The public has less than 24 hours to have their say in the 'Bird of the Century' competition.
It comes as US talk show host John Oliver has brought global attention to the contest, which advocates hope will raise awareness of Aotearoa's conservation crisis.
It's fair to say the pūteketeke has never been so famous.
"It's an interesting bird. There's only a thousand of them in New Zealand," Oliver said on his TV show earlier this week.
"So I think it's a fine candidate."
It came as a bit of a shock for zoologist John Darby, who has been researching the native bird for years.
"It just… I mean I think me, and everybody was absolutely gobsmacked," he told Newshub.
Oliver's team contacted Darby and made use of his expertise when they were putting their campaign together.
"I think I'm the only person in the country who has had an ACC claim for being pecked by a grebe [pūteketeke], which went into my thumb joint and got infected."
But he said the pūteketeke is at serious risk of disappearing, with only a couple hundred left in the wild.
"We are in a state of crisis," said Darby regretfully.
"It's very much a signal of how badly we've stuffed up in New Zealand with these issues, especially in terms of predators."
More than 50 species have gone extinct in Aotearoa in the last 800 years - namely due to habitat loss and introduced predators.
The worst predators for native birds are possums, cats, stoats, rats, and ferrets.
The whēkau (laughing owl) hasn't been heard since 1914.
Or the tutukiwi (South Island snipe), which was last photographed in 1964.
And the South Island kōkako hasn't been seen since 2007.
"We are called the extinction capital of the world for good reason," said Lynn Freeman, media manager at Te Reo o te Taiao/Forest and Bird.
She warned that without urgent action, we could lose more of our precious native species.
"It would just take… Even for a species like the kākāpō, which have done so well… It would take some kind of virus to wipe them out," Freeman told Newshub.
The same goes for tara iti (fairy terns), of which there are only 40 remaining in nature.
And there are just 150 kakī (black stilt) left.
Plus, the pukunui (southern New Zealand dotterel) is also on the brink of extinction.
Pukunui campaigner Daniel Cocker, with his laser-dotterel shirt, has loved the bird since he first saw them eight years ago.
"There were about 250 of them then, and that was considered very low numbers," he told Newshub.
"But now I'm 22 and there are 126 of them. So seeing their numbers fall has been heartbreaking."
While campaigners around the motu plead for votes, and John Oliver does his best to win hearts for the pūteketeke, New Zealand's birds could do with more than a little bit of attention.
