Magpie wins Australian bird of the year poll – as it happened
This article is more than 6 years old
Australian magpie pips the ibis and laughing kookaburra in the Guardian Australia/BirdLife Australia poll after weeks of controversy, a powerful owl voting hack and a strong #teambinchicken social media push
There is a magpie carolling outside my window, calling time on our live coverage of the 2017 Australian bird of the year vote. Thank you so much for your enthusiastic campaigning for our avian friends. We really do have an astonishing variety of birds in Australia and we should celebrate them more often.
I will leave you with some soothing words from Dr John Martin for the ibis lobby, who are still smarting from their shock loss this morning.
Martin is a research ecologist who specialises in the Australian white ibis. He writes:
Their colonisation of urban areas, and associated shift to a fast-food diet, is a remarkable example of their adaptability …
Truly, if you asked anyone a month ago if the Australian white ibis would come second in a popular vote as the bird of the year I struggle to imagine even one person seriously predicting this result. I would have said it was unlikely to place in the top 50. This is a stunning result.
The #birdoftheyear vote summoned in a brief, beautiful period of bird photos replacing political news and the sense of impending doom that usually populates Twitter. It was a lovely time, and we are keen for it to continue.
Keep posting your bird photos. We need them more than ever.
Bird lovers had the opportunity to nominate a favourite bird that was not on our original list, and the most popular write-ins, by far, were the yellow-tailed black cockatoo, the black-throated finch and Abbott’s booby.
The latter is a real thing. Abbott’s booby, or Papasula abbotti, is a seabird found on Christmas Island and is listed as endangered by both the EPBC and the IUCN red list. There are an estimated 2,500 breeding pairs.
It received 243 write-in votes, all of which I am sure were concerned with the conservation of this endangered species and not making a reference to anything else.
The yellow-tailed black cockatoo, Calyptorhynchus funereus, is also endangered. It received 304 votes.
The black-throated finch, Poephila cincta, received 291 votes. The southern subspecies, Poephila cincta cincta, is listed as endangered.
Magpies have been compared to Donald Trump, Malcolm Turbull, and Harry Potter this morning (that last one by me, sorry) and I have to say I don’t think they deserve any of it.
I admit to having a deep affection for magpies after being woken up by the blighters carolling on the TV cable at 4am every morning of my teenage years, and do not like to see them slighted in this way.
They are very smart and good and we should be proud of them, even if they are a bit violent.
I’ve been asked to dissect why Australia’s vast array of parrot species did not do better in the poll. The simple answer is that we have so many parrot species that it split the vote. No one could agree on a favourite.
Most popular was the rainbow lorikeet in 6th place with 6,041 votes, followed by the sulphur-crested cockatoo at 11th with 4,051 votes; king parrot 12th with 3,449 votes, and the galah 13th with 3,405 votes.
Then we have gang-gangs 15th with 2,871 votes; crimson rosellas in 19th spot with 2,379 votes, the stupidly endangered orange-bellied parrot in 21st spot with 2,324 votes; and Perth’s Carnaby’s black cockatoo with 2,249 (a personal favourite of mine, we used to have them in the backyard).
The 50s pink Major Mitchell’s cockatoo was 27th with 1,828 votes and the common budgie 30th with 1,594 votes.
They were all the parrot species we included in the original (limited by necessity) list. Total parrot votes: 30,191.
We also had a huge number of write-in votes for parrots, including 11 for the corella and one specifically for male superb parrots.
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