STRICTLY FOR THE BIRDS
About 10 days before the end of Forest & Bird’s 2018 Bird of the Year competition, Taylor Davies-Collie began to feel his optimism wane. The Dunedin botany student had thrown his support behind the takahē to win the top perch, but the tide was beginning to turn.
“It was a really hard thing, actually, Bird of the Year, because I love New Zealand wildlife, but I’d walk home from work and I’d see a kererū on the power line and I’d just be angry at it.”
Team Kererū were streaking ahead in the vote count. Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick brought her army of supporters with her when she joined the campaign team, and social-media memes featuring “round bois” (any animal of considerable girth) and “thicc birbs” (any bird species with a voluptuous physique) were dominating conversation.
The popularity of the salubrious wood pigeon was not all Davies-Collie had to contend with. Major shade was being thrown at him from Team Pukeko, whose fans became engaged in a slinging match with the takahē, each side taunting the other with memes including (but not limited to) which bird lives with its parents for too long, whose fecal matter is the most substantial, and whether or not one of the species was a “lowkey Australian”, a slight that could leave a stain on a bird’s good name forever.
To an outsider, this behaviour is dazzling in its oddity. To a native bird fan, however, it’s good-natured fun, and par for the course when you’re talking about the most hotly contested competition in New Zealand’s recent history.
Bird of the Year (BOTY) kicked off in 2000. Brainchild of the late
