New Zealand bird of the year: playful alpine parrot kea soars to victory

The kea, the world’s only alpine parrot, has been crowned New Zealand bird of the year, with thousands more votes cast for the species than there are surviving individuals.

New Zealand’s annual bird of the year competition hit new heights this year with more than 50,000 votes cast from around the country and the world. The competition is in its 13th year, and pits the country’s rare and endangered birds against one another. No bird has won twice.

The kea – a highly intelligent and inquisitive olive green mountain parrot that lives only in the Southern Alps – received 7,311 votes, streets ahead of the native wood pigeon, the kererū, which came second with 4,572 votes, followed by the kākāpō with 2,554 votes.

There are 168 bird species in New Zealand and about a third are threatened with extinction, with dozens more on the endangered list. Some species have dwindled to a few hundred individuals tucked away in isolated pockets of the country.

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Kea are found only in the mountains of the South Island in a vast habitat of some 3.5m hectares. They once numbered in the hundreds of thousands but are now classified as nationally endangered with between 3,000 and 7,000 birds remaining.

One of the most intelligent bird species in the world, kea are renowned for their playfulness and novelty-seeking nature, which conservationist David Attenborough discovered when filming them for a BBC documentary, titled The Smartest Parrot, on the west coast of the South Island.

Tamsin Orr-Walker, the co-founder of the Kea Conservation Trust, said it was “fabulous” the kea had finally won and in many ways it was more representative of New Zealanders than the official national bird, the reclusive kiwi.

“A lot of people are saying the kea should be our national bird because they so much epitomise what it is to be a New Zealander: adventurous and up for a challenge and maybe a bit misunderstood,” she said.

“I think New Zealanders are starting to realise how special kea are; they are interactive birds and seek out humans which is very unusual. The fact they are declining from our mountains is alarming.”

Recent studies from the Kea Conservation Trust have found two-thirds of kea chicks never reach fledgling stage, as their nests are ground-dwelling and they are eaten by stoats, rats and possums (which the NZ government has pledged to exterminate by 2050).

Orr-Walker said the threat to kea was three-pronged: from introduced species, lead poisoning from old-fashioned alpine dwellings such as huts and shearing sheds, and from their interactions with humans, which include being hit by cars or fed inappropriate food.

Lead poisoning was particularly difficult to tackle, Orr-Walker said, as there were thousands of old buildings dotted around remote parts the South Island that could poison inquisitive kea. The effects of lead poisoning on the birds were disastrous, including brain damage and death.

An estimated 150,000 kea were killed from the 1860s onwards due to a government bounty introduced after conflict with sheep farmers.

The department of conservation and the Kea Conservation Trust continue to record intentional kea deaths each year (either shot, bludgeoned or poisoned by humans) though such incidents are thought to be under-reported.

“Education efforts have gone a long way towards New Zealanders learning to love and respect the kea, but if the kea cause financial loss or begin to hit people’s bottom line, that is when we are still hearing stories of kea being killed,” said Josh Kemp, a kea expert at New Zealand’s department of conservation.

Despite their protected status, keas have divided Kiwis between those who enjoy the cheeky parrot’s animated nature and those who curse its destructive habits such as damaging cars, tents and buildings in alpine environments, attacking stock and habitually stealing food.