From Five Birds to Bird of the Year: The Extraordinary Rescue of New Zealand’s Black Robin

In 1980, one of the world’s rarest birds was standing on the edge of extinction.

There were just five Chatham Island black robins left alive.

Five.

And among those five birds, only one was a fertile female.

Her name was Old Blue.

Today, the black robin — known in te reo Māori as karure or kakaruia — is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated conservation success stories. Hundreds of these small, dark-feathered birds now survive on predator-free islands in the remote Chatham Islands, roughly 800 kilometres east of mainland New Zealand.

And in September 2026, the species reached a remarkable new milestone.

The black robin was named New Zealand’s Bird of the Year after receiving 26,610 votes in Forest & Bird’s annual competition. More than 105,000 people participated in the 2026 contest, making it a record year for voter participation.

The victory was more than a popularity contest.

For conservationists, the black robin’s rise from five surviving birds to a population numbering in the hundreds represents something much bigger: proof that a species can sometimes be pulled back from the brink when science, persistence, habitat protection and extraordinary human intervention come together.

But the story is also a reminder that survival is not the same as complete recovery.

The black robin remains classified by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation as Threatened – Nationally Critical, and its future still depends heavily on predator-free habitat, careful monitoring and continued conservation work.

The story of how it got this far begins with a tiny population, an unusual bird named Old Blue and a group of conservationists willing to try something that had never been attempted on this scale.

A Species Trapped on a Remote Island

The black robin is endemic to the Chatham Islands, meaning it occurs naturally nowhere else on Earth.

The Chatham Islands are an isolated archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, far from New Zealand’s mainland. Their isolation helped many unique species evolve, but it also left those species vulnerable when introduced predators arrived.

Rats and cats were among the introduced mammals that devastated native wildlife after human settlement. According to New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, by around 1900 black robins had disappeared from almost everywhere except Little Mangere Island.

For decades, the species survived in a tiny fragment of its former range.

By the 1970s, the situation had become desperate.

Wildlife officers found only 18 black robins in 1972. Four years later, only seven remained. Those birds were moved from Little Mangere to Mangere Island, where conservationists had already been restoring vegetation to create better habitat.

The move was intended to give the birds a better chance.

But the population continued to decline.

By 1980, only five black robins remained.

And the demographic situation was even more frightening than the raw number suggested.

Only one female was known to be fertile.

That female was Old Blue.

Her existence would ultimately become one of the most important facts in the history of the species.

Old Blue: The Female Who Became the Future of a Species

Old Blue was not simply another member of a critically endangered population.

She was the last breeding female.

Her reproductive success would determine whether the black robin survived at all.

According to the Department of Conservation, every black robin alive today descends from Old Blue. She eventually lived to about 14 years old, making her one of the longest-lived black robins known.

But simply protecting Old Blue was not enough.

A single female could only lay so many eggs and raise so many chicks.

Conservationists therefore had to find a way to increase the number of young produced without exhausting the bird or compromising the survival of her offspring.

That required an unconventional strategy.

And it would transform black robin conservation forever.

The Extraordinary Cross-Fostering Experiment

The conservation team began manipulating the birds’ breeding cycles.

One of the most important techniques was known as cross-fostering.

The basic idea was surprisingly simple but highly innovative.

When Old Blue and other black robins laid eggs, conservationists could remove some of those eggs and place them into the nests of another suitable bird species.

In this case, Chatham Island tomtits became foster parents.