Forget the Melbourne Cup, the other race that stopped the nation in mid-November was Australia’s Bird of the Year contest for 2019.
Unlike the horse race won by Vow and Declare, the bird contest was not decided by a short head.
The black-throated finch led the field from the start when voting opened, dominating the initial 50 starters and then clinching victory when the contest was decided in a second round of 10 finalists.
The finch scored 11,153 votes, with the next runner, the tawny frogmouth, way back on 3351 ballots.
Usually birds seen in the garden or a local park decide the winner but this year the familiar took a back seat. A political dimension entered the fray, to say nothing of allegations of cheating and race-fixing.
As I have said, the birds that usually prompt nature lovers to vote are those seen out of the kitchen or front-room window, common birds whose beauty and antics are familiar to us all. However, the eventual winner is a bird that few people have seen.
The black-throated finch is confined to a rapidly vanishing habit that sits atop the Carmichael coalfield in northern Queensland. Specifically, it is the very area that has been earmarked for the controversial Adani coalmine.
From a species on the fringe of birding consciousness, the black-throated finch has now become the poster bird for the anti-Adani movement. The activists say the project will spell the finch’s demise.
It is not surprising that evidence of vote-rigging spotted by the poll’s organisers, Birdlife Australia and Guardian Australia, involved zealous advocates of the finch’s future, but what is equally surprising is the underhand tactics were also used to promote two common birds – the sulphur-crested cockatoo and the rainbow lorikeet.
The organisers had detected automated voting, with a spike for the three species over a short period of time. These votes were erased from the record.
The black-throated finch might be an exception, but the Bird of the Year competition remains a celebration of the birds that intrude on our daily lives.
“The competition is to draw attention to the birds we all love,” says Samantha Vine, head of conservation at Birdlife Australia. “Everyone has a bird story. Everyone, perhaps without even noticing it, will have birds in their life. They’re one of the most beautiful, colourful, sometimes cheeky, parts of nature we interact with.”
It’s not just a beauty contest, of course. Not only is the poll a celebration of birds, it is also designed to draw attention to their plight.
Birds of most species are decreasing across Australia, for a number of reasons which include predation by introduced animals and habitat loss due to land clearance for farming and coastal development.
Conversely, the illegal voting surge concerned two species of parrot that are actually increasing in number. But the passion for the rainbow lorikeet and cockie this year could not overcome the politics involving the black-throated finch.
The reaming top ten, in order: superb fairy-wren; magpie; kookaburra; wedge-tailed eagle; sulphur-crested cockatoo; willie wagtail; rainbow lorikeet; white ibis.