🔗 Share this article

The annual bird competition functions as a refreshing antidote to an increasingly bleak news cycle, honoring Australia's remarkable and unique native wildlife. However, it's additionally a contest of statistics.

Taking history as a guide, more than 300,000 votes are expected to be lodged over nine days, starting at 6am AEDT on 6 October, as people from across the globe select their preferred Australian bird species for 2025.

The victorious aviator (assuming it is a flying species – probable, 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 boasts approximately 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 consider.

A growing number of bird species are not in a great way. The national authorities lists 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 been pushed to extinction, mostly in the decades after European colonisation.

Most pressingly, there are 18 bird species listed as severely threatened, placing them just one step from extinction. 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.

It is hoped 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 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 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 assign to their preferred bird that is still in the competition.

At the end of each day, the five birds that received the fewest votes will be removed from the race. The last round of voting will occur on Tuesday the 14th, when just 10 birds will remain. That voting ends 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 driving force behind bird of the year – the coming days 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 highly enjoyable. Time to get voting.