That cheeky, screeching, acrobatic parrot that swings through the beech forests, ripping bark for honeydew, chattering like a monkey with a hangover. Now imagine it bigger. Louder. Bolder. A bird that looked at a possum and thought lunch – not threat. That was the giant kākā, and it was magnificent. Size and attitude made it special. Modern kākā are impressive – they are the largest of the forest parrots (kea are bigger but live above the treeline). But the giant kākā was something else. Heavier bones, thicker beak, broader wings. This was a bird built not just to survive the forest but to bully it. It could crack harder nuts, tear deeper into rotting wood, and defend its feeding territory against anything that flew, climbed, or crawled. It did the same things kākā do today – but more of it. It ripped bark from rimu and beech to lap up honeydew, a sugary secretion from scale insects. It dug its curved beak into rotting branches to extract wētā, beetle larvae, and other wood-boring invertebrates. It ate seeds, berries, and nectar from flowering plants. It was a keystone species – breaking wood, spreading seeds, creating hollows that other creatures used. A forest with giant kākā was a forest that had a demolition crew. It nested in deep tree hollows – the kind that only form in old, mature trees. It laid eggs. It raised chicks slowly, because parrots are not sprinters. They are the tortoises of the bird world – long-lived, slow-breeding, and utterly dependent on stable habitats. The usual death sentence destroyed it: big, slow-breeding, tree-hollow-nesting (which is just elevated ground nesting when rats can climb), and delicious. Polynesian settlers arrived. They brought kiore (Pacific rats). Rats climb. Rats found every kākā nest in every hollow and ate every egg, every chick, every sleeping adult they could reach. Settlers also hunted kākā – for food, for feathers, for the sheer ease of shooting a large, curious parrot that had never learned to fear humans. And they cleared the lowland forests – the richest habitats, the biggest trees, the deepest hollows – for gardens. The giant kākā, being larger, needed more food, bigger hollows, and older forests than its smaller cousin. When those forests fell, the giant fell first. The living kākā survived in marginal habitats – higher altitudes, smaller trees, poorer pickings. But it never forgot. You can see it in their eyes – a wariness, a distance, a memory of when parrots were not the ones hiding in the shadows. The forest clown is gone. But its smaller shadow still swings through the branches, calling out a name that no longer fits.