Twitchers, this one’s for you. In an try to decelerate the extinction of a few of our most valuable birds, there’s been an enormous census of Australian skies – and the outcomes are in. This 12 months, the exotic-looking rainbow lorikeet has been topped the preferred chook in New South Wales.
Collating information from 60,598 eager bird-watchers from throughout Australia, the tenth annual Aussie Bird Count recorded a complete of greater than 3.6 million birds – with 597 completely different chook species recorded. And whereas there have been important numbers of noisy miner sightings and sightings of sulphur-crested cockatoos (the second and third commonest birds in NSW, respectively), it was the rainbow lorikeet who got here out on high.
The first Aussie Bird Count was carried out again in 2014, with a smaller cohort of chook watchers turning their eyes to the sky. Back then, solely 9,000 chook counters took half – and whereas quite a bit has reportedly modified about our sky-bound residents over the previous ten years, the dominance of 1 notably vibrant creature stays constant.
“Australia has undergone a lot of changes in the past decade, but the results of BirdLife Australia’s 10th Aussie Bird Count show that two things have remained constant in that time – rainbow lorikeets continue to rule the roost when it comes to counting Australia’s most common birds, and Aussies love to get out and connect with nature in the places where they live,” explains BirdLife Australia spokesperson, Sean Dooley.
Thanks to our thriving bird-watching neighborhood right here in NSW, our state was chargeable for probably the most birds counted – racking up a rely of a couple of million birds (1,084,976 in complete), adopted by Victoria with a rely of 846,890 and Queensland, the place 872,204 birds have been counted. According to the examine, rainbow lorikeets are the most typical birds right here in NSW, in addition to in Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, whereas over within the National Territory, the magpie reigns supreme. According to Dooley, the traits constant in our most profitable birds are their daring, aggressive nature and “broad, generalist diet.”
The primary concern of BirdLife Australia is the decline of a few of our smaller, much less aggressive native birds – with sightings of fairy-wrens and silvereyes in decline.
“The information we are collecting from the Aussie Bird Count is confirming what other research is showing about the challenges facing our native birds,” Dooley explains. Insights from the Aussie Bird Count inform BirdLife Australia’s Bird Conservation Strategy, which goals to halt chook extinctions by 2032 and total chook declines by 2050 – a noble trigger, should you ask us.
If you’re eager to affix the Aussie Bird Count subsequent 12 months, you are able to do so by taking twenty minutes to look as much as the sky and rely the birds you see flying above you. The 2024 Aussie Bird Count will take place from October 14-20, so that you’ve obtained time to brush up in your binocular method.
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