Farewell for now
And with the swift parrot taking the title of 2023 Australian bird of the year, our 2023 poll has come to a close.
Thank you for manning your avian campaigns, casting your votes and tuning in. See you back here in two years for the next bird of the year poll.
We leave you now with some reading …
Lisa Cox’s coverage of the critically endangered swift parrot’s narrow win:
Sean Dooley’s reflections on Australian’s connections to our birds:
And BirdLife Australia’s Aussie Bird Count, a citizen science event curating a snapshot of our avian landscape:
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Bird of the year 2023 updated poll
The bird of the year 2023 poll has been updated with the final votes and rankings. You can take a look here:
And give CSIRO’s playlist of music to birdwatch to a listen in the meantime – looks like there are some tunes for both the celebrating and the crestfallen (though I haven’t spotted any Taylor Swift numbers for team swift parrot yet):
Fun fact: our @atlaslivingaust has more than 20,600 records of swift parrots, with records dating back to the 1860s!
— CSIRO (@CSIRO) October 6, 2023
If the hotly-contested vote has whetted your appetite for birdwatching, we've got the perfect playlist for you. 👇 https://t.co/guWDD8OrwD
Team tawny frogmouth are already reconvening after a disappointing loss – sights are set on the next poll.
Bridesmaids again!!!
— Richard McLellan / kaarnka (raven/crow - Martu) (@RichardMcLellan) October 6, 2023
Vote 1️⃣ for the Tawny Frogmouth for the 2024 Australian Bird of the Year.
Voting opens in 11 months.#TawnyFrogmouth 4 #BirdOfTheYear#Ngurlunga #YamajiCountry pic.twitter.com/GTXlCfDZdF
Meanwhile, other tawny frogmouth fans are taking a moment for a can of tawny “grogmouth” beer.
“We’re big tawny frogmouth fans in the northern beaches of Sydney (even when our local resident Tammy is keeping us from our sleep),” Duncan Clarke says.
“What better way to commiserate the tawny not taking out the big prize (again!) than with a few cans.”
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Looks like Australia’s national science agency are Swifties:
The Swifties have prevailed! 🐦
— CSIRO (@CSIRO) October 6, 2023
After a late surge, the critically endangered swift parrot (Lathamus discolor) has been crowned the @BirdlifeOz/@GuardianAus Bird of the Year.
📷 | Ben Johnson via @inaturalist/@atlaslivingaust pic.twitter.com/79LLh2oaVo
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Shoutout to the cockatoo running this blog – what a good sport.
Working hard to bring you the Bird of the Year result for Guardian Australia @gabriellecj pic.twitter.com/pRjy1KRtH9
— david munk (@davidmunk) October 6, 2023
Swift parrots need habitat protection, conservationists say
The swift parrot’s victory puts a spotlight on endangered species’ need for habitat protection. And with plans for land clearing near a NSW mine where critically endangered swift parrots have been found, advocates point to a failure in Australia’s environmental laws.
Read more from Lisa Cox’s reporting here:
The detection of an increased number of critically endangered swift parrots near a coal mine in north-west New South Wales highlights flaws in Australia’s national environmental laws, advocates say.
Conservationists called on the federal government to protect remaining habitat for the swift parrot in the Leard state forest from further clearing.
It comes after winter surveys conducted by mining company Idemitsu observed 21 parrots in an area of the forest near its Boggabri coal mine site, according to meeting minutes. A similar number of parrots (20) were detected the previous year, up from 13 in 2012.
The Lock the Gate Alliance and BirdLife Australia said they were concerned further clearing for mining was planned in the Leard state forest, despite the known presence of swift parrots in the area.
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Who backed the winners?
Congratulations to trending team swift parrot, who overtook the tawny frogmouth after a neck-and neck-stretch in the final days of voting. And commiserations to team tawny frogmouth, who has been made runner up for the third year. (Best of luck next time guys.)
The swift parrot didn’t need the endorsement of Taylor Swift after all.
But here is a look at the cheer teams for 2023’s top two birds, courtesy of Amy Remeikis (who wrote this before the winner was announced):
The tawny frogmouth is the bird of winners – at least politically.
Three of the MPs who chose the introverted icons as their bird of the year also happen to be among those who took blue ribbon seats off Liberal MPs.
Labor’s Mary Doyle and Michelle Ananda-Rajah and the Kooyong independent, Dr Monique Ryan, all nominate the socially awkward hide-and-seek champion as their favourite bird, along with Labor’s Josh Burns, who has so far managed to hold off a strong Greens challenge for his seat.
