BBC
7 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2016–2025
2:32 · 31M views · Sep 29, 2009
A clip from BBC's Last Chance to See in which Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine meet Sirocco, a kakapo, who famously tries to mate with Carwardine's head. The kakapo is a critically endangered flightless New Zealand parrot.
HN points to it as the origin of the Party Parrot emote and as the famous viral kakapo clip whenever kakapo come up.
7 comments from Hacker News
I understand that, my two favourite New Zealand explorers (Charlie Douglas and George Dobson), are both very obscure but very admirable IMO - and they're obscure because they were the furthest from glory hounds that you can get. If you can get a hold of this book[0], it's a very interesting read (well, for me, anyway, being a Kiwi and all, especially the chapter where the editor collated Charlie Douglas' diary writings on our native birds, and what they were like for eating, which features some of our now rarest birds, he was quite fond of the flavour of kākāpō[1][2], which is critically endangered now). This article might be easier to access than an out of print book.[3] But, so many explorers that were contemporaries of Shackleton, like Amundsen, Nansen, Byrd, Scott, etc. _were_ glory hounds. Does that negate their exploration? I mean, it often meant that they took stupid risks to be "first", fully agree there. But if we eliminate the glory-hound polar explorers, there's precious few left. [0]: [LINK] [1]: [LINK] [2]: this video [3]: [LINK]
Famously there is a kakapō named Sirocco who imprinted on humans to the point of being sexually attracted to them rather than to other kakapō. Which is both a problem because with only 244 individuals left, the species needs as many mating pairs as it can get; and a blessing because his international fame and fondness for humans makes him an effective "spokesbird" for conservation. Here he is mounting and having a go at Mark Carwardine: this video "You are being shagged by a rare parrot!"
You may be able to see a real-life kākāpō by booking to see Sirocco, New Zealand's official spokesbird for conservation. I saw him once and he's pretty cool! Not sure if he's touring at the moment. [LINK] It wasn't quite as exciting as when Stephen Fry's film crew met him. The video of that encounter is the origin of the Party Parrot emote which you might have seen on Slack. this video [LINK]
During the filming of the TV series of Last Chance to See (with Stephen Fry) this happened this video with a Kakapo named Sirocco and he then became quite the internet celebrity: [LINK]
If you're like me, you may mostly recognize kākāpō from a video that has gone viral a few times of one attempting to mate with a documentary cameraman's head: this video