New Zealand’s longest running citizen science project, THE NEW ZEALAND GARDEN BIRD SURVEY, kicks off on Saturday, 28 June and we need you to help us get as many people as possible out in their gardens counting birds.
In brief:
This is the 18th annual New Zealand Garden Bird Survey run by Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research. Since 2007, more than 70,000 surveys have been submitted by tens of thousands of volunteer citizen scientists giving us enough data to begin establishing definitive trends for increasing or declining numbers of birds.- We ask people to count all the birds they see or hear in their garden for ONE HOUR ON ONE DAY during the nine-day period from 28 June to 6 July.
- Every sighting is recorded on a tally sheet with the observations then submitted via an online form on the Garden Bird website. All the data we receive is then processed through a super-computer with the results published in the State of New Zealand Garden Birds | Te Āhua o ngā Manu o te Kāri I Aotearoa
- What will 2025 bring? We need the eyes and ears of the country to help our scientists understand the changing world around us.
Song thrush in the early morning light was the winning entry in the 2023 Photography Competition, photographer Amy Boyce.
How you can help:
Share information about the Survey with your networks, friends and whānau.
There are a host of bilingual resources, including bird ID posters, available on the Garden Bird Survey website.
More photos, social media sharing tiles and other resources are also downloadable from the website.
We’d love to reach our target of adding another 10,000 surveys to our data resource this year, but we need lots of help to make that happen. You sharing this event with your networks would be a huge help.