Te Ipukarea Society’s Bird of the Year competition gets close to reaching 10,000 total votes, already three times more votes than last year’s competition.

Aitutaki’s Kuramo’o (blue lorikee/nunbird) holds the top spot in the competition with over 3150 votes.

Rarotonga starling, 'Ī'oi is on the Kuramo’o’s tail with over 2570 votes and in third place is the Moa Kirikiri (Pacific Fruit Bat) with over 920 votes.

Voting for the competition closes on November 10.

Kate Mckessar from Te Ipukarea Society said even from the first day that voting was open, the competition had half the total number of votes of last year’s competition.

It’s the second year the Society has run the Bird of the Year competition.

Mckessar said the high voter turnout was down to campaign managers pushing for votes behind each bird.

She said the “Kuramo’o crew” – the campaign managers behind Kuramo’o – were running a very strong campaign.

Most of the birds in the competition were vulnerable of threatened, Mckessar said.

“There are a few exceptions, some seem quite common and some of them haven’t been surveyed so we don’t know.

“There’s a little one called the Kereārako which is a Cook Islands reed warbler which is endemic to Mitiaro and Mangaia but nobody has done any surveys on it so we don’t really know what its numbers are, but when you go there you see it so you feel like it’s healthy.”

Mckessar said the competition had raised awareness for Cook Islands native birds.

“We are getting people call us up saying ‘we didn’t know there were birds that you only find in the Cook Islands that are endemic, we didn’t know there were so many native birds’.

“People are unaware that we’ve got four extinct native birds and that is nearly entirely to do with rats and their habitat.”