Twitchers, this one’s for you. In an attempt to slow down the extinction of some of our most precious birds, there’s been a huge census of Australian skies – and the results are in. This year, the exotic-looking rainbow lorikeet has been crowned the most popular bird in New South Wales.
Collating data from 60,598 keen bird-watchers from across Australia, the tenth annual Aussie Bird Count recorded a total of more than 3.6 million birds – with 597 different bird species recorded. And while there were significant numbers of noisy miner sightings and sightings of sulphur-crested cockatoos (the second and third most common birds in NSW, respectively), it was the rainbow lorikeet who came out on top.
The first Aussie Bird Count was carried out back in 2014, with a smaller cohort of bird watchers turning their eyes to the sky. Back then, only 9,000 bird counters took part – and while a lot has reportedly changed about our sky-bound residents over the past ten years, the dominance of one particularly colourful creature remains consistent.
“Australia has undergone a lot of changes in the past decade, but the results of BirdLife Australia’s 10th Aussie Bird Count show that two things have remained constant in that time – rainbow lorikeets continue to rule the roost when it comes to counting Australia’s most common birds, and Aussies love to get out and connect with nature in the places where they live,” explains BirdLife Australia spokesperson, Sean Dooley.
Thanks to our thriving bird-watching community here in NSW, our state was responsible for the most birds counted – racking up a count of more than one million birds (1,084,976 in total), followed by Victoria with a count of 846,890 and Queensland, where 872,204 birds were counted. According to the study, rainbow lorikeets are the most common birds here in NSW, as well as in Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, while over in the National Territory, the magpie reigns supreme. According to Dooley, the characteristics consistent in our most successful birds are their bold, aggressive nature and “broad, generalist diet.”
The main concern of BirdLife Australia is the decline of some of our smaller, less aggressive native birds – with sightings of fairy-wrens and silvereyes in decline.
“The information we are collecting from the Aussie Bird Count is confirming what other research is showing about the challenges facing our native birds,” Dooley explains. Insights from the Aussie Bird Count inform BirdLife Australia’s Bird Conservation Strategy, which aims to halt bird extinctions by 2032 and overall bird declines by 2050 – a noble cause, if you ask us.
If you’re keen to join the Aussie Bird Count next year, you can do so by taking twenty minutes to look up to the sky and count the birds you see flying above you. The 2024 Aussie Bird Count will take place from October 14-20, so you’ve got time to brush up on your binocular technique.
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