Voting opens today in the most important election of 2026. And no, this is not the General Election.

I am talking about Forest & Bird’s ‘Bird of the Year’. Run annually since 2005, it has become a fixture in New Zealand’s calendar.

This year comes with a twist. It is election-themed, starting with an electoral system inspired by MMP. There are bird votes and party votes. Thankfully, they are combined, so overhang seats are not possible.

The seventy-odd birds stand for six parties, each with a manifesto. Sorry, a ‘manu-festo’, manu being te reo Māori for bird. And those manu-festos may remind you of certain human parties.

The Tree Birds run on roots. “Unlike certain offshore parties who disappear across the horizon for months at a time, Tree Birds believe in putting down roots and sticking around for the long haul,” they proclaim. I think I have heard that before, if not from a bird.

The Floor Birds, meanwhile, speak for “the flightless battlers” and campaign under “Ready to take the floor... again.” So yes, for some birds, too, this is not their first rodeo.

The Shy Birds party is my personal favourite. Its slogan is “Once bittern, twice shy”, the bittern being a bird rarely seen. It warns against underestimating “the quiet caucus”. National’s failed coup has given that a completely new relevance.

And yet, policy trouble is on the horizon, especially for migratory birds.

This week, the kūaka, the bar-tailed godwit, will land in New Zealand after flying 11,000 kilometres from Alaska non-stop. Luckily, it stays with us for six months, clearing ACT’s proposed rule that residents spend 730 days here in every five years. Which means it has the right to return next year.

Then there is the shining cuckoo, also migratory. It has found an ingenious way to circumvent the foreign buyer ban by laying its eggs in the grey warbler’s nest. Whether the warbler can then claim New Zealand First’s $45,000 Kiwi Kids Grant is unclear.

Voting is not restricted to citizens, and we know where this can lead. In 2023, US late-night host John Oliver hijacked the competition and delivered 290,000 votes from around the world to the pūteketeke.

In politics at least, birds will always hold a natural advantage over us humans: every candidate is a left-winger and a right-winger at once.

And with that, the campaign season is off to a flying start.