[3] The birds were about 38 cm long, with mostly olive-brown upperparts, reddish-orange cheeks and throat, straw-coloured breast, thighs, rump and lower abdomen dark orange and a prominent beak.

The call was described by Gould as "hoarse, quacking, inharmonious noise, sometimes resembling the barking of a dog".

The species likely became extinct in the wild in the early nineteenth century some time during the period of this second penal colony.

As Best collected specimens for ornithology, including the Norfolk parakeet (which he called "lories", being similar in shape), it is hard to accept that he would not have documented this much more attractive quarry, had the kākā still been present.

It is more likely, given Phillip Island was already overrun with feral pigs, rabbits, goats and chicken in late 1838, that the 1863 specimen was purchased from another collection.

The single unsexed individual from Philip Island at the Zoölogisch Museum[29] (ZMA 3164) has been obtained before 1860, and originate probably from the same batch as the two specimens at Naturalis in Leiden.