Applications for student travel grants for the 2027 Australasian Ornithological Conference #AOC2027 in Auckland are now open, closing March 31. Three travel grants to the value of $300 each will be offered. Criteria and application forms are available at www.birdsnz.org.nz/awards-and-p...

Muriwai Gannets Revisited 2025 - delighting in the gannets of Muriwai after a cyclone triggered hiatus

Our Summer 2025 magazine is now online featuring: 🐧 New research on kiwi + long-tailed cuckoo koekoeā 🦆 Tips on finding unusual terns 🐥 Good news for pukunui southern NZ dotterels 🦉 News on new species of extinct penguins + shelduck & much more! www.birdsnz.org.nz/wp-content/u...

The latest issue of our journal Notornis is now online including articles on the mysterious Rebecca Stone (ornithology in the 1800s), changes in the bird community of Auckland Domain, 50 years of petrel records in the Cook Islands, and more. #ornithology #NZBirds www.birdsnz.org.nz/society-publ...

Our latest Birds NZ magazine is now online, containing news from the 2024/25 national Royal Spoonbill survey and Southern NZ Dotterel survey. Hear from Oscar Thomas on his Western Pacific Odyssey to Japan, and learn how to identify NZ raptors. #ornithology #NZBirds www.birdsnz.org.nz/publications...

Some news from New Zealand! Is bird flu at the doorstep? Great monitoring effort trying to spot and capture a handful of black-iris individuals among hundreds of birds, a very interesting proposal from @birdsnewzealand.bsky.social, v happy to have been involved in the last trip of the season. 👁️🐧

Apologies for the blatant self-promotion 😜 but I'm very pleased to be a part of the @birdsnewzealand.bsky.social council helping steer the society into the future. Hit me up if you want to have a chat www.birdsnz.org.nz/news/new-cou...

Has anyone else every seen the curlew tribe 'anting'? In Iceland I watched this Eurasian Whimbrel pick ants off the plants & place them deliberately on different part of its plumage. @btobirds.bsky.social @rspb.bsky.social @aba.org @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social @birdsnewzealand.bsky.social

We are offering 2 AOC Student Travel Grants of $700 each to #AoNZ postgrads presenting research at the AOC2025 aoc.org.au, Perth, 18-20 Nov. Grant details available at www.birdsnz.org.nz/awards-and-p.... Applications close 20 June, so get in quick! #NZBirds #ornithology 🪶

We gratefully thank the local organising committee for their hard work to make #BirdsNZ2025 a great conference weekend! Thank you to all the presenters for sharing the latest research, and to the enthusiastic, engaged audience. Ngā mihi!

Hui Zhen Tan has been involved with monitoring Tūturiwhatu | Northern NZ Dotterels on Motuihe. Trail cameras are used to assess threats, and nest shelters are being used to provide protection from predators. #BirdsNZ2025 #conservation

Chris Muller presents the latest tech available for #conservation including automated multi-track VHF telemetry. #BirdsNZ2025

6 Emu were introduced to the Chathams ~30 yrs ago, which were then released and bred, with an estimate of 200 today on Rēkohu Chatham Island, reports Campbell James. #BirdsNZ2025

Matt Rayner shares news of fisheries impacts on Kawau tikitiki | Spotted Shags in the northern North Island, where nest numbers have been declining in recent years. #BirdsNZ2025

Colin Miskelly explains how the species identity of MacGillivray’s Prion was highly uncertain until the find of another population on Gough Island among Broad-billed Prions. #BirdsNZ2025 #taxonomy

Extreme winds heavily impact seabird movements, but this is understudied as it’s logistically challenging to track #seabirds in these conditions. Jamie Darby has been tracking Toanui | Flesh-footed Shearwaters to see how they respond during storm events. #BirdsNZ2025

Palaeontology involves a lot of time out in the mud, says Alan Tennyson. A huge diversity of taxa have been discovered from the St Bathans site including >8000 identifiable bird bones. #BirdsNZ2025

Jacinda Woolly asks what species are present, where are they, and how are they going? Her team on Auckland Council have compiled regional #conservation status assessments of birds in the Auckland region. Auckland was identified as a national stronghold for 24 species. #BirdsNZ2025

Graeme Taylor shares his passion project monitoring petrels on 2 tiny privately owned islands off Bethell’s Beach. Since 1989, GT has been monitoring up to 5 species breeding there, counting, banding, tracking and more. #BirdsNZ2025 #seabirds

Johannes Fischer shares the challenges of ensuring standardised approaches to estimating abundance and trends of albatrosses and petrels - important work to inform conservation status + mgmt. #BirdsNZ2025 #seabirds

Nikki McArthur presents results of systematic surveys of birds across hundreds of kms of river in the lower North Island. Cyclone Gabrielle had massive impacts on Banded Dotterel numbers in particular, with a 15% decline, showing how vulnerable shorebirds can be to extreme weather. #BirdsNZ2025

Richard Littauer presents an entertaining overview of how the ICZN code facilitates (and presents challenges for) scientific #nomenclature, in the context of the Checklist of the Birds of NZ. It’s not all Greek (or Latin) to me! #BirdsNZ2025

Zunaira Noreen is assessing flight initiation distance as a measure of boldness of Red-billed Gulls in Otago. This information can tell us how this largely urban population has been increasing since the 1990s while others have declined. #BirdsNZ2025 #ornithology

What impact has the small and bottlenecked population history of Hihi had on relatedness within current populations? Hui Zhen Tan uses genomics to show inbreeding levels are moderately high. #BirdsNZ2025 #consgen

