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Annual competition in New Zealand From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bird of the Year (Māori: Te Manu Rongonui o te Tau) is an annual election-based competition run by New Zealand conservation organisation Forest & Bird to elect a New Zealand native "Bird of the Year". The competition is intended to raise awareness of the conservation threats to many endangered native birds.
Bird of the Year | |
---|---|
Te Manu Rongonui o Te Tau | |
Term length | 1 year |
Inaugural holder | Tūī |
Formation | October 2005 |
Website | birdoftheyear |
It draws support from celebrities including politicians, artists, actors, and television personalities.[1] The election is a significant social media and public event in New Zealand; there are regular attempts at voter fraud, some winners (such as the short-tailed bat) have been controversial.
In 2023, a TV campaign by British comedian John Oliver for the pūteketeke drew international attention to the contest, leading it to win with more than 290,000 votes[2].
Bird of the Year (BOTY) was first launched in October 2005 by Michael Szabo, editor of Forest & Bird at the time, initially as an online poll featured in Forest & Bird's first email newsletter; votes were collected by email and through the post.[3] Szabo noticed the public outcry when RNZ considered dropping bird calls from its daily Morning Report, and decided to tap into this public interest with an annual poll.[4] The first BOTY contest included 76 native bird species and received a total of 900 votes; the tūī was the winner.[5] BOTY was later championed by Forest & Bird's communications manager Helen Bain, who saw it as a "light-hearted…way of raising the profile of native birds and the threats to them".[6]
In 2014, the competition was temporarily retitled to Seabird of the Year and only seabirds were eligible.[7] In 2023 the competition was dubbed Bird of the Century (Te Manu Rongonui o te Rautau) to coincide with Forest & Bird's centennial celebrations, and for the first time included extinct birds: laughing owl, South Island snipe, huia, South Island kōkako, and bush wren.[8]
Currently voters use the Forest & Bird website to rank their top-five choices for Bird of the Year. The winner is determined using the instant-runoff voting method. The competition runs for two weeks in October to November each year, and around 70 species usually compete. Anyone can nominate themselves as a "campaign manager" for a bird, and organise social media publicity campaign. The competition is not restricted to New Zealand: anyone with a valid email address is able to cast a vote, which became critical to the 2023 landslide victory of the Pūteketeke.[2]
Because of the transferable voting system, the Bird of the Year is not necessarily the species receiving the most number-one votes. For example in BOTY 2022 (starting 17 October), seventy-one species were shortlisted as candidates, and the rock wren was the winner, because it received the most and highest vote rankings, despite getting fewer #1 votes than the second-place winner, the little penguin.[9]
Bird | Number of #1 votes | Position |
---|---|---|
Rock wren/Pīwauwau | 2,894 | 1st |
Little penguin/Kororā | 3,351 | 2nd |
Kea | 1,852 | 3rd |
Black robin | 1,594 | 4th |
Rockhopper penguin | 1,468 | 5th |
Fantail | 1,228 | 6th |
Stitchbird | 1,302 | 7th |
New Zealand falcon | 1,260 | 8th |
Australasian crested grebe | 1,184 | 9th |
Rifleman/Titipounamu | 1,477 | 10th |
Bird | Number of #1 votes | Position |
---|---|---|
Pūteketeke | 290,374 | 1st |
North Island Brown Kiwi | 12,904 | 2nd |
Kea | 12,060 | 3rd |
Kākāpō | 10,889 | 4th |
Pīwakawaka/Fantail | 7,857 | 5th |
Rockhopper penguin | 6,763 | 6th |
Kakaruia/Black robin | 6,753 | 7th |
Huia | 6,467 | 8th |
Tūī | 6,457 | 9th |
Takahē | 6,292 | 10th |
No. | Portrait | Name | Year | Votes | % of vote |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | ![]() |
2005 |
865[2] |
20 | |
2 | ![]() |
2006 |
458 |
||
3 | ![]() |
2007 |
|||
4 | ![]() |
2008 |
578 |
||
5 | ![]() |
2009 |
1,586 |
||
6 | ![]() |
2010 |
6,921 |
33 | |
7 | ![]() |
2011 |
1,480 |
||
8 | ![]() |
2012 |
1,261 |
||
9 | ![]() |
2013 |
2,473 |
19 | |
10 | ![]() |
2014 |
|||
11 | ![]() |
2015 |
1,957[11] |
15 | |
12 | ![]() |
2016 |
3,614 |
18 | |
13 | ![]() |
2017 |
7,311 |
18 | |
14 | ![]() |
2018 |
5,833 |
12 | |
15 | ![]() |
2019 |
12,022 |
28 | |
(4) | ![]() |
2020 |
10,773 |
20 | |
16 | ![]() |
2021 |
7,031 |
12 | |
17 | ![]() |
2022 |
2,894 |
5.6 | |
18 | ![]() |
2023 |
290,374 |
83 |
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