The Taiko a medium sized gadfly petrel weighing between 500 to 600 grams has a wingspan of around one metre.  The plumage is black with a white breast.  It is an ocean wanderer spending its entire life at sea, feeding in the sub tropical waters of the South Pacific Ocean between the Chatham Islands and South America.  It will return to land only to breed.  Current population estimates range between 120 to 150 individuals with only 17 known breeding pairs.  The New Zealand Government's Department of Conservation class the Taiko as category A, the highest priority for conservation management.  Taiko are also ranked as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List Categories (IUCN 1994).

The Taiko is endemic to the Chatham Islands with the breeding grounds located in dense forest in the southwest of the main island.  Sub fossil and historical evidence suggests that they once bred in huge numbers in the southwest of the island.  However once Europeans arrived along with introduced mammalian predators the Taiko all but disappeared within 100 years and were considered extinct until 1978, when they were rediscovered by ornithologist David Crockett.  Unfortunately for the Taiko they had no colonies on nearby predator free off-shore islands, so their situation today remains vulnerable. Without continuing work to protect the adults and young from predators they would rapidly become extinct.

Breeding is during the southern hemisphere summer from September till May.  Adults return in late September to clean out and prepare their burrow.  Taiko nest in burrows two to five metres in length which the male excavates.  The breeding pair will use the same burrow each year and usually mate for life with the same partner.  A single white egg is laid around the end of November or beginning of December.  Both parents share the incubation of the egg which will last for 55 days.  Once the chick hatches, usually around the middle of January, both parents will feed the chick for approximately  105 days until the chick is ready to fledge.  When the chick is ready to fledge and depart out to sea, it will climb a tree in the dense forest and then launch itself for the five kilometre flight to the coast and out into the South Pacific Ocean.  The Taiko chicks will then remain at sea for seven or eight years until they are ready to return to the Chatham Islands, find a mate and breed themselves.