Enjoy New Zealand's native birds......
Annual Bird of the Year election and award:
Link (with beautiful bird photos): https://www.birdoftheyear.org.nz/
(sample)
Kororā - Little Penguin
(snip)
Voting opens at 9am on Monday 28 October and closes at 5pm on Sunday 10 November.
Sadly, many of New Zealand's native birds are in crisis. Two thirds of our birds are threatened with extinction. Forest & Bird’s Bird of the Year celebrates our unique birds and with each vote you help give them a voice.
Great Guardian article on the subject of the contest:
New Zealand's bird of the year: the most important election – aside from the real one
What started as innocuous good fun has evolved into a national obsession, complete with voter fraud, skulduggery and high passions
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/05/new-zealands-bird-of-the-year-2019-the-most-important-election-aside-from-the-real-one
(snip)
If a nationwide vote to name a favourite native bird sounds like innocuous good fun – a creative means of celebrating unique, threatened fauna – you may be underestimating bird of the year. Coordinated by the Royal Forest & Bird Society, an environmental nongovernmental organisation, it is often described as the country’s most important election – second only to, you know, the actual elections. Since 2017, too, it has had the same validation as two other Kiwi creations, pavlova and Russell Crowe: Australia has tried to pass it off as its own.
Heartbreaking to see so many of their birds seriously endangered........
= new reply since forum marked as read
This has to be as bad as it gets! Heartbreaking! 
Southern Brown Kiwi
Such a precious little creature.
This organization came up with the Bird of the Year idea and it appears they're doing everything in their power to save as many as possible:
Forest & Bird is New Zealand’s leading independent conservation organisation — protecting wildlife and wild places, on land and in the sea.
Link: https://www.forestandbird.org.nz/
We are the voice for nature in our communities, to our city and district councils, to our regional councils, to central-government, and in our courts. No other organisation does this.
We do not receive government funding – we rely on the support from our members and supporters through membership fees, regular giving, donations and bequests. We speak for all our threatened species and treasured places, from endangered Maui’s dolphins to high-country tussock lands.
KY............
........... Thanks for the link, I'll definitely check it out. My parents have been to New Zealand - and my mother went a second time, plus we have more than one DUer here from there - that I know of. Stephen Colbert also just returned from there and we're still waiting for footage. Of course, he's interested in the Middle Earth movies which were filmed there. 
Hoping that this helps out with wildlife protections, especially for the vulnerable birds.
Link to tweet
