Australians urged to take part in national bird counting event

The Great Aussie Bird Count is happening today. The annual citizen science initiative invites people to observe and record birds in their local area.

Transcript

00:00All we need people to do is this week, carve out 20 minutes, find your favourite patch

00:08of green.

00:09It could be the backyard, it could be the patch of bush, it could be the lake.

00:13Download the Aussie Bird Count app and sit for 20 minutes, letting us know all the birds

00:17that you see and hear.

00:19Most people probably know more birds than they think they do, but absolutely not everybody

00:25is a massive bird nerd like us at BirdLife Australia, so we've made it easy.

00:30In the Aussie Bird Count app, there's actually a bird finder.

00:33So you put in a little bit of information about how big the bird was, what sort of features

00:39did you see, what sort of colours did you see, pop that in, that will then give you

00:44a list of possible birds and you can just look at the photos and tick it off that way.

00:49This is our 11th year of doing the Aussie Bird Count and this is helping us build a

00:54bit of a census of how birds that live where we live are faring.

00:58So by going out and doing this at the same time every year, we're getting an idea of

01:02which birds are doing really, really well, which birds in our sort of more urban spaces

01:06are not doing so well, and then we can also put that into our bigger set of data at BirdLife

01:12Australia to get an overall idea of how birds are faring across the country.

01:16Bird Week is always the third week in October and it stems from a national bird day that

01:21started in the early 1900s.

01:23It's also spring.

01:24It's a great time to be out seeing birds, you know, everybody's out busy nesting, being

01:29very vocal and so it's a really nice opportunity to celebrate the season and get out and see

01:35some birds.

01:36The Aussie Bird Count is all about just getting data wherever you are.

01:39So we would always encourage you wherever, even if you think you're in the middle of

01:43the CBD and you're not going to see much or there's going to be a whole heap of counts

01:46coming in, doesn't matter.

01:48We want data in from everywhere and for the most part this is of course around the birds

01:52that live where people live.

01:54So where we've got lots of active people watching birds is where we're going to get some great

01:57data.

01:58I think what's always really exciting for me is that the sheer number of birds, so I

02:03think we had over three million birds counted last year, but also the number of species.

02:08So in Australia we have somewhere, you know, it varies around 840-ish bird species.

02:13We saw just under 600 of those bird species last year in the Aussie Bird Count.

02:18So that's one week in October with a whole heap of people keeping an eye out and we're

02:23seeing a huge number of birds.