yellow variant kaka (Nestor meridionalis)

Southland Museum, Invercargill, December 2006

the NZ kaka has two subspecies, North Island and South Island. Both are rare nowadays (usual story, stoats and other predators killing females in their nest-holes). The South Island subspecies is the more colourful of the two, and is still common on Stewart Island and its surrounding islands because there are no mustelids there, but is now only rarely seen on the South Island itself sadly. The North Island subspecies is more common overall than the southern one but is rapidly declining on the mainland sites (except predator-free ones like Karori and Mt. Bruce where they are very common).

Before Europeans came along colour variations such as the one pictured were quite common (e.g. yellow, red, or white) - indeed common enough to each have specific names in Maori but such forms are rarely/never seen now, although there was an all-yellow kea seen a few years back.

There was also a kaka native to the Chatham Islands to the east which was probably a distinct species; I have read somewhere that it may have been approaching flightlessness; it became extinct after colonisation by the Moriori (and before the arrival of Europeans).

The other species of kaka was of course the Norfolk Island kaka, of which the last known bird died at London Zoo in 1851 (wild extinction date unknown but possibly before this date)

here's a photo of the yellow kea: 11001-72717 Kea or mountain parrot (Nestor notabilis) 'golden' kea. A rare example of xanthochromism or 'xanthism' - Rod Morris Photography

I keep meaning to post the following picture in reply to you Pertinax, so others can see it as well. I have seen this specimen (or another lutino kakapo) in storage at the Canterbury Museum, and I actually used to have a couple of feathers off it.

one word: earthquakes. Some things I saved, other things I could not.

That NZ Geographic issue had a photo of a very weird-looking blue kakariki on the cover (a museum specimen of a wild bird shot in the 1800s I think)