Past Conferences and Abstracts
The 2024 New Zealand Bird Conference and Birds NZ AGM was held in Nelson from 1-3 June. This 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. Abstracts are available here
Society President Bruce McKinlay stood down after six years in the role and new President Natalie Forsdick stepped up to take on the role.
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 awaraded to Raewyn Empson for her contribution to ornithology and conservation, particularly in the Wellington region. Meritorious Service Awards and various Notornis and Confernce awards were also presented. List of Society awards and recipients
All AGM files, including motions passed and minutes are available here
Bottles of wine donated by Toi Toi Wines and books donated by Potton & Burton and Heritage Expedition were presented to the conference award and photo competition winners, Faunatech song meters were donated to the best student talk, student poster and raffle winners, and Nelson City Council sponsored a conference branded cotton bag for each conference attendee.
A big thank you to Mark Ayre, Michelle Bradshaw and the Conference Team, and everyone who helped making this a significant and memorable event, and the largest national bird conference ever in New Zealand!
The 2025 New Zealand Bird Conference and AGM will be held in Auckland over King’s Birthday Weekend from 31 May to 2 June. Details will be available later this year.
To read or download abstracts from previous conferences scroll down.