🔗 Share this article

The annual bird competition serves as a refreshing remedy to an ever more grim news cycle, honoring Australia's extraordinary and unique native wildlife. But, it's additionally a contest of statistics.

Using past results as a indicator, more than 300,000 votes could be cast over nine days, starting at 6am AEDT on 6 October, as participants from around the world vote for their preferred Australian bird species for 2025.

The victorious bird (assuming it is a bird that flies – probable, but not certain) will be elevated 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 numerous reader nominations.

While you are considering how to vote, here are some other numbers to consider.

A growing number of bird species are not in a great way. The federal government lists 164 as threatened. 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 been pushed 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 shortly be joined 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 deemed at risk – will be at the heart of the government’s work to revise the national nature law in the coming months.

Why this matters, and what birds mean to people, has already been the central theme of a wave of scene-setting stories, photos, videos and artwork over the past three weeks. There’s plenty more to come.

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

Each day, everyone has a single vote to assign to their favourite 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 final round of voting will take place on Tuesday the 14th, when just 10 birds will remain. That voting ends at 6am on Wednesday the 15th.

The winner will be revealed in a live stream at midday the following 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 “joyous celebration of the birds that save us” and a “rallying cry for us to work harder to save them”.

It will also be plenty of fun. Time to get voting.