The Bird Popularity Contest that has a More Profound Mission
The annual bird competition serves as a refreshing remedy to an ever more grim news cycle, honoring Australia's extraordinary and distinctive native wildlife. But, it's also a numbers game.
Using past results as a guide, more than 300,000 votes could be lodged over a nine-day period, beginning at 6am AEDT on 6 October, as participants from across the globe vote for their favourite Australian bird species for 2025.
The winning bird (assuming it is a flying species – probable, but not guaranteed) will be elevated alongside prior winners: the Australian magpie, the black-throated finch, the superb fairy-wren and last year's winner, the swift parrot.
Australia boasts approximately 850 native bird species. Almost half are not found anywhere else on the planet. That total has been narrowed to 50 for this year’s voting, based in part on numerous reader nominations.
While you are thinking about how to vote, here are some other numbers to ponder.
A growing number of bird species are facing challenges. The national authorities lists 164 as threatened. According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, 11 birds have been included to the list since the previous bird of the year vote two years ago.
At least 22 species and subspecies have been pushed to extinction, mostly in the decades after European colonisation.
Most pressingly, there are 18 bird species classified as severely threatened, placing them a single step from lost. They encompass some bird-of-the-year perennials: the regent honeyeater, the far eastern curlew and the swift and orange-bellied parrots. They may soon be joined by others, such as Baudin’s black cockatoo.
Hopefully that what to do to save them – and the approximately 2,000 other species and ecological communities considered at risk – will be at the heart of the government’s work to revise the national nature law in the coming months.
Why this matters, and what birds mean to people, has been the focus of a series of scene-setting stories, photos, videos and artwork over the past three weeks. There’s much more to come.
But, for now, the number to concentrate on is: one.
Each day, everyone has one vote to allocate to their favourite bird that remains in the competition.
At the end of each day, the five birds that received the least votes will be removed from the race. The final round of voting will occur on Tuesday the 14th, when only 10 birds will remain. That voting closes at 6am on Wednesday the 15th.
The winner will be announced in a live stream at midday the next day.
In the words of BirdLife Australia’s Sean Dooley – a key organizer behind bird of the year – the next week-and-a-bit will be a “joyous celebration of the birds that save us” and a “call to action for us to work harder to save them”.
It should also be highly enjoyable. Time to get voting.
