Canterbury Mornings

The State of New Zealand Garden Birds 2019, released today by Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research, shows the latest results in New Zealand’s longest-running citizen science project – the New Zealand Garden Bird Survey. Since 2007, people across the country have spent one hour in their gardens, local park, or school grounds, counting the numbers of birds that they can see. The survey helps scientists to understand the health of garden bird populations and the wider environment by showing how bird counts are changing across Aotearoa over two timeframes – the past 5 and past 10 years.  The latest results, collected in 2019, show strong evidence for increases in fantail (pīwakawaka), tūī and kererū over the past 10 years, with some evidence that bellbirds (korimako) are increasing as well. These native species seem to be doing particularly well in some regions in the past 5 years. And although silvereye (tauhou) continue to decline, their decline has slowed nationally from 38% in the past 10 years to 2% in the pas