A raptor with no qualms about eating its opponents wins New Zealand’s annual bird election

Wellington, New Zealand – Wellington, New Zealand (AP)-The annual election of New Zealand birds is challenged by cheeky parrots, sweet singers and cute puff thieves. The winner of this year was a mysterious hawk who would not think twice to eat them.

Kārearea, the name Maori indigenous du Falcon de la Nouvelle-Zéland, was crowned bird of the year on Monday. But the annual survey, managed by the forest of the conservation group & Bird is not an ordinary online vote.

The fiercely fought elections see the volunteer campaign directors (human) apply to Stump for their favorite bird. The feathers fly while avian amateurs seek to influence the public through memes battles, poster campaigns and dance routines of the trash carried out in bird costumes.

“The bird of the year went from a simple e-mail survey in 2005 to a highly contested cultural moment,” said Forest & Nicola Toki, director general of birds. “Behind the same and chaos is a serious message.”

The competition draws attention to the species of native birds of New Zealand, 80% designated as having trouble to some extent. But it attracts a passionate fandom because New Zealanders are obsessed with birds.

In a country without native terrestrial mammals, with the exception of two species of bats, birds reign supreme. They appear in art, on jewelry, in the songs of schoolchildren, and in the name of New Zealand are known from abroad, “Kiwis”.

Beloved birds include alpine parrots that harass tourists and pigeons who get so drunk on the berries that they sometimes fall trees.

“It is not a land of lions, tigers and bear,” said Toki. “The birds here are strange and wonderful and not what you expect to see perhaps in other countries.”

The first competition two decades ago attracted less than 900 votes. More than 75,000 people in the country of 5 million ballots this year.

It was the highest participation rate outside of an episode when the host last week this evening John Oliver volunteered as a campaign director in 2023, which was mainly jokingly jokingly jokingly in the New Zealanders in American interference. Perhaps inevitably, the Oliver bird, the Pūteketeke or the Australasian Crête Grebe, won a landslide of 290,000 vote.

Other controversies have struck the survey. In 2021, there was a gentle outcry when a bat won the title, although it was not a bird.

The vote was rocked by a scandal of foreign influence in 2018 when self-watering actors in Australia voted hundreds of fraudulent votes for a bird that shares its name with a term of antipodean slang for sex. Voters must now check the email addresses used to vote.

Forest & Bird said that 87% of this year’s survey votes came from New Zealand. The more than 14,500 Falcon votes seemed to have been won Fair and Square.

The majestic Kārearea can fly at speeds of more than 200 km (124 miles) per hour and plunges to capture its prey, often smaller. The endemic species is threatened in New Zealand, vulnerable to electrocution on the threads and the loss of their forest habitats.

“They are a mysterious bird and it is partly because they are cryptic, they are often well hidden,” said Phil Bradfield, administrator of Kāreare Falcon Trust in Marlborough, on the island of southern New Zealand.

Official figures suggest between 5,000 and 8,000 New Zealand hawks, although the real number is unknown. Bradfield said that the raptor “fast and sneaky and very special” was a deserving bird winner.

Other campaigns knew that the victory on Monday would take a miracle. Birds that are ugly – but not ugly enough to be funny – unknown or perceived as boring face a climb slog.

This does not dissuade bird lovers. The year 2025 was the first that the 73 competitors of the birds attracted campaign directors, some choosing not to leave a lower content that they knew how to lose.

One was Marc Daalder whose basic and basic campaign for Tākapu, or Australas Gannet, attracted 962 votes – about a 15th in Falcon.

“Managing a campaign for one of the least popular birds is a more satisfactory experience because you know that the votes that your bird has received are the result of your hard work,” said Daalder, who is a political journalist (human) and a campaign director three times (bird).

Despite the participation of almost record voters, Toki de Forest & Bird said that it feared that New Zealanders abandon some of the most threatened species as they have developed more expensive to protect, especially against predators such as cats, rats and stoas.

“Successive governments in New Zealand have cumulatively reduced investments in conservation, which is the cornerstone of New Zealand economic prosperity,” she said, referring to tourist campaigns promoting the country’s panoramic landscapes.

“People come here to see our native birds and the places they live in,” she said. “They don’t come here to see shopping centers.”