Dead of Winter Knowledge Quest: Birding New Zealand – An Introduction by Eric DeFonso

It is getting chilly here in Colorado but in the Southern Hemisphere summer is just getting started! Join us for a virtual exploration of the birds of New Zealand with Colorado biologist and birder Eric DeFonso.

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New Zealand is frequently overlooked as a birding destination. It certainly is renowned on the general travel circuit with good reason, for trekking, skiing, adventure tourism, and now as a Lord of the Rings shooting location. But as a temperate climate region in the southern hemisphere, it is often overshadowed by neighboring Australia as well as other tropical locales like southeast Asia or even Africa. Thus New Zealand tends to be prioritized lower by birders.

This is unfortunate though, because the country is very accessible to English speakers both culturally and ornithologically, and offers remarkable birding opportunities alongside remarkable geology, scenery, and fascinating human history.

In Nov 2023, Eric took a monthlong birding vacation to this distant land, fulfilling a longstanding bucket list dream and exploring bird families entirely unfamiliar to us Colorado residents including penguins, kiwis, and albatrosses. Endemic songbirds like Tui, stitchbirds, and saddlebacks also provided enthralling birding experiences.

Join Eric as he shares the details of his 28-day journey to Aotearoa (the Maori language name for New Zealand), where he explored both the North and South Islands, visiting a land that has been known to birds for nearly 70 million years but to land mammals and humans for less than one thousand.

Eric DeFonso began his birding life over 30 years ago, in 1993 while a graduate student in atmospheric science at the University of California in Davis. For a decade he simply enjoyed birdwatching solo for its simple pleasures while working full-time as a software engineer, but after moving to Colorado in 2005, became an avid lister and photographer.

Eric began pursuing sound recording in 2010 and has since uploaded over 2,500 recordings of birds to online sound libraries like the Macaulay Library at Cornell and xeno-canto.org. In 2011, he traveled extensively in South America for the entire year, encompassing four countries, and encountered over 1,200 species of birds, many with photos and sound recordings. He began working in 2013 for the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies on the IMBCR project (Integrated Monitoring of Bird Conservation Regions), and in 2024 was a Survey Crew Leader in the Southern Great Plains, the fourth full season he has served in that role with the previous three seasons served here in Colorado. He writes a column on Birding By Ear for the Colorado Field Ornithologists’ quarterly journal, has led field trips for the Colorado Field Ornithologists annual conventions, currently serves on the Colorado Bird Records Committee, is an eBird reviewer for Chaffee, Eagle, and Pitkin Counties, and has done conservation and guiding volunteer work in South America.