Great team effort | Thank you to all our supporters over the years!
Building a picture of the State of NZ Garden Birds is very much a team effort.…..
The importance of volunteers
The results presented in the State of NZ Garden Birds 2018 - Te āhua o ngā manu o te kāri i Aotearoa report are based on information gathered by volunteers taking part in the New Zealand Garden Bird Survey.
Each winter thousands of volunteers search for birds in their gardens for one hour and, for each species they detect, record the highest number of individuals counted at one time.
Since the survey began in 2008, over 34,000 bird counts have been completed in gardens across the country.
The importance of partnerships
The NZ Garden Bird Survey, which is led by Maanaki Whenua - Landcare Research, is very much a collaborative effort involving a host of organisations and individuals. It is organised by Eric Spurr, who established partnerships with Forest and Bird, Birds NZ and Topflite in the early days. More recently we have worked with NatureWatch, LEARNZ and the Department of Conservation to facilitate increased participation by schools in particular.
Between 2014 and 2017, the MBIE-funded research programme Building Trustworthy Biodiversity Indicators led by Catriona MacLeod (Maanaki Whenua - Landcare Research) worked closely with Eric Spurr to enhance the NZ Garden Bird Survey. This programme aimed to ensure that we are making the best use of the existing data and building on it, informing the development of the State of NZ Garden Birds 2018 report.
Again, this was very much a team effort – drawing a diverse range of skills to improve how we process and communicate the NZ Garden Bird Survey data and results. The analytical developments were brought about by a dedicated group of young and emerging quantitative ecologists based at Maanaki Whenua -Landcare Research - Simon Howard, Peter Green, Andrew Gormley and Angela Brandt. The Maanaki Whenua - Landcare Research graphics team and webmaster worked with Fabiola Rodríguez Estrada (Links Communication and Design) and Mary Brake (Reflection Graphics) to develop new supporting material and enhance the data visualisation. Improvements in the use of social media to build an online social and learning hub for NZGBS volunteers were facilitated by our research partnership with Nancy Longnecker and Andrea Liberatore at the Science Communication Centre at the University of Otago.
We have also worked with Māori researchers to explore mechanisms for better reflecting the relationship between tangata whenua and birds. This includes making better use of Māori bird names in our reporting and supporting resources. Priscilla Wehi (Maanaki Whenua - Landcare Research), who led these developments, working in consultation with Hēmi Whaanga, Tom Roa and Rangi Matamua (Waikato University) and Paul Scofield (Canterbury Museum) as well as Te Waiarani Harawira, Wena Harawira and Te Aniwaniwa Wehi.
