There’s no going over the rainbow in bird count

Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au

ALTHOUGH counting continues and the winner won’t be announced until December, the rainbow lorikeet is leading the field when comes to being the most commonly spotted bird.

BirdLife Australia received more than 100,000 lists accounting for more than 3.6 million birds seen during last month’s week-long bird count.

Preliminary analysis of the lists, which featured more than 658 bird species showed rainbow lorikeets leading the flock with more than 420,000 sightings. The colourful parrots were ahead of noisy miners (220,000) and magpies (154,000).

“The enthusiasm with which Australians have taken to the Aussie Bird Count has been outstanding,” BirdLife Australia's national public affairs manager Sean Dooley said.

Over the past 10 years, the Aussie Bird Count had helped raise the profile of Australia’s bird life and encouraged thousands of people around the country to connect with nature.

“In addition to being good for our mental health, bird watching is often the first step towards nature conservation. We can’t protect something if we don’t know how it is faring in the first place.”

Dooley said that with nearly one in six bird species in Australia at risk of extinction from threats such as climate change, habitat loss, fires, and invasive species, BirdLife Australia relied on data to inform priorities and insights from monitoring projects such as the count to help shape its bird conservation strategy.

The strategy aimed to halt bird extinctions by 2032 and overall bird declines by 2050.

To find out more about Australia’s biggest citizen science event go to: aussiebirdcount.org.au