Birds of Te Araroa Trail – Aotearoa New Zealand’s long pathway

Te Araroa Trail runs for more than 3,200 km between Cape Reinga and Bluff, along the length of Aotearoa New Zealand’s two main islands. All birds seen and heard along the trail during the austral summer were counted in 1,720 contiguous transects during 124 days of walking from north to south between 2 November 2023 and 11 March 2024 (84.7% of transects were 2 km long). A total of 106,207 birds of 107 species were counted during daylight transects, at a mean encounter rate of 32.6 individuals per km. The highest counts were for house sparrow (Passer domesticus – 12,517 birds), chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs – 5,806), and red-billed gull (Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae – 5,427). The species recorded most frequently were chaffinch (62.3% of transects), silvereye (Zosterops lateralis – 58.5%), and Eurasian blackbird (Turdus merula – 56.7%). Bird communities are summarised and compared for 19 sections covering the entirety of the trail, providing a baseline for comparisons within regions and over time. Northern and/or southern limits are presented for 30 species with restricted distributions. Comparison of counts along sections of the trail that were trapped (233 km, including 22.4% of forest) with counts from untrapped forest sections revealed that tūī (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae), kererū (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae), and New Zealand fantails (Rhipidura fuliginosa) were more abundant where predator control was undertaken. Twenty of the fantails seen in the South Island were black morph (5.6%), with the remaining 339 (94.4%) pied morph, indicating that the proportion of black morph birds has been stable over the past two decades. In addition to describing bird communities likely to be encountered on different sections of Te Araroa Trail, this account (and the dataset it is based on) provides a baseline for comparing New Zealand bird communities over time and space.