I was told this would be easy...

Right now I'm not so sure. I think computer operation is one of my 21st century challenges.

The first problem you guys might have with this blog is what in the world my title means. Often I've heard the phrase "as the crow flies," meaning an estimated distance. If someone tells you this, they don't know for certain how far you are from where you're going or when you're ever going to get there. That sounds about right for me in this century. In truth, I'm not quite sure I know where I'm going, let alone how close I am to it.
But this thing isn't called "As the Crow Flies." So what's a kakapo? It's a very fat green parrot. Native only to New Zealand, there are about ninety of them left in the world. Originally New Zealand had no predators, and there was plenty for the birds to eat, so the kakapo gave up its ability to fly because it wanted to stuff itself. (The trouble with this is that the kakapo seems to forget sometimes that it can't fly, and so they have been known to leap from trees, flapping their inadequite wings the whole time they're falling.) To prevent over-population, the birds developed an elaborate mating ritual. Males construct a "track and bowl system," a shallow hole with several trails leading off from it, and then they settle into the bowls and boom, or make calls so deep that humans can barely hear it. This noise, helped by pitch and the tracks leading out from the bowl, can travel for miles, attracting every eligible female on the island. The trouble is, it's difficult to know which direction such deep booms are coming from. Douglas Adams, in his book Last Chance to See, described the conversation between a male and female kakapo as something like this:
Male: Come and get me!
Female: Where are you?
Male: Come and get me!
Female: Where the heck are you?
Male: Come and get me!
Female: Oh, go stuff yourself!
To make things a bit more difficult, females are only prepared to reproduce when a particular tree (which I believe is now also endangered) is bearing fruit. This tree does not blossom every year. But even with all this difficulty, the kakapo did well on the islands of New Zealand.
The trouble started when humans came ashore, bringing rats, cats, and stoats. Kakapos had lived for centuries (at least) without a single preadator, and when faced with a cat, they didn't even have a fight-or-flight instict. They became easy prey to the mainland invaders, as many island species do.
If you're interested (and trust wikipedia), here's an article with a lot more detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakapo .
Also, I learned about the kakapo from a fantastic book (previously mentioned) called Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. The BBC followed these two men as they trekked around the world trying to see endangered animals in the wild, and here's a site that has exerpts from that radio broadcast: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/dna/lastchance.shtml . I believe there are also free audiobook downloads available, but it would probably be against blog rules to encourage file sharing.

That's all I've got for now. Here's hoping this works correctly.