, belonging to the parrot family Nestoridae. The birds were about 38 cm long, with mostly olive brown upperparts, reddish orange cheeks and throat, straw coloured breast, thighs, rump and lower abdomen dark orange and a prominent beak. It inhabited the rocks and treetops of Norfolk Island and adjacent Phillip Island. Around 1790, John Hunter depicted a bird on a kangaroo apple (Solanum aviculare). The bird was formally described by John Gould in 1836, from a specimen at the Zoological Society of London. Originally, the individuals from Norfolk Island and Philip Island were considered two separate species, Nestor norfolcensis (described by August von Pelzeln in 1860) and Nestor productus, respectively, but direct comparison of specimens of both islands showed that they were the same species.

Little is known of the bird's biology. It was said to have lived both on the ground and in tall trees, feeding on flowering shrubs and trees. The call was described by Gould as "hoarse, quacking, inharmonious noise, sometimes resembling the barking of a dog".

The Polynesians who lived on the Island for some time before the arrival of the Europeans, hunted the kākā for food before disappearing from the island around the 1600s. It was also hunted for food and trapped as a pet after the arrival of the first settlers in 1788. The species' population suffered heavily after a penal colony was maintained from 1788 to 1814, and again from 1825 to 1854. The species likely became extinct in the wild in the early nineteenth century some time during the period of this second penal colony. It was not recorded by Ensign Abel D. W. Best on either Norfolk or Phillip Island in his 1838/1839 diary entries. As Best collected specimens for ornithology, including the Norfolk parakeet (which he called "lories", being similar in shape), it is hard to accept that he would not have documented this much more attractive quarry, had the kākā still been present. The last bird in captivity died in London in 1851.