When the hoiho won the Bird of the Year Te Manu Rongonui o te Tau in 2019, Marlon Williams, no less, wrote a song about the creature, also known as the yellow-eyed penguin. “Let’s go, hoiho, there’s no stopping you now…” he sang, somewhat hopefully.

The shy endangered seabird has taken the title again this year, making it the avian popularity contest’s second two-time winner alongside the equally flightless and endangered kākāpō. The hoiho won with 6328 of the 52,000-plus votes cast in the poll, run by Forest and Bird.

It won in 2019 with rather fewer votes than it got this year. And it won this time with rather fewer hoiho. According to Forest and Bird, in 2018/19 there were about 225 breeding pairs on mainland Aotearoa and Stewart Island/Rakiura. Now, that’s down to 130 breeding pairs out of a global population of 1700 pairs. The rest are the genetically distinct southern population, which breed on the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands and Campbell Island.

Pictured is a hoiho at Surat Bay on the Catlins coast, where there have been efforts to save the hoiho population for decades.