The Avian Popularity Competition with a More Profound Purpose
Bird of the Year acts as a welcome remedy to an ever more bleak news cycle, honoring Australia's extraordinary and distinctive native wildlife. But, it's additionally a contest of statistics.
Using past results as a guide, over 300,000 votes could be cast over nine days, starting 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 bird that flies – probable, but not certain) will be honored 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 whittled down 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 other numbers to ponder.
A growing number of bird species are facing challenges. The federal government 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 decades after European colonisation.
Most urgently, there are 18 bird species listed as critically endangered, placing them a single step from lost. They include some regular contenders: 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 actions needed to save them – and the roughly 2,000 other species and ecological communities deemed at risk – will be at the centre of the government’s work to overhaul the national nature law in the coming months.
Why this matters, and what birds mean to people, has been the central theme of a wave of introductory stories, photos, videos and artwork in recent 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 fewest votes will be removed from the race. The final round of voting will occur on Tuesday the 14th, when only 10 birds will be left. That voting ends at 6am on Wednesday the 15th.
The winner will be revealed 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 “happy 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.
