Birds are always around us, always in view, always within hearing. Although most times they were merely on the periphery of sight and sound, the covid pandemic has put our feathered friends in the spotlight. With lockdowns and restricted travel, we have turned our attention to our immediate environment as never before, discovering what’s literally on our doorstep.
Record numbers of people took part in the Bird of the Year poll, in which the superb fairy-wren was declared the winner when it finished nine days ago.
The blue wren – as the species is also known in Tasmania – beat the popular tawny frogmouth into second place.
Since the advent of Covid last year, I’ve dubbed the blue wren the “pandemic bird” simply because it is one of the species that has entered our lives during lockdowns, which are still in force in parts of the mainland.
Confined to home, nature-lovers have discovered wildlife in their gardens and in parks were they have been allowed to exercise. Most of all it has been the birds which have caught our attention, especially the colourful ones like the blue wren and the scarlet robin whose true beauty might not have been fully appreciated in the past.
The pandemic, in fact, has fuelled an unprecedented interest in birds, something reflected in a record participation in the Bird of the Year contest, run by Guardian Australia and the Birdlife Australian.
Over a two-week period building to a nail-biting finale, 430,000 votes were cast leading to the blue wren’s victory.
As if to prove the point that nature-lovers were looking to home turf for their birds, the previous winner had been an exotic species that most birdwatchers would never be likely to see, the endangered black-throated finch found in far-north Queensland. That was pre-pandemic, in 2019, because the competition run by Guardian Australia in conjunction with Birdlife Australia is only held every second year.
The finch’s victory was seen as a “political” vote, because the species is largely found in areas designated for coal mining.
Politics apart, a growing number of voters in the competition have certainly fixed their focus on birds seen in our cities and suburbs. The second-placed frogmouth can be seen in gardens, as with the gang-gang cockatoo coming in third, which inhabits the Canberra suburbs.
The Bird of the Year contest might have been a bit of fun but a more serious online bird activity runs for a week from tomorrow, the Backyard Bird Count.
The annual count has grown from just over 38,000 participants when it stated in 2018, to a record 108,207 last year.
It’s easy to participate by downloading the Aussie Bird Count app (aussiebirdcount.org.au) to record birds seen during any 20-minute period. And the “backyard” can be anywhere you happen to be at the time. Results will be used by Birdlife Australia to determine how many bird species live in our cities.