From Just Five Birds to 350: The Extraordinary Comeback of New Zealand’s Black Robin
In 1980, the future of one of New Zealand’s most remarkable native birds seemed almost impossible to imagine.
There were just five Chatham Island black robins left in the world.
Only one of those birds was the surviving breeding female.
Her name was Old Blue.
For a species that had once occupied several islands across the Chatham Islands, this was an extraordinary collapse. The black robin, known as karure in Moriori and kakaruia in Māori, had been pushed to the edge of extinction by habitat changes and introduced predators. By the late 1970s, conservationists were facing a frightening possibility: the species could disappear entirely within a very short period. Department of Conservation
Instead, something remarkable happened.
Scientists, wildlife officers, local communities and conservationists launched an intensive recovery programme. They experimented with extraordinary techniques, including moving eggs between nests and allowing other native birds to incubate and raise black robin chicks.
The effort worked.
Decades later, the black robin population has recovered to around 350 adult birds, living primarily on two predator-free islands in the Chatham Islands. The species remains classified as Nationally Critical in New Zealand, and its future is still dependent on careful conservation. But its recovery has become an internationally recognized example of what determined conservation work can accomplish. Department of Conservation
And in September 2026, the little black bird reached another milestone.
The karure black robin was named New Zealand’s Bird of the Year 2026, receiving 25,610 votes and finishing ahead of the kākāpō, New Zealand falcon, kea and takahē. Forest & Bird
For a species that once had only five surviving individuals, the victory carried a meaning far greater than a popularity contest.
It was a celebration of survival.
A Bird Almost Lost Forever
The Chatham Islands lie roughly 800 kilometers east of New Zealand’s South Island. The remote archipelago is home to a remarkable collection of plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth.
The black robin is one of them.
The species is endemic to the Chatham Islands, meaning it naturally occurs nowhere else. Today, its remaining populations are concentrated on Maung’Rē/Mangere Island and Hokorereoro/Rangatira, also known as South East Island. Department of Conservation
But the black robin's history on the islands is one of decline.
Human settlement brought predators such as rats and cats, which had devastating consequences for native wildlife. By around 1900, black robins had disappeared from most of their former range and survived only on the small and difficult-to-access Little Mangere Island. Department of Conservation
The situation became especially serious during the 1970s.
In 1972, wildlife officers could find only 18 black robins on Little Mangere. By 1976, just seven remained. Those birds were moved to nearby Mangere Island in an attempt to give them better habitat and a better chance of survival. Before the move, conservationists had planted around 120,000 trees on Mangere to provide additional habitat. Department of Conservation
But relocation alone was not enough.
The population continued to decline.
By 1980, only five black robins remained.
And among those five, there was only one breeding pair: a female known as Old Blue and a male known as Old Yellow. Department of Conservation
The species was now facing a biological crisis.
There were simply too few birds to recover naturally at the speed required.
The Importance of Old Blue
Old Blue became one of the most famous individual birds in New Zealand conservation history.
She was not physically imposing. The black robin is a small songbird, weighing only a fraction of what people might associate with a large, charismatic endangered animal.
Yet the survival of an entire species came to depend on her.
According to New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, every black robin alive today is descended from Old Blue, the last breeding female of the original population. She eventually lived to about 14 years old, making her one of the longest-lived black robins known. Department of Conservation
Her importance becomes even clearer when considering the numbers.
Five birds were alive in 1980.
Only one was the fertile female whose descendants would eventually form the modern population.
The fate of the entire species therefore became closely connected to whether Old Blue and Old Yellow could successfully reproduce.
But black robins did not naturally produce large numbers of offspring.
Their usual clutch size is only around two eggs, and successful nesting can take more than three months. That made natural population recovery extremely slow. A population reduced to only a few individuals could easily disappear before enough young birds were produced to replace adults that died. Papers Past
Conservationists needed to find a way to increase the number of young black robins without putting the remaining birds at even greater risk.
That led to an unusually ambitious experiment.
The Revolutionary Idea of Cross-Fostering
The solution was called cross-fostering.
The basic idea was remarkably simple but technically difficult.
Instead of allowing every black robin egg to remain in its mother's nest, conservationists could carefully transfer some eggs to nests belonging to another suitable bird species.