Bird of the Year

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.

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, and in 2023 a TV campaign by comedian John Oliver drew international attention (and hundreds of thousands of overseas votes) to the contest.

History

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

In 2014, the competition was temporarily retitled to Seabird of the Year and only seabirds were eligible.[6] 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.^[7]

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 competion 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.^[8]

Because of the

Bird of the Year 2022 top 10

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 of the Century 2023 top 10^[10]

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

Previous winners

Bird of the year

No.	Portrait	Name	Year	Votes	% of vote
1		Tūī	2005	865[8]	20
2		Pīwakawaka	2006	458
3		Riroriro	2007
4		Kākāpō	2008	578
5		Kiwi	2009	1,586
6		Kākāriki	2010	6,921	33
7		Pūkeko	2011	1,480
8		Karearea	2012	1,261
9		Mohua	2013	2,473	19
10		Tara-iti	2014
11		Kūaka	2015	1,957[11]	15
12		Kōkako	2016	3,614	18
13		Kea	2017	7,311	18
14		Kererū	2018	5,833	12
15		Hoiho	2019	12,022	28
(4)		Kākāpō	2020	10,773	20
16		Pekapeka	2021	7,031	12
17		Pīwauwau	2022	2,894	5.6
18		Pūteketeke	2023	290,374	83

Controversies

• 2008: The successful campaign to elect
  takahē of accepting undeclared donations "from wealthy migratory birds living in Monaco." It was cleared by the fictional Serious Feathered Fraud Office.^[12]
• 2010: The
  Forest & Bird confirmed these concerns in 2011, committing to improving vote security.^[13]
• 2011: The
  Kāpiti Coast. It had made national and international headlines after being rescued.^[14][15][16]
• 2015: Two teenagers from
  kōkako.^[17] They used their father's business account to make fake email addresses.^[18]
• 2017: The competition suffered a further voting scandal when 112 fraudulent votes were made for the white-faced heron using internet bots from an IP address in Christchurch.^[19]
• 2018: An independent
  black shag. These were traced to Australia.^[21][22][23]
• 2020: 1500 votes were placed for the little spotted kiwi using fake email addresses from the same IP address, briefly pushing it to the top of the leaderboard before the fraudulent votes were discovered.^[24]
• 2021: The long-tailed bat was added to the competition with mixed responses from candidates and voters, who criticised the fact that it was not in fact a bird.^[25] This controversial entry ended up winning 2021 Bird of the Year.^[26]
• 2022: The kākāpō, a previous two-time winner of BOTY, was barred from competing again.^[27]
• 2023: Television comedian
  pūteketeke. Oliver erected billboards in Wellington, Paris, Tokyo, London, Mumbai, and Manitowoc, and arranged for an aeroplane with a pūteketeke banner to fly over Ipanema Beach in Brazil. He also appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show in a pūteketeke costume. So many votes were received—over 350,000, from 195 countries—that Forest & Bird's website crashed and the results of the competition had to be delayed by two days while verification was carried out.^[8][28] The previous record for verified votes was 56,733 in 2021.^[29] The pūteketeke won by a landslide, receiving 290,374 votes, over 100 times those of the previous year's winner, and far more than the second-placing North Island brown kiwi with 12,904.^[29] The contest was also marred by fraud, with 40,000 votes cast by one person for the eastern rockhopper penguin. A Pennsylvania voter cast 3,403 fraudulent votes, with one arriving every three seconds.^[29] Forty-five of the verified votes were cast under the name "John Oliver", one of them for the fairy tern, and the rest for the pūteketeke.^[28] Forest & Bird claimed to be pleased by Oliver's campaign, as it furthered the contest's basic environmental awareness purpose by encouraging international attention.^[30] The organisation received over $600,000 in donations, six times the previous record, as a result of the campaign.^[31]