00:02We were out at Centennial Park in Sydney and we had a bird list of about 33 species so it
00:09just
00:09shows and the Aussie bird count proves this is that in Australia we're so lucky we have so many
00:14amazing birds literally on a doorstep like Australia's largest city it essentially in
00:20the middle of the city we got 33 different species and that's what we found when we started the bird
00:27count in 2014 we had about 9,000 people involved it's burgeoned to 64,000 people now who just love
00:34that opportunity to get out into nature even just in their backyard or down the local park and then
00:41by doing stuff that they love they actually contribute to a wealth of knowledge through
00:46the citizen science that they and and this was the project wasn't it citizen scientists were involved
00:51can you remind us how it was conducted yeah people download the Aussie bird count app and
00:56every October during National Bird Week we have get people to go out for 20 minutes and do a survey
01:03of the birds that they see it can be anywhere you are during the week we want to find out
01:08at BirdLife
01:08Australia where the birds are where people live because we actually it does a great service to us
01:16we don't have the funding to be able to get our staff out and do surveys everywhere and so when
01:21we get
01:21people just doing what they love noticing birds and then telling us it's this vast repository of
01:28knowledge that we now have 12 years of data to compare so we can see how our common birds are
01:33faring
01:34yeah so that is that the the idea behind this research why is it important to collect this data what
01:40are you
01:40trying to learn yeah what's important for the people doing it we know from the research that having
01:45that connection to nature through birds is really good for physiological and psychological health and the sense of
01:52well-being but even more so for us at BirdLife we get this snapshot annually of what's going on with
01:59the our most
02:00common birds or the birds that we share our human spaces with because the urban environment is still an environment
02:06and we what we learn from from this all these 150,000 surveys that come in
02:12is that we have winners in the environment in some birds the ones that are in the top 10 but
02:18also we're seeing even over this 12 year data set we're seeing a lot of losers birds that are starting
02:25to drop out of urban and semi-urban environments
02:27well let's start on the positive note and talk about the winners I'm just going to play a clip of
02:33who the winner was this year okay
02:42there he or she is the beautiful Maggie took out top spot that's right yeah and what it means is
02:48that one in two people who did an Aussie bird count survey recorded a magpie right across the country they
02:55found they're very widespread everywhere except the top end and Cape York and they've adapted really well to urban areas
03:03just any bit of
03:04of park greenery garden they will manage to thrive and so any cyclists they'd like to swoop yeah exactly the
03:12uh the natural the natural prey of the magpie but we we we see that like that uh also because
03:20they're so ubiquitous people have such a connection with magpies the swooping notwithstanding of course but like we we hear
03:28all the time at bird life and it's often you know voted very highly in the bird of the year
03:32people love that sound it just
03:34reminds them of of their their childhood it reminds them it's the sound of australia just as much as a
03:40kookaburra sound is well you mentioned a kookaburra what else made the list were there any surprises for you yeah
03:46interestingly we we are seeing year on year the top 10 is very similar um the you know rainbow lorikeets
03:53are often uh like number two they're here and they're the most counted bird as in the highest numbers
04:01because when while we see more people see magpies when people see the rainbow lorikeets they're usually in big flocks
04:08flying across noisily feeding in eucalypt blossom and things like that but we've seen the rise of some
04:15other birds like the over the years we've seen inland birds like the australian white ibis aka the bin chicken
04:22or the little corrala or the crested pigeon all of these birds traditionally were inland species but
04:29because of land use on the inland and lack of water and things they're coming to the coast and
04:34they're finding new habitats to adapt to in the cities and so if people missed out on getting involved
04:41this year you run it every year right they can they can come up next year i definitely the more
04:47the merrier
04:48because this annual snapshot each survey is like a pixel in that image and if we can get we had
04:54150 000
04:55pixels if we could get 200 000 pixels the the detail that we get is so much clearer to us
05:02so hopefully
05:03come october people can sign in to the aussie bird count app and get counting and have a ball and
05:08help
05:09science at the same time excellent sean dooley thank you very much for joining us thanks a lot cap
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