A pūkeko ‘getting jiggy' takes all of 20 seconds - accomplished after a lot of chasing about and amidst a cacophony of noise. Other pooks are prone to watching the spectacle, and several may get in on the act - making exact paternity a doubtful claim in the pūkeko world!
Favourite nesting spots are tucked away in clumps of rushes or inside tall beds of raupo. The nest is a well-hidden deep bowl of woven marsh vegetation.
Pūkeko lay 5-6 buff-coloured eggs and incubate them over 23-24 days. Sometimes several birds can lay in the same nest (this is why some early researchers thought pooks laid anything up to a whopping 19 eggs each) - an extremely rare behaviour in the bird world. Each bird's eggs will have a distinct mottling pattern peculiar only to them.
Both parents will look after the eggs and rear the chicks, often with good whānau support from other adults and teens from an earlier brood. Usually several broods are raised in a season.
A pūkeko chick can swim and walk at a day old. Chicks take about 85 days to fledge from their fluffy black baby outfits - you can spot a teenage pook (not by their pimples!) but by the fact they have traces of black on their bills and a narrower frontal forehead shield.
