Flap, Munch, Flap – Great Kererū Count closes Sunday

How’s your counting folks?

The Great Kererū Count team still needs New Zealanders across the county to keep their eyes on the skies to help build up a comprehensive picture of where our native pigeon is – and isn't – found. The annual count closes this Sunday, 25th of September, at midnight. In short, we need your counts to help protect our beautiful kereru!

With school holidays underway, this is a perfect time for families and friends to get outside and get involved with this fun conservation count.

This year we have three options for you to make your kererū observations via www.greatkererucount.nz, https://inaturalist.nz or with the iNaturalist App available on iTunes and Google Play.

It’s been a fun and frantic time for the Great Kererū Count team. It’s great news that there have been 2468 reports coming through from all over the country, but we still need more data from our fantastic Counters for a comprehensive analysis.

Great Kererū Count data is critical not just for protecting this species, but for ensuring the vitality of our forest ecosystems for future generations. Kererū are known as the "gardeners of the skies" and play a crucial role for forest regeneration. With their large size and bright white singlets, surrounded by green and purple plumage, kererū are easy to spot perched in treetops or on power lines.

In addition, to the actual Count, a number of great kereru activities have been running across the county.

Unique to 2016, there was a LEARNZ virtual field trip underway "Kererū Count - kaitiakitanga in action. There is some fantastic feedback coming in already from teachers and students. There were some 90 individual classes enrolled in the field trip, with student enrolment numbers more than 2758. All the Kererū Count field trip videos can be accessed here https://vimeo.com/album/4072604

The Kererū Discovery annual kererū-friendly plant giveaway was a success. This year Wellington City Council kindly donated 500 locally sourced native plants, and Tony and his team distributed these beautiful plants to happy residents at six locations.

To celebrate this year’s Count, Nelson Nature invited school students from across the region to enter the Nelson Nature Art Challenge (photography, art & poetry) – an opportunity to show what people value most about Nelson’s natural environment, and how important it is that we look after it so that birds like kererū not only survive but thrive. We’re looking forward to see the results of the competition.

As part of Conservation Week, Forest & Bird hosted a tree planting day at Pearl Creek, Waimea on 11 September – with people planting kowhai and other food trees to attract kererū at Pearl Creek.

A huge thanks to Great Kererū Count partners - Kererū Discovery, WWF-New Zealand, Wellington City Council, Victoria University of Wellington and NatureWatch NZ. Many thanks to our amazing supporters including Kiwi Conservation Club, Forest & Bird, Nelson City Council, The Tindall Foundation, Wildland Consultants Ltd, Wellington Zoo Trust, LEARNZ, Department of Conservation, ZEALANDIA, New Zealand Birds, wildaboutnz, Rotorua Canopy Tours, Backyard Birds, kiwigardener, Blackbridge

Environmental Protection Society Incorporated, Project Janszoon, Enviroschools, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. 2016 Great Kererū Count statistics are uploaded live at

https://inaturalist.nz/projects/great-kereru- count-2016

By Louisa McKerrow, WWF-New Zealand

Posted on September 24, 2016 05:45 AM by greatkererucount