An Bird Favor Contest with a Deeper Mission

The annual bird competition acts as a welcome antidote to an ever more bleak news cycle, celebrating Australia's remarkable and distinctive native wildlife. But, it's additionally a contest of statistics.

Using history as a guide, over 300,000 votes could be lodged over nine days, starting at 6am AEDT on 6 October, as people from around the world vote for their favourite Australian bird species for 2025.

The victorious bird (assuming it is a flying species – probable, but not certain) will be honored together with previous winners: the Australian magpie, the black-throated finch, the superb fairy-wren and 2023’s champion, the swift parrot.

Australia boasts approximately 850 native bird species. Nearly half are not found anywhere else on the planet. That number has been narrowed to 50 for this year’s voting, based in part on thousands of reader nominations.

While you are thinking about how to vote, here are some additional numbers to consider.

A increasing number of bird species are not in a great way. The national authorities lists 164 as endangered. According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, 11 birds have been added to the list since the last bird of the year vote two years ago.

At least 22 species and subspecies have already been driven to extinction, primarily in the years after European colonisation.

Most urgently, there are 18 bird species listed as severely threatened, placing them just one step from lost. They include some bird-of-the-year perennials: the regent honeyeater, the far eastern curlew and the swift and orange-bellied parrots. They may shortly 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 deemed at risk – will be at the heart of the government’s work to overhaul the national nature law in the coming months.

Why this is important, and what birds signify to people, has been the focus of a wave 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 a single vote to allocate to their favourite bird that is still in the competition.

At the end of each day, the five birds that garnered the least votes will be eliminated from the race. The last round of voting will take place on Tuesday the 14th, when only 10 birds will be left. That voting closes at 6am on Wednesday the 15th.

The winner will be revealed in a online broadcast at midday the following day.

In the words of BirdLife Australia’s Sean Dooley – a driving force behind bird of the year – the coming days will be a “happy celebration of the birds that save us” and a “rallying cry for us to work harder to save them”.

It will also be highly enjoyable. Time to get voting.