The Bird Favor Competition with a More Profound Purpose

Bird of the Year acts as a refreshing antidote to an ever more bleak news cycle, celebrating Australia's remarkable and unique native wildlife. But, it's also a contest of statistics.

Using past results as a indicator, more than 300,000 votes are expected to be lodged over a nine-day period, starting at 6am AEDT on 6 October, as participants from across the globe vote for their favourite Australian bird species for 2025.

The winning bird (assuming it is a bird that flies – likely, 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 has about 850 native bird species. Nearly half are absent anywhere else on the planet. That total has been whittled down to 50 for this year’s voting, based in part on thousands of reader nominations.

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

A growing number of bird species are facing challenges. 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 pressingly, there are 18 bird species listed as critically endangered, placing them a single step from lost. They encompass some bird-of-the-year perennials: the regent honeyeater, the far eastern curlew and the swift and orange-bellied parrots. They may soon be joined by others, such as Baudin’s black cockatoo.

Hopefully that what to do 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 later this year.

Why this matters, and what birds mean to people, has been the focus of a series of scene-setting stories, photos, videos and artwork in recent 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 allocate to their favourite bird that remains in the competition.

At the end of each day, the five birds that received the least votes will be eliminated from the race. The last round of voting will occur on Tuesday the 14th, when just 10 birds will be left. That voting ends at 6am on Wednesday the 15th.

The winner will be revealed 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 “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 highly enjoyable. Time to get voting.