{"id":606121,"date":"2026-09-20T10:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T10:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/606121\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T10:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T10:20:12","slug":"record-number-of-votes-cast-in-2026-bird-of-the-year-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/606121\/","title":{"rendered":"Record number of votes cast in 2026 Bird of the Year competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

A record number of votes have been cast in this year’s Bird of the Year competition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Voting to choose the nation’s favourite native bird closed at 5pm on Sunday. The winner will be announced on Monday.<\/p>\n

“We have over 90,000 validated votes, and even more impressively 88 percent of those have been cast here by people in Aotearoa New Zealand,” Forest and Bird’s Rebecca Hatch said.<\/p>\n

“This makes it the biggest homegrown Bird of the Year ever.”<\/p>\n

It was also the closest competition yet, she said, with more than 70 birds campaigning for votes across seven parties.<\/p>\n

“There are five birds in the top 10 who have never won Bird of the Year before. Your vote could mean a brand-new winner.”<\/p>\n

The winner of this year’s contest will have a waiata composed for it by Moana Maniapoto.<\/p>\n

\"Singer-songwriter<\/p>\n

Singer-songwriter Moana Maniapoto<\/p>\n

Stephen Tilley<\/p>\n

According to Hatch, producer Delaney Davidson came up with the idea for Waiata Manu last year, with the first – for the k\u0101rearea – being written by Troy Kingi.<\/p>\n

The song will shine a spotlight on the winning species, helping people fall in love with the birds, understand the challenges they face, and take action to protect them, Hatch said.<\/p>\n

Singer-songwriter Moana Maniapoto will write the waiata for this year’s winner.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got Scotty Morrison and Paddy Free joining us and I’m very, very excited. It’s such a nice feeling to do something very positive,” Maniapoto said.<\/p>\n

Davidson conceived the series to carry on the tradition of M\u0101ori composer Hirini Melbourne, and the many waiata he wrote about the manu (birds) of Aotearoa.<\/p>\n

“I would love these songs to be something we all learn to sing. We teach them in schools,” Davidson said.<\/p>\n

“We honour the whenua and we honour the manu. We transform ourselves into manu by singing. And I see us building on Hirini’s tradition by creating a vast treasury of songs, like a forest, full of magic.”<\/p>\n

Bird of the Year has been running since 2005.<\/p>\n

Last year, it drew more than 75,000 voters from across 123 countries.<\/p>\n

In 2023 Bird of the Century had more than 350,000 votes – nearly 300,000 alone for the P\u016bteketeke after John Oliver’s campaign.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A record number of votes have been cast in this year’s Bird of the Year competition. Voting to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-606121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}