Bird Sighting Binoculars

Understanding Cookies with NZ Native Birds

Use the virtual pair of binoculars below with the Carried Away With Cookies activity to see how many native manu you can spot. This tools lets you take a look, learn a bit about them, and even listen to each bird’s call! Some birds show up a lot, and some are tricky to find, depending on how well each species is doing in the wild.

Tap Look For A Bird to have a go...but there’s a catch! You only get 5 sightings a day. A cookie named bino_data is keeping count, and once you’ve used your 5 chances, you must wait until tomorrow for the cookie to reset. Tap Peek Inside at any point to see the actual cookie your browser is holding and learn more about how it remembers you!

Discussion Questions

Here are some questions to consider while you’re using this tool. When you’re ready, share and discuss your thoughts either in your group or as a class.

1. Who is actually remembered?

Sure, you’re the one using the tool on this webpage, but is the 5-sighting cap really assigned to you, personally? What would happen if you switched devices and visited this page again on a different computer? What would the next person find if they visited this page on the same device?

So what is the webpage actually remembering when you visit? Is it you, your browser, your device, something else? What might be different if a website could recognise you specifically, like with a login account you can access no matter what device or browser you used?

2. What does one cookie actually know?

This tool shows you exactly what the website knows from the bino_data cookie: a name, a number, and a time. That’s it. It doesn’t know which birds you looked at, how long you looked, or why you kept clicking. But could it track those things, too?

Most websites don’t run on just one cookie, they run on dozens, often sorted into the categories like Necessary, Functional, Improvement, Tracking, and more. Each cookie on its own may be a plain note, but what kinds of patterns do you think could appear once different types of cookies are repeated across lots of sites, many of them working together?

3. What does incognito/private browsing actually do?

Once you’ve tested this tool in incognito/private browsing mode, think about what happened. What changed? What didn’t? What does that tell you about what’s going on?

In incognito/private browsing mode, nothing is hidden, nothing is blocked, nothing is deleted. Cookies still work in the same way, but your browser is given a brand new, empty box to keep a new set of cookies in that gets emptied the moment you close the session. So what what kind of privacy is it actually giving you?

For these, work out whether incognito/private browsing mode actually hides it:

  • Your browsing history showing up later on this computer

  • A school or library internet filter blocking a site

  • A website’s own server recording that someone visited today

  • A file you downloaded, sitting in your downloads folder

  • Someone glancing at your screen while you’re using it

4. Who benefits?

The 5-sighting cap on this tool is useful for learning about cookies, but it’s unusual because nobody really gains anything when you hit the limit. Most real limits exist because they lead to actions that benefit someone.

Think of a real site or app with a limit. Who put that limit there? What happens when you hit the limit, who benefits from those next steps, and what do they gain? Some limits may genuinely help you, like by protecting your time or money, while others may exist purely to move you to benefit someone else. How can you tell the difference?

For these, work out who the limit is designed to benefit and what they get out of it:

  • A mobile game that gives you 5 lives, then makes you wait or pay to keep playing

  • A banking app that locks your card after 5 wrong PIN attempts

  • A news website that lets you read 3 free articles a month before asking you to subscribe

  • A password reset link that expires after 15 minutes

  • A streaming service free trial that ends after 7 days

5. Who’s keeping track?

This tool is unusually honest. Peek Inside shows you the actual cookie, in plain text, with an explanation of how it works. But how would you find out what other websites are storing about you? You may have seen what looks like evidence of websites remembering things about you, like familiar ads, video recommendations, and more. What do you think is going on in there?

Have you ever read over the cookie consent options when you first land on a site? Do you check and adjust your browser settings? How about reading over a privacy policy before clicking accept? With what you know about cookies now, how can you be more informed and responsible about what websites know about you?

Note: Not Just for Bird Watching

This tool uses one simple example, a 5-sighting limit, to show something that happens commonly and even invisibly across the internet every day. Login accounts, shopping carts, paywalls, browsing history, all of it runs on the same basic idea as the cookie you just peeked inside. Once you know what to look for, you'll start noticing its impacts everywhere, and hopefully you’re one step closer to safe and responsible online habits. Kia haumaru!

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If you hear a mix of clicks, croaks, and bell-like notes coming from overhead, look up! It’s probably a tūī!

They have dark feathers that flash green and blue in the light, and on their neck they have two distinctive curls of white feathers that look a bit like a fancy collar.

Tūī feed on nectar, and you’ll often see one chasing other birds away to protect their yummy flowers.

One thing that makes tūī special isn’t just how they look or sound, it’s also that seeing one at all used to be far less certain. Their numbers dropped hard, and their comeback in many towns and cities across Aotearoa is something people have worked hard to make happen.

