People urged to record calls of endangered wetland bird

Holidaymakers are being asked to do a little homework this long weekend to help one of New Zealand's endangered birds.

Labour weekend coincides with the start of the mating season for the often secretive matuku-hūrepo, Australasian bittern.

Conservation group Love Bittern's Wendy Ambury told Morning Report there were fewer than a thousand left in the wild, and its distinctive booming call would be a little more prevalent around wetlands in the coming weeks. She's asking for Kiwis to put aside a couple of hours to listen out for the bird, and record what they hear.

"This weekend we've got the third year of our great matuku-hūrepo muster and what we're asking people to do is sign up to listen at a wetland near them just after sunset for 60 minutes and record that amazing boom of the male matuku-hūrepo.

"We're using citizen science and people right around the country. We've got over 1000 people registered to join us to try and establish how many male bitterns there are, which is the way that we establish the population across the country," Ambury said.

The group has already seen an increase in the number of people signing up to take part, which will help establish a more accurate figure on how many of the birds are living across Aotearoa.

"So more boots on the ground for bittern is fantastic. It means we can get more sites covered, which means that we can get more accurate results in terms of a national population estimate," Ambury said.

You can hear a Matuku-hūrepo call here:

Ambury described the sound of a matuku-hūrepo coming out of wetlands as "magical," and wants the sound to be experienced for generations to come.

"We're really good at talking about our forest birds and our sea birds, but we need more people on board to be able to identify and record the matuku-hūrepo. With less than a thousand left, we'd like to see them here for future generations as well. So this recording of them is actually the first link in that."

She said people may not even be aware they had matuku-hūrepo living within their neighbourhood, with less than 1000 of them spread out across the country.

"They're often considered solitary because they're only ever heard or seen in ones and twos. But they're quite a social bird. So we'd love to see those flocks come back again across New Zealand.

"You can listen anywhere across New Zealand at a wetland that has got some nice deep permanent sort of water spots in it and access to fish and eels," Ambury said.