"I ran inside and got my camera and shot down to the end of the street and the kākā was in a kōwhai at the end of the street and I got a couple of photos of it and since then we've had about three other sightings, and often pairs of birds."There are thought to be less than 10,000 kākā living in the wild - mostly on offshore islands or in the vicinity of heavily predator-controlled sanctuaries."Taranaki's been sort of a dead zone for kākā for a number of years, so they must be coming from somewhere and it's somewhat puzzling where they might be coming from."There's obviously birds in the Wellington region that have come out of Zealandia and then there's birds to the north in the southern Waikato or King Country around Pureora and there's birds in the central North Island as well.""Over the last three or four years, we've been getting them more and more frequently and there's been reports of them sticking around almost the entire year in places like the Te Henui Walkway, around Brooklands, Pukekura Park and now at Barrett's Domain."