The counting team are Miskelly's fellow members of the ornithological society, a team which is getting older, he said.
"We have lost quite a few [people] because their hearing or physical fitness has declined.
"So we are specifically trying to train up a new generation."
Given the training process was one-on-one, Miskelly said the selection of new trainees was fairly targeted with priority given to the Kāpiti Island landowners and rangatahi of Ngāti Toa.
A long-time bird counter is paired up with a new recruit and the pair will log five-minute counts at some of the 64 sites across the island.
Every bird seen or heard in the five-minute timeframe must be recorded.
One of the key skills of bird counting is the ability to identify every call heard.
For someone who has spent their life studying birds, Miskelly said it was not as hard as it sounds.
"You'll be familiar with playing around on Spotify and hearing a couple of chords of a song and you know what it is.
"Human brains are actually very good at identifying sound, but most people tune out the natural environment and think it is all too confusing."
He said Kāpiti Island had about 20 different bird species with a range of calls to identify.
Technical administrator for the banding office at the Department of Conservation (DoC) Annemieke Hendriks has spent her youth studying the natural environment and volunteering at various bird sanctuaries.
She described herself as that kid who always loved museums and had "a pretty big interest in outdoorsy and engaging species".
The Victoria University alumni has a masters in ecology and biodiversity, and has worked with kakapo, the native Archey's frog and over lockdown spent time in the depths of Fiordland working for DoC.
Hendriks said volunteer bird banding with Miskelly on Mana Island was her audition to be a counter.
"He picked up on the fact that I am one of those really keen on bird nature weirdos," she said.
Part of the challenge of bird counting was recognising the nuances in calls between birds of the same species.
She likened it to humans who do not say sentences with the same words in the same order every time.
But before identifying calls she said you needed to be sure you could hear them.
A good litmus test was the rifleman or tīī-pounamu.
"As you get older you lose that range of being able to hear.
"Colin thinks the rifleman probably has a higher call and what we hear is a lower resonance."
Hendriks said she was soaking up as much information as she could from her trainers who were all extremely knowledgeable, but quite a bit older.
"It is something that I think about from time to time because there is such a wealth of expertise and knowledge and at some point that needs to be transferred otherwise the next lot need to start from scratch."
Like Hendriks, second year veterinary student Kate Pickard has been interested in conservation from a young age.
She has been bird banding since she was 7, and found having small fingers was an advantage when dealing with tiny birds like the gray warbler.
Her parents met while working at DoC, so she always knew she was destined for the conservation realm.
"When I was little I was always the weird kid at school obsessed with insects, birds, and creepy crawlies," Pickard said.
Miskelly said Pickard's proficiency as a bird handler was unusual for someone so young.
He said it demonstrated her investment in conservation so she was specifically shoulder-tapped for the training.
Pickard said she learned a lot on her last excursion to Kāpiti Island.
"Bird songs are just incredible.
"All the birds are quite separate from other birds of their species.
"Out on Kāpiti in particular they can develop their own sort of dialects."
She said getting younger people involved in such projects was vital to maintaining knowledge in the field.
"A lot of people I know in the bird world are beginning to retire now and it's kind of scary.
"They're such knowledgeable people but they're not as involved in projects."
Counting could be physically demanding and she feared the knowledge was slowly getting lost.
"It's not an easy hike up to the top of Kāpiti Island and back.
"There is a need to get young fit people involved to do it."
Pickard said she was looking forward to the next count.
Between now and the end of 2023 the team will be carrying out 10 more on Kāpiti Island.