The primary #pathogen causing Kākāpō ‘crusty bum’ (cloacitis) appears to be E. coli. Rebecca French explains how knowing the cause is essential to prevent spread & determine management of infectious agents. #BirdsNZ2025

The Auckland Council seabird monitoring and restoration programme began in 2019. Gaia dell’Ariccia shares updates on #seabird monitoring in the region, focussing on shags, Black Petrels, and Cook’s Petrels. #BirdsNZ2025

Anne Gaskett presents work from Ariel Heswall on the sensory systems of #seabirds. Specifically, how do seabird optical systems (vision + interpretation by the brain) influence plastic ingestion? #BirdsNZ2025

Rachel Klein investigates nest composition on Rēkohu Chatham Islands, including using eDNA. 62 different components were identified! #BirdsNZ2025

Plenary speaker Matt Maitland shares highlights from ~30 yrs of work for Auckland sanctuaries, with a focus on Tāwharanui Open Sanctuary. With a predator-proof fence and integrated management of farmland and native habitat, this site has seen huge change. #conservation #BirdsNZ2025

Edin Whitehead presents an overview of 10 yrs of work by the Northern NZ Seabird Trust. Longevity estimates, genetic relatedness, and lots of work to try to count NZ Storm Petrels are giving us new insights into this little known species, among others. #BirdsNZ2025 #seabirds

Keith Woodley calls on the #AoNZ #ornithology community to vote for Ngutu-pare | Wrybill in this year’s #BirdOfTheYear, to raise awareness for this little-known bird, and celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pūkorokoro Miranda Naturalists’ Trust. #YearOfTheWrybill

Isabella Brown is using accelerometry data to understand at-sea behaviours and energy expenditure associated with those behaviours for Kuaka | Common Diving Petrels. #BirdsNZ2025 #seabirds

Katie Gray presents on the Banded Dotterel flyways project to learn where they are travelling. Conditions are changing at breeding grounds and migratory hotspots, and new tech can give us more insights into these changes. #BirdsNZ2025

Michelle Bradshaw showcases the projects that have been accomplished under our Society’s Global Banding Permit for individually marking birds for specific research purposes. #BirdsNZ2025

Wendy Fox presents data on breeding success and survivorship of Karoro | Black-backed Gulls in Canterbury. Karoro are considered to be a pest species, and so these data can inform control work. #BirdsNZ2025

Hiltrun Ratz tells us about genetic analysis of Kororā | Little Penguin scat, to understand diet for populations around AoNZ. #seabirds #BirdsNZ2025

Inka Pleiss provides a crash course in stable isotope analysis for dietary studies across populations in the ‘champion migrator’ Tītī | Sooty Shearwater. #seabirds #BirdsNZ2025

Kōkako only breed when rat trap indices are <1% by 1 Nov and <5% during breeding season. Lenny van Heugten shares how DOC, Auckland Council and volunteer efforts brought the Hūnua population back from the brink, reaching 500 adults in 2023. #BirdsNZ2025

Timothy Yang informs us of the threat of plastic ingestion in #seabirds. Using dissections of birds washed up on beaches, the number, size, and colour of ingested plastics were assessed, with variable results between species. #BirdsNZ2025

Giuliana Ferrari presents survey work from orchards. 112 hrs of observations for 20 native and 24 introduced species showed differences between presence of these groups, and lower species diversity in autumn. #BirdsNZ2025

We know very little about mortality events for Chatham Island Tāiko, says Ela Hunt. If we don’t know why they disappear from the population, how do we know what threats they need protection from? #BirdsNZ2025 #seabirds

Biz Bell presents on her passion project: Black Petrels | Takoketai. These #seabirds are threatened by invasive predators at their nesting sites on land, and by fisheries, pollution, and climate change at sea. #BirdsNZ2025

Nic Rawlence presents genomic work to clarify the taxonomy of Buller’s Albatrosses by Vanessa Barry. With 1000 km between the northern and southern populations, migratory and breeding (and perhaps morphological) differences, how different are they genetically? #BirdsNZ2025 #seabirds

Hendrik Schultz gives an overview of research on Brown Skuas from studies of communal breeding to non-breeding movement and foraging behaviour on the Chathams. #BirdsNZ2025 #seabirds

Michael Anderson gives us an intro to brood parasitism, sharing details on egg and nestling mimicry between Shining Bronze-cuckoos and their hosts. #BirdsNZ2025 #ornithology

David Melville & Megan Jolly report on black eyes in Takapū | Australasian Gannets, thought to be an indicator of birds having had H5N1 bird flu in Northern Gannets. Gannets on Farewell Spit were assessed, with 3 dark-eyed birds observed, with no evidence of bird flu. #BirdsNZ2025 #seabirds

Surenya Hilton updates us on the Critically Endangered Tara Iti | NZ Fairy Tern, currently numbering 40 individuals. Annual survival rate for fledglings is only 58%, and they require significant #conservation management. #BirdsNZ2025

James Russell shares news from recent surveys of the birds of Aitutaki & Manuae in the Cook Islands. Observations include Red-tailed tropicbird, Red-footed boobies, Wedge-tailed shearwater, Blue lorikeet, and many more. #BirdsNZ2025

Chris Bycroft from Rotoehu Ecological Trust in the Bay of Plenty shares news of kōkakō. The Trust manages 1600 ha of traps and bait stations latest survey results indicate a 14% increase in the popn thanks to these efforts. #BirdsNZ2025

Erin Patterson provides updates on hihi conservation. Hihi have been extensively translocated and require management (especially supplementary feeding) at these sites. Volunteers play a key role (+10,000hrs/yr!). #BirdsNZ2025