🔗 Share this article

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

Using past results as a guide, more than 300,000 votes are expected to be cast over nine days, beginning at 6am AEDT on 6 October, as participants from across the globe vote for their favourite Australian bird species for 2025.

The victorious bird (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 last year's winner, the swift parrot.

Australia boasts approximately 850 native bird species. Almost half are absent anywhere else on the planet. That total has been whittled down to 50 for this year’s voting, partly based on numerous reader nominations.

While you are considering how to vote, here are some other 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 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, mostly in the decades after European colonisation.

Most urgently, there are 18 bird species listed as severely threatened, placing them a single 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 accompanied by others, such as Baudin’s black cockatoo.

It is hoped that actions needed to save them – and the approximately 2,000 other species and ecological communities considered at risk – will be at the centre 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 central theme of a wave of introductory stories, photos, videos and artwork over the past three weeks. There’s plenty more to come.

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

Each day, everyone has one vote to assign to their preferred bird that remains in the competition.

At the end of each day, the five birds that received the least votes will be removed from the race. The final round of voting will take place on Tuesday the 14th, when just 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 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 “joyous 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.