{cite_img} Matai Moorfield, Creative Commons

{cite_audio} Department of Conservation (NZ), Crown Copyright

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Pīwakawaka are small, restless, and hard to miss once you know what to look and to listen for.

These flying fidgeters rarely sit still for long, known to flick their wide, fan-shaped tail open and shut in display before darting around through the air. Their call is a thin, cheerful “cheet, cheet, cheet.”

Their constant movement isn’t nervous energy, it’s actually strategy. Pīwakawaka often follow bigger animals, or even people, through the bush, snapping up insects that get stirred up along the way.

Pīwakawaka are found almost everywhere in Aotearoa, from native forest to suburban backyards, which makes them one of the easier birds on this list to spot without needing to go far at all.

{cite_img} Mandy Hague, Copyright

{cite_audio} Department of Conservation (NZ), Crown Copyright

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Pūkeko are tall, deep blue-purple birds with long orange-red legs, a red beak-shield, and a habit of striding through paddocks and wetlands like they own the place.

They’re strong walkers and swimmers, and when startled, they’ll flick their tail to show a flash of white feathers underneath, which may work as a signal to others nearby.

Pūkeko usually live in small groups and will take turns keeping watch while others feed.

These hard-to-miss manu are common and widespread across the country, found in wet paddocks, roadside ditches, and wetlands.

{cite_img} Shellie Evans, Copyright

{cite_audio} Meena Haribal (XC958031), Creative Commons

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Kererū are big, solid birds, and probably the largest pigeon you’ll ever will ever see.

They have a white belly, a green-and-bronze sheen across their back, and a flight so noisy you’ll often hear the whoosh of their wings before you see them.

Kererū are important for native forests, able to swallow large fruit whole that smaller birds can't manage, then carry the seeds elsewhere and drop them, helping trees like karaka, pūriri, and taraire spread.

Kererū can look almost clumsy in flight, especially after eating a big feed of fruit, but that same size is exactly what makes them such useful seed-carriers for the forest.

{cite_img} Matai Moorfield, Creative Commons

{cite_audio} Department of Conservation (NZ), Crown Copyright

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Ruru are one bird that you’re far more likely to hear than see. Come nightfall, listen for a soft, two-note call that sounds to many like its English name, “more-pork”, echoing across the dark.

Ruru are native owls, with big yellow eyes built for hunting in low light and soft-edged feathers that let them fly almost silently.

During the day they roost quietly in trees, often unnoticed, before becoming active again after dark to hunt insects, small birds, and even mice.

In many Māori traditions, ruru are seen as watchful guardians, a reputation that fits a bird most people only ever meet by sound.

{cite_img} Julie Mudge, Copyright

{cite_audio} Department of Conservation (NZ), Crown Copyright

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Takahē are large, flightless birds, related to pūkeko but heavier-built, with the same blue-purple body and a big red beak suited to grazing on tussock grass.

Unlike their much more common look-alikes, takahē are much more rare in the wild. In fact, it’s a marvel that there are still takahē around today.

Their story truly remarkable. Takahē were thought to be extinct, completely gone, with no confirmed sightings for 50 years, until a small population was found alive in a remote Fiordland valley in 1948.

Since that rediscovery, careful breeding and predator control have slowly grown their numbers, though takahē remain very rare and are still only found in a small number of protected places.

{cite_img} Stephen Belcher, Copyright

{cite_audio} Department of Conservation (NZ), Crown Copyright

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Kea are large, olive-green parrots with a flash of orange under their wings, found only in the mountains of the South Island.

They are the only alpine parrot in the world. They’re known for being sharp and endlessly curious, often investigating backpacks, boots, or picking eagerly at car windscreen wipers just to see what happens.

Their intelligence and curiosity mean kea can solve problems most birds can’t, working together or even using objects to get at food. It also gets them into trouble, since nosing around roads, buildings, and rubbish can put them at risk.

Their knack for getting into trouble combined with the threat of introduced predators has pushed kea numbers down, making every encounter with one in the wild worth respecting and admiring.

{cite_img} James Reardon, Copyright

{cite_audio} Department of Conservation (NZ), Crown Copyright

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Kākāpō are a moss-green bird that moves through the forest at night, using strong legs to climb and walk rather than wings to fly. They’re the only flightless parrot in the world, and among the heaviest parrots, too.

Male kākāpō make a deep booming call that can carry for kilometres, or screech out a chorus of “ching, ching, ching”, to call out across valleys during breeding season in the hope of attracting a mate.

There are only 235 kākāpō left in the world, living exclusively on protected, predator-free offshore islands and mainland sanctuaries. With such a small population, every kākāpō alive today is known individually, tracked and named by the people working to protect the species.

Every single kākāpō chick that hatches matters enormously to the future of this bird species.

{cite_img} Jake Osborne, Department of Conservation (NZ)

{cite_audio} Department of Conservation (NZ), Crown Copyright

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