Australian bird of the year 2025 winner announcement – live | Australian bird of the year 2025
Key events
Top 10 spotlight: the Baudin’s black cockatoo
Of all the black cockatoos across the country, none is more threatened than Western Australia’s Baudin’s (pronounced ‘bowdans’). Baudin’s is distinguished from the more familiar Carnaby’s black cockatoo by its longer bill, which it uses to extract seeds from marri and jarrah trees. Declining at an alarming rate due to the continuing loss of forests, researchers from BirdLife Australia and elsewhere recommended that the species be uplisted to critically endangered, which the WA government has refused to do.
Reader db.sweeney, from Fremantle, nominated the Baudin’s black cockatoo, and said:
They f*ckin’ rock. Very sociable, they love to hang out in our backyard and have loud yarns. Beautiful in an understated way … and critically endangered, they need all the press they can get.
They do: the destruction of Western Australia’s northern jarrah forests for bauxite mining will push the Baudin’s “to and beyond the brink of extinction” if governments allowed it to continue, conservationists have warned. Environment and climate correspondent Lisa Cox had the story here:
I’ve just received an email from Mrs Harris, Miss Catherine, Mrs Walsh, Mr Beard and Miss Brown and the whole Kelly’s kids crew at Kelly’s Plains public school in Armidale, NSW.
They have been committed tawny frogmouth campaigners this year. They tell me:
We are on the edge of our seats waiting for the results. Of course, we are team Tawny Frogmouths all the way!!!!!! Yesterday we welcomed our new baby Tawny in our playground trees. Her mum and dad visit every year to build their nest and have new babies. We think it is a sign that this year is the Tawnies year. We are so busting to know and wish the results were at 11.30am.
Here’s some of their Facebook campaign for Team Tawny:
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Thank you so much for sharing this with us!
Journey to the top 10 – the biggest climbs
Nick Evershed
While we count down to the final reveal, I’m making the data explorer I’ve been using behind the scenes to track the vote available to everyone:
In this chart you can see every bird’s progress in the vote, measured by rank in each round, vote total in each round, and cumulative votes throughout the poll. You can also switch the chart to show the results of the 2023 poll to compare the data between the two competitions.
For the 2025 poll, it only shows rounds one to eight, and doesn’t include the final round as we don’t want to spoil the big announcement.
Before we get into the top 10 I’d like to highlight the birds which made the most progress over the course of the competition – the most impressive climbs (hit the big climbs button to see them highlighted!).
The little penguin had a great competition this year, starting out ranked 25 in the first round and finishing in round eight in an impressive eighth position. As a big penguin fan, this is a great result.
The other notable climb comes from the peregrine falcon. The speedy raptor came from 28th position in the first round to finish at 14th in the penultimate round, no doubt getting a boost in publicity as people watched Melbourne’s beloved falcon chicks fledge and learn to fly.
Where we landed when voting went dark
Righto, time for a recap.
Bird of the year began with a longlist of 50 birds, nominated by you, lovely readers. You then voted for your favourite every day, and every day the lowest-ranking five birds were eliminated until 10 remained.
On the final day of voting, tallies were hidden, which means none of us know which bird has won the crown until the Guardian Australia editor, Lenore Taylor, opens the fateful envelope this afternoon.
What we do know, however, is the ranking of birds before voting went dark at 12.01am on Tuesday. This is where things stood at that time:
1. Tawny frogmouth
2. Baudin’s black cockatoo
3. Gang-gang cockatoo
4. Willie wagtail
5. Bush stone-curlew
6. Southern emu-wren
7. Laughing kookaburra
8. Little penguin
9. Spotted pardalote
10. Wedge-tailed eagle
Our bird-data gurus will bring you some analysis soon on how the voting played out this year, but what I can tell you is that this ranking was very consistent across the eight open voting rounds, though we did see a couple of curveballs.
Welcome
Good morning folks and happy bird-day! Welcome to the 2025 bird of the year live blog.
I’m Stephanie Convery, your official bird correspondent for today (and unofficially every other day) and I’ll be with you as we count down to the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the announcement of the 2025 Guardian/BirdLife Australia bird of the year.
We’ve got all sorts of bird treats in store for you this morning, including intriguing bird facts, voting analysis and an update on some of the campaigns we’ve seen developing over the past few weeks.
Most importantly, we’ll be livestreaming the announcement ceremony from 12.30pm AEDT. You’ll be able to watch it here on the Guardian website and also on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. I’ll share those links with you soon.
So grab a coffee, join in the conversation in the comments, send me your avian inspired thoughts at stephanie.convery@theguardian.com or share the best bird stuff you’ve seen with me on Bluesky (@gingerandhoney.bsky.social) or X if you’re still using it (@gingerandhoney).
Let’s get stuck in!
