Birds New Zealand - annual conference

[Michael Szabo]

This is a reminder that registration for the Birds New Zealand annual conference and AGM closes on 10 May. The venue this year is in Nelson where about 200 people will gather on King's Birthday weekend 1-3 June for NZ's largest annual ornithological conference with dozens of presentations and talks, and a range of post-conference field trips.

Register online now: https://www.birdsnz.org.nz/other-events ... rence-2024

[Michael Szabo]

The programme outline for the 2024 annual conference and AGM to be held in Nelson over Kings Birthday weekend 1-3 June is now online here:
https://www.birdsnz.org.nz/wp-content/u ... utline.pdf

There will be 38 presentations on new research covering a wide range of aspects of New Zealand birds and bird research.

If you would like to attend the conference here is the link for registration (closes end of today, 10 May):
https://www.birdsnz.org.nz/news/nz-bird ... istration/

Please note, registered participants are eligible for a 10% discount on all books published by Potton & Burton.

[Michael Szabo]

The Birds New Zealand annual conference and AGM will be held in Nelson next weekend 1-3 June, where there will be 38 presentations on new research covering a wide range of aspects of New Zealand birds:
https://www.birdsnz.org.nz/wp-content/u ... utline.pdf

Conference venue details and times: https://www.birdsnz.org.nz/nz-bird-conf ... e-details/

And of course Birds New Zealand's mascot 'Orbell the Takahē' will be there too!

[Michael Szabo]

The 2024 New Zealand Bird Conference and Birds New Zealand AGM was held in Nelson 1-3 June. This year's was the largest ever, with over 230 people attending the high quality scientific presentations, including talks by Dan Burgin on the completion of the NZ Bird Atlas project and Graeme Elliott on 33 years of Antipodean Albatross research.

Presentations covered bird conservation monitoring, tracking Kaka and Kea, restoring seabird populations, using genomics for bird conservation, the taxonomy of cuckoos, albatrosses and prions, Little Penguin and Great Spotted Kiwi monitoring, results of a new Black-billed Gull census, and much more across a range of bird species and habitats.

Birds New Zealand President Bruce McKinlay stood down after six years in the role and new President Natalie Forsdick stepped up. Colin Miskelly was made a Fellow of the Society for his distinguished ornithological research and service to Birds New Zealand, and a Robert Falla Memorial Award was awarded to Raewyn Empson for her contribution to ornithology and conservation, particularly in the Wellington region.

Meritorious Service Awards and various 'Notornis' and conference awards were also presented (more details will be posted here).

The 2025 conference and AGM will be held in Auckland over King’s Birthday Weekend.

Conference programme with abstracts of the talks: https://www.birdsnz.org.nz/wp-content/u ... tracts.pdf

Link with conference photos: https://www.facebook.com/Birdsnewzealan ... pxWG3nAmPl

[Michael Szabo]

These were the award winners at the 2024 Birds New Zealand conference & AGM in Nelson over King's Birthday weekend (Photos by Michael Szabo):

[Michael Szabo]

A brief clip of Graeme Elliott presenting part of his talk on '33 years of monitoring wandering albatrosses on Antipodes and Adams islands' from the recent 2024 Birds New Zealand annual conference held in Nelson on King’s Birthday weekend has been posted on the Birds New Zealand Facebook page.

Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/Birdsnewzealan ... 638890917/

The 2025 Birds New Zealand annual conference will be held in Auckland on King's Birthday weekend. More brief clips of the presentations at the 2024 conference will be posted on the Facebook page with the relevant abstract over the next few weeks.

Here is the abstract for Graeme's presentation: Monitoring of Gibson’s wandering albatrosses on Adams Island started in 1991 and an almost identical programme of monitoring of Antipodean wandering albatrosses started on Antipodes Island in 1994. Both programmes have continued annually, except for one missed year on each island. Both programmes have involved estimating survival by banding and re-sighting birds, monitoring nesting success, tracking birds at sea using satellite and geolocator tags, estimating the size of the population by undertaking whole island censuses, and tracking population change by annual counting of nesting birds in representative portions of the islands. Both populations increased up until 2005 but then crashed with numbers continuing to fall for about 15 years, until Antipodean albatrosses were about 42% and Gibson’s about 47% of their pre-crash levels. Satellite and geolocator tracking of both taxa have enabled accurate description of their foraging ranges and identified that a large number of birds have been killed by tuna long-liners, particularly in the waters to the northeast of New Zealand. Tracking has revealed that although their foraging ranges overlap, Gibson’s mostly forage in the Tasman Sea while Antipodean mostly forage in the eastern Pacific. Such long-term monitoring programmes have involved half of our lives’ summers and several hundred days of sea-sickness, but we now know exactly what the two albatross populations are doing in good detail and we’ve had the joy of interacting with a wide range of rarely seen subantarctic birds.

[Michael Szabo]

A brief clip of Richard Holdaway presenting part of his talk on the morphometric patterns and intraspecific taxonomy of the Shining Cuckoo at the recent 2024 Birds New Zealand annual conference held in Nelson on King’s Birthday weekend is now online here:
https://www.facebook.com/Birdsnewzealan ... 666291895/

Here is the abstract for his presentation:
A comparison of morphometric patterns and intraspecific taxonomy of the shining cuckoo
Four subspecies of shining cuckoo (Chrysococcyx lucidus) are presently recognised by most authorities. Two, the Australian breeding C. l. plagosus and the New Zealand breeding C. l. lucidus are migratory, both spending the non-breeding season in the tropics. The other two are thought to be sedentary, harterti on Rennell and Bellona Islands south of the Solomon Islands, and layardi on New Caledonia, the Loyalty Islands, and Vanuatu. A male cuckoo that came aboard ship 400 nautical miles north of North Cape, New Zealand, just east of Norfolk Island, in October 1954 and which is now preserved in Museums Victoria, Melbourne, Australia had been provisionally identified as C. l. lucidus. Its 30 g mass is the highest listed in the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand & Antarctic Birds. We assessed its relationships using principal component analysis, non-metric non-dimensional scaling, and discriminant function analysis of the measurements of its bill width (at proximal edge of the nares), bill length (chord of culmen to frontal feathers), wing length (wing flattened, not straightened), and tail length in comparison with these dimensions in 146 cuckoo skins in the museum collections in New Zealand, Australia, the US and the United Kingdom, including the 6 syntypes of C. l. layardi and the holotype of C. l. harterti. The ‘North Cape bird’ was in one of four morphometric groups identified whose distributions did not accord with those of the present subspecies. Potential implications of the mismatch for our understanding of the species taxonomy and migrations are discussed.

The 2025 Birds New Zealand annual conference will be held in Auckland on King's Birthday weekend next year.

[Michael Szabo]

Multiple photos and brief clips of the presentations at the 2024 Birds New Zealand annual conference and AGM held in Nelson on King's Birthday weekend, including abstracts, have now been posted to the Birds New Zealand Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Birdsnewzealand

The 2025 Birds New Zealand annual conference will be held in Auckland on King's Birthday weekend.