A perennial runner-up, the tawny frogmouth remains in the top three of the Australian bird of the year poll, but it is facing a strong challenge from the swift parrot.
I had to click on Swift Parrot that's trending, and it seems the Swift Parrot has a first class social media campaign going.
— Dave Jones (@eevblog) October 5, 2023
Screw the Tawny Frogmouth, I'm Team Swift parrot. https://t.co/uwBoyHwfLj pic.twitter.com/kxsWaHLDKs
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Voted for bird of the year? Now make your avian affection really count
Sean Dooley of BirdLife Australia has a plea for you avid birdwatchers (“twitchers”) – read on below.
Recently, I visited Tokyo for the first time and was immediately struck by the bird calls I would hear at each train station. In an urban conglomeration of 37 million people, it was a pleasant surprise to think birds were thriving. It wasn’t until I heard the distinctive two-note call of a cuckoo that I became suspicious.
It was then that I discovered that they piped in bird sounds to help visually impaired people navigate around the extremely busy stations. In the vast megapolis itself there were very few birds. With the lack of rubbish on the streets, there were hardly even any pigeons or crows compared with Australian cities.
The lack of genuine background bird noise began to unnerve me. Several recent studies have shown how important birdsong can be for our physical and mental health. Having grown up with the sounds of magpies carolling and wattlebirds squawking, the most foreign aspect of Japan for me was not the language, culture or food, but the avian silence.
This was brought home when I recorded a greater number of bird species when transferring between the international and domestic terminals at Brisbane airport on returning home than I would for an entire day in Tokyo. And boy, were they loud – rainbow lorikeets, noisy miners and figbirds all yammering away. They may have been “songless bright birds” to Adam Lindsay Gordon and his colonial mates, but the inner joy this Aussie soundtrack brings is incalculable.
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How did voting play out?
Here’s the round-up from myself and the rest of the data team, who run the technical side of the bird of the year (particularly my colleague Andy Ball who has put in an amazing effort to ensure the poll runs smoothly and is not derailed by bots!).
Total votes over the whole poll numbered just over 321,000, with just over 55,000 votes cast in the final round.
As foreshadowed in our earlier analysis, the swift parrot was able to surge from 10th place in round 4 to take out the top spot in the final round:
Here’s how the final round of voting played out in real time (I’ve started the cumulative vote count from 6am, even though voting was open from 12:01am, as not all birds were on the board before then):
Click here if you’re having trouble seeing the animated chart
As you can see, the tawny frogmouth was in the lead initially, only to be overtaken by the swift parrot just after 10am. The gang-gang cockatoo was solidly in third place for the entire time, but never looked like it could unseat either of the top two.
Here’s how the final votes for each bird landed:
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Critically endangered swift parrot is 2023 bird of the year
The critically endangered swift parrot is the 2023 Australian bird of the year.
Voters in the Guardian/BirdLife Australia biennial poll have used this year’s competition to send a message that they want to see the habitat of the world’s fastest parrot protected.
After ranking around 10th place during the early days of voting, the swift parrot emerged as a frontrunner this week amid a grassroots campaign to raise awareness about its plight.
In the final 24 hours of polling, 11,171 votes were cast for the swift parrot, placing it 442 points ahead of the tawny frogmouth, which received 10,729 votes.
Read more from Lisa Cox here:
The winner is in
And the swift parrot has taken swift flight to victory.
Less than ten minutes to go until the 2023 Australian bird of the year is announced.
Which bird do you think will take the crown?
A moment of remembrance for the fallen pelican
I would like to offer my personal condolences to team pelican. Your loss has not been taken lightly by the Guardian Australia office.
We wish you comfort and support during this difficult time. (See our resident pelican’s reaction below in this Instagram reel)
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Vote rigging attempts thwarted
Voting this year has seen some controversy. Guardian Australia thwarted two attempts at automated vote rigging in the 2023 poll – for the pied currawong and brush-turkey.
Andy Ball, our chief of bird of the year voter security, reports that the attempts at fraudulent voting were detected and neutralised. But this isn’t the first time this has happened. Like the 2019 cockatoo incident and the 2017 powerful owl scandal, these bids involved a large volume of votes from the same source.
Neither species ended up making it to the top ten (though I do love crossing paths with brush-turkeys on random walks).
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‘Watching extinction in real time’: conservationists losing hope for Australia’s swift parrot if logging continues
Conservationists have predicted there will be less than 100 swift parrots by 2031 if logging continues, as the rate of decline in population grows faster. They say we are “watching extinction in real time”.
Giselle Owens is a conservation scientist. She says the swift parrots are “really cute”.
