Every man, woman and child is being asked to do their duty for kereru and country by noting down when they see one and where.
Dunedin's Tiff Stewart - manager of Forest and Bird's Kiwi Conservation Club - said the count started at the beginning of this week and already 1163 kereru had been spotted nationwide.
Dunedin has typically been a bastion for bird watchers, recording the third-most kereru sightings (377) last year, behind Wellington and Auckland out of a total of 2036.
This year, the city has logged just 87 sightings so far but that could all change over the next two weeks of the survey, and especially this weekend.
Yesterday, at Moore's Bush in the Leith Valley people were asked to come down and spot a kereru and take part in a fun family afternoon.
People do not have to wait though and any sighting of a kereru is being sought - simply log your sighting at www.kererucount.org.nz and say what the bird was doing at the time - for example feeding. Even a lack of a sighting is useful information for those collating the survey.
Ms Stewart said there were several schools and kindergartens that were actively counting the birds but the more watchers they had the better.
Kereru are the only bird that can swallow large berries from trees such as tawa, pūriri, miro and karaka, so they play an important role in the regeneration of native plants - especially broadleaf forests.
