Tui – the most viewed species on New Zealand Birds Online. Image: Tony Whitehead, NZ Birds Online.
Colin Miskelly, New Zealand Birds Online – 1 million hits, 26 November 2015
The website New Zealand Birds Online is a collaborative project between Te Papa, Birds New Zealand and the Department of Conservation. It was launched in June 2013, and use of the site has continued to grow since, with just over 1,900 visits to the site per day at present. The milestone of 1,000,000 visits to the site was reached on 26 November 2015.
Daily visits to NZ Birds Online – growing steadily and approaching 2,000 per day.k
Google Analytics screen shot of NZ Birds Online visitation data, 09:08 am, 26 November 2016.
The original site contained 457 species pages written by 111 authors, and 6592 images from 256 photographers, plus more than 1100 sound files and 1783 book extracts. Content continues to be added, including 354 extracts from the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic birds in November 2013, and 2274 further images (total = 8866), including from 121 additional photographers. That is an average of about 2.5 images added every day since the launch.
An additional 14 species pages have been added to the site since the launch, reflecting evolving knowledge of the birds of New Zealand. These new pages include:
- Three vagrant species newly confirmed as reaching New Zealand (buff-breasted sandpiper, dusky woodswallow and magpie-lark)
- Four newly-described fossil species (St Bathans kiwi, Love’s Paleocene seabird, Bartle’s bittern and New Zealand lake wanderer)
- Three newly-described recently extinct species from the Chatham Islands (Chatham Island merganser, Imber’s petrel and Chatham Island kaka)
- Four introduced species occasionally encountered in the wild in New Zealand, but not regarded as having established populations here (red-legged partridge, rainbow lorikeet, rose-ringed parakeet and red-vented bulbul).