They are very chatty. When they’re around you know they’re around. They make this little flying call – it goes ‘pip, pip, pip, pip’.
So fascinated was Owens by the critically endangered swift parrot, she is writing a PhD on the bird, which is one of just two migratory parrot species in the world, and the farthest flying. Maybe she’s voted for them in the bird of the year poll too?
You can learn more about the swift parrot, and the critically endangered state of their species, here:
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Australian birds poster
To our fellow bird lovers, we have a gift for you … an A3 poster featuring some of our best-loved avian species.
Artist Georgia Angus has drawn 23 birds from this year’s poll. Use it as a desktop background, print it as an A3 poster, a tea towel or a tote bag – the choice is yours!
You can download the poster as a print-ready PDF or JPEG file.
Team tawny frogmouth have been given a sign of hope in the form of song!
@At_Raf_ One of our local frogmouths serenaded me for hours last night, so I am hoping it is a sign! (Or it may have simply been reminding me to change the batteries in the smoke alarms, given its song…)
— Ms D 🌈 (@msdwrites) October 6, 2023
Perhaps you will be singing in celebration of a victory soon? Only time will tell … forty minutes until the winner is revealed!
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Who is in the running?
Let’s recap our top ten finalists (with some help from BirdLife Australia’s Sean Dooley):
The Spotted pardalote is a tiny little thing. Gorgeous little jewels of birds that feed among the gum trees but nest in tunnels they excavate in sandy ground, they have a sweet but surprisingly loud call that some think sounds as though they’re saying “Miss Piggy”.
Carnaby’s black-cockatoo are the rockstars of the bird world. Once a familiar site wheeling across Perth’s skyline, these strutting black cockies with their rock-star quiff are in serious trouble. BirdLife Australia’s annual “Great Cocky Count” shows their numbers are still declining due to clearing from urbanisation, forestry and mining, an indictment on our failing nature laws.
It’s hard to imagine how the Gouldian finch (impossibly beautifully little birds) survived in the harsh outback. They almost didn’t, due to trapping, disease and inappropriate grazing and fire regimes. But, just when they’ve been making a comeback thanks to a return in some areas to traditional burning practices, along comes the threat of large-scale fracking in the Top End.
For my Swifties, everything about the vibrant green Swift parrot is swift – their rapid flight, the way they migrate across the bass strait to visit the winter-flowering eucalyptus woodlands of the mainland and – sadly – their rush towards extinction, due largely to destruction of their habitat by native forest logging.
The laughing kookaburra probably make the best-known Australian sound. Their laughter is not for comic effect, but to let other kookaburras know they had better keep out – this turf’s occupied! Much loved in eastern Australia, but considered a pest where it has been introduced into WA and Tasmania.
Reaching speeds of up to 300km/h when diving after prey, the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on the planet. Thousands of viewers from around the world are enthralled every year by the high-stakes soap opera over the skies of central Melbourne, where a nest cam watches over a pair that lay eggs on a skyscraper ledge annually.
Is it an owl? No. Is it a muppet? Possibly. Is this the year the tawny frogmouth (the runner up of the previous two bird of the year votes) will finally break through to victory? Only time will tell for what has been dubbed the world’s most Instagrammable bird by researchers in 2021.
Join the gang-gang cockatoo gang! Our smallest, possibly cutest cockatoo, with a call that sounds like a creaky door being opened, these much-loved creatures are the bird emblem of Canberra. They are declining across their range due to native forest logging, and the black summer bushfires had a huge impact, driving these birds towards a listing on the endangered list.
The willie wagtail was Australia’s favourite bird in the first ever national bird vote in 1908. What’s not to like about this incessantly active little bird that will go to any length to defend the eggs and young in its delicate, cup-shaped nest?
And the Australian magpie is a MAGnetic candidate … Despite their fearsome reputation for swooping, the magpie was the winner of the inaugural bird of the year vote. We love their beautiful warbling, and many of us regularly feed a pair in our backyards. And the swooping? Well, they’re just protecting their babies when they do it.
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Welcome to the bird of the year announcement live blog
The time has come… The results of Australia’s most heated debate are in.
Today we count down to 12.30pm AEDT to announce the winner of the 2023 Australian bird of the year poll.
I’m Rafqa Touma and I’ll be with you for the next couple of hours as we recap some of this year’s high points in the bird of the year vote, reveal the winner and talk about the result and what raising awareness of Australia’s amazing bird life can achieve.
Thanks for joining us!
If you want to share your thoughts and feelings, Tweet me @At_Raf_ or email me at rafqa.touma@theguardian.com
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