The Avian Popularity Competition that has a Deeper Purpose

The annual bird competition serves as a refreshing antidote to an ever more bleak news cycle, celebrating Australia's extraordinary and unique native wildlife. But, it's also a numbers game.

Using history as a guide, over 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 aviator (assuming it is a bird that flies – likely, but not guaranteed) will be elevated together with previous winners: the Australian magpie, the black-throated finch, the superb fairy-wren and 2023’s champion, the swift parrot.

Australia has about 850 native bird species. Almost half are absent anywhere else on the planet. That number has been whittled down 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 increasing number of bird species are not in a great way. The federal government classifies 164 as threatened. According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, 11 birds have been included 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 extinction. They encompass 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 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 later this year.

Why this matters, and what birds signify to people, has been the focus of a wave of introductory stories, photos, videos and artwork in recent weeks. There’s plenty more to come.

But, for now, the number to concentrate on is: one.

Each day, everyone has one vote to allocate to their preferred bird that is still in the competition.

At the end of each day, the five birds that garnered the fewest votes will be eliminated from the race. The final round of voting will occur on Tuesday the 14th, when just 10 birds will remain. That voting closes at 6am on Wednesday the 15th.

The winner will be announced in a online broadcast at midday the next day.

In the words of BirdLife Australia’s Sean Dooley – a driving force 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 will also be plenty of fun. Time to get voting.