Listeners to Radio New Zealand's Morning Report were on tenterhooks. At last, after weeks of intense speculation, the competition winner was to be announced. Would it be the Kereru pigeonA former winner, it is famous for getting drunk on fermented fruit and crash landing in trees.? The Antipodean albatrossA large seabird which ranges as far as Chile.? The answer was no. In fact, the country's bird of the year - chosen by a hefty margin of 3,000 votes - was not a bird at all: it was a long-tailed bat the size of a human thumb.  

The outrage was immediate. "NOOOOOOO!!!!!" exclaimed one Twitter user.  "This will not stand. This election was stolen. The winner can only be Kereru!"

But another was more stoicalCalm or accepting of suffering. Stoicism was a Greek school of philosophy which argued that everything that happened in life was for the best.. "There's really nothing more New Zealand than: (a) having a heated bird of the year comp every year, (b) putting a bat in the comp, which is not a bird but does fly so close enough I guess, (c) everyone voting for the not-bird."

In its 17^th year, the competition is described as the country's most important poll other than its parliamentary elections. The number of votes has soared from 900 in 2005 to 58,000 in 2021.

Each bird has a campaign team, which goes to great lengths to secure victory. Candidates have been promoted with tattoos, Tinder profiles and celebrity endorsements: Stephen Fry spoke up for the kakapoThe only parrot in the world that does not fly. and Bill Bailey for the takaheA flightless bird. For 50 years it was thought to be extinct, before being rediscovered in 1948..

George Hobson from Wellington was just 11 when he became campaign manager for the banded dotterelA type of plover found on the sea shore. in 2015. From unpromising beginnings he has built up an impressive supporter base, including New Zealand's former prime minister Helen Clark.

George prides himself on running a "reasonably fair and straightforward" campaign - but not everyone is so scrupulous. In 2015 two sisters from Auckland registered hundreds of illegal votes for the North Island kokakoA large forest-dwelling songbird which was close to extinction but is now thought to be safe.. In 2017 someone in Christchurch used a random email address generator to lodge 112 votes for the white-faced heron.

Despite the hilarity it creates, the competition has a serious purpose. Organised by a conservation organisation called the Royal Forest & Bird Society, it aims to increase awareness of New Zealand's biodiversity.

Claims that including a bat was simply a PR stunt have been denied by Forest & Bird. "Bats are New Zealand's only native land mammals, and they are classed as nationally critical," explains one of the organisers, Lissy Fehnker-Heather. "They face a lot of the same threats that our native birds do, so this year we thought we'll try and get more people aware of that."

The pekapeka-tou-roa is in fact one of the rarest mammals in the world. The size of a bumblebee when it is born, it is preyed upon by cats, rats, stoats and possumsMarsupials which often live in trees: some can glide from one branch to another.. Habitat loss is a further problem, and the population is now believed to be declining by 5% a year.  

"These kind night flyers get a bad rap from their cousins overseas," declared their campaign manifesto. "A rap which COVID-19 has made worse. A rap they do not deserve... Pekapeka-tou-roa, it's your time to rise up."

Some say, no: bats are nasty, dangerous creatures. Vampire bats do actually suck your blood, which is why scary legends have grown up about them. They also spread disease: one of the most plausible explanations for Covid-19 is that it passed to humans from an animal infected by a bat.

Others argue that bats are wonders of nature. They are the only mammals that can fly, and find their way by echolocation. They help the environment by pollinating flowers, spreading plant seeds through the rainforest and eating lots of insects that would otherwise damage crops.