From The New Daily (14/3/24)…
Who rules Australian skies? Millions of birds counted in attempt to halt extinctions
When you think of Australian birds, kookaburras or cockatoos are likely the first to come to mind – but a colourful parrot is reported to be a far more common sight in our skies and backyards.
The results of the 10th annual Aussie Bird Count announced this week revealed the rainbow lorikeet was the bird most commonly seen in Australian skies since October.
The result comes after more than 60,000 people across the country looked up to tally more than 3.6 million birds.
This is not the first time the rainbow lorikeet has been found to rule our skies.
When the Aussie Bird Count was first held in 2014, the rainbow lorikeet came in as first according to reports by the 9000 bird counters who took 20 minutes out of their week to do a survey in the places where they lived, worked or played.
The results for the second and third most-common birds remain similarly unchanged over the past decade; those titles belong to the noisy miner and Australian magpie, respectively, in 2014 and 2024.
Over years, only one bird has climbed into the top 10 – our much-maligned bin chickens, the Australian white ibis, at the expense of the introduced common myna.
