A resplendent parrot returns to Cook Islands after 200 years
Two centuries after a dazzlingly feathered parrot called the Rimitara lorikeet disappeared from the Cook Islands, a breeding colony of the birds has been re-established with the help of the islands’ royalty.
About 100 years ago after the parrots died out on the Cook Islands, the queen of Rimitara Island in French Polynesia to the east issued a royal decree that locals say saved the last naturally occurring population of the lorikeet, one of the Pacific’s most beautiful parrots.
The decree prevented lorikeets from being caught and removed from Rimitara. But now her royal counterpart, Queen Rongomatane of Atiu in the Cook Islands, has accompanied 27 of the birds on the journey back to her island. Already, the birds have spread over the whole 30 square kilometers (12 square miles) of Atiu, a coral atoll also known as Enuamanu (land of the birds) 187 kilometers (117 miles) northeast of Rarotonga, the capital of the Cook Islands.
“This was the bird that provided the feathers for chiefs and ceremonial costumes and most red-feathered birds in the Pacific have been wiped out,” Cook Island Natural Heritage Trust head Gerald McCormak said today. Four days of celebrations followed the bird’s return to Atiu, which has 570 people, starting with a giant feast led by Queen Rongomatane and dignitaries from Rimitara. “Every night and every day they feasted and sang songs and made up poems about the bird,” MCormak said.