
24 June – 2 July 2023
Te Tatauranga o ngā Manu Māra o Aotearoa – The New Zealand Garden Bird Survey
Make our birds count
We need you to help make a difference
Healthy bird populations can indicate that the environment is healthy. We know lots about endangered native birds in the bush, but we don’t always know what’s happening in the populations of all the birds around us, particularly in urban and garden environments.
That’s why we need you to help us count them.
What we learn from information about the birds in your garden collected by you and your fellow citizen scientists helps our researchers make decisions to protect our environment. It also tells us if what we are doing in areas such as predator control is working.
State of NZ Garden Birds 2022 | Te Āhua o ngā Manu o te Kāri i Aotearoa
What are our birds telling us?
Birds act as backyard barometers – telling us about the health of the environment we live in. They are signalling significant changes in our environment over the last 10 years. We should be listening.
Using cutting−edge techniques, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research has distilled a substantial information base – bird counts gathered by New Zealanders from almost 44,000 garden surveys since 2012 – into simple but powerful metrics.
Thank you to all the citizen scientists who participated in the survey in 2022. It was a great turnout.
Full report »