08 Aussie Bird Count
About this episode
Twenty minutes outside can become part of a national bird story. Sean Dooley from BirdLife Australia shares how to join the Aussie Bird Count and why counting common birds matters.
Episode illustration: Rainbow Lorikeet
Sean Dooley is the National Public Affairs Manager for BirdLife Australia, author of The Big Twitch, and former holder of the Australian Big Year twitching record. For many years, Sean and his team have been working tirelessly to ensure that birds are protected and loved by Australians. That's why he is affectionately known as 'the Birdman' and we reckon he’s a national treasure.
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Kirsty: This episode was recorded on the Countries of the Bunurong Boonwurrung and the Wurundjeri woiwurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin nation. I pay my respect to Elders past and present. I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Custodians of the land, sea and sky, where birds across Australia can thrive.
Kirsty: Welcome to Weekend Birder. I'm your birdwatching mate, Kirsty Costa. Today you and I are hanging out with one of my favorite bird nerds, Sean Dooley. Sean is the National Public Affairs manager for BirdLife Australia. He's the author of The Big Twitch and he's the former holder of the Australian Big Year twitching record. For many years, Sean and his team have been working tirelessly to ensure that birds are protected and loved by Australians. That's why he's affectionately known as 'The Birdman'. Here is how Sean got into birdwatching.
Sean: I got into birds when I was ten and I grew up in Seaford, which is a it's a suburb in the south east of Melbourne on Port Phillip Bay and just near a place called Frankston, which some people might have heard about. It was a fabulous place to grow up because you had the bay and there was bush along Kananook Creek to explore and we had this place called Seaford Swamp, which was right on the boundary of our school fence at Seaford North Primary School. When I was in Grade Five, my Grade Five teacher was a birdwatcher and a bird bander, and he had a pair of binoculars for every kid in the class and would take us out bird banding in the grounds of the school, which also had a whole lot of bush in it. And he inspired me to, well, he opened my eyes to this to this window, this world of nature that happened right literally on our doorstep. You would walk out of the classroom and to the boundary fence, which in winter tended to get flooded from the swamp and occasionally have to jump over a Tiger Snake or something to get there. But here was this world of wildlife that I never really had noticed before, and I'd always loved animals.I think by the time I was about five or six, I realised that the animals are getting in my Weet-Bix packet in the cards, like, you know, tigers and and lions and giraffes and things - I was never going to see them in suburban Melbourne. So I put dreams of seeing wild animals just to one side. But suddenly in Grade Five, here they were. And it wasn't just local birds, it was birds from all around the country that were turning up and birds from across the other side of the world, you know. I discovered there were birds like the Latham Snipe, which flew in every August and September from Japan. And I'd see these little grey birds rushing around on the edge of the mud and found out they were Sharp-tailed Sandpipers, which had come from the Arctic Circle in Siberia, and that was just mind blowing to a ten year old. And I just really fell in love with with birds, not only as creatures and beautiful creatures, but also that idea that they have wings and they can turn up literally anywhere. And so you never know what you're going to get. It's like so like the Magic Faraway Tree of hobbies because you don't know what's going to be at the top of the tree when you go up and look.
Kirsty: Seaford Edithvale-Wetlands, known as Carrum Carrum by the Bunurong Boonwurrung people, is also where I fell in love with birds and birdwatching. I was walking through the wetlands one summer and came across a family of a bird called Latham Snipe, hanging out in a pond. My connection with this wonderful bird was almost instant after I discovered that it is a return flight each year from Melbourne to Japan. I also fly from Melbourne to Japan almost each year, but my journey is a little bit more comfortable. In that moment, I transition from 'bird noticer' to 'birdwatcher'. Soon after, I got a pair of binoculars and I downloaded some birding apps. Sean says that it's no surprise that these wetlands have had such a huge impact on both people and on birds.
Sean: The Latham's Snipe is one of the reasons why Seaford, now known as the Edithvale-Seaford Wetlands, which are the two main remnants of a huge swamp that used to exist called the Carrum Carrum... the Edithvale-Seaford Wetlands are now recognised as wetlands of international significance by the Ramsar Treaty that Australia signed up to. And that's pretty much on the basis of those migratory shorebirds, such as the Sharp-tailed Sandpiper and the Latham's Snipe. Those little urban wetlands actually get more than 1% (of the population). Probably these days, because the numbers are dwindling across the globe, sometimes for the Sharp-tailed Sandpiper we get more than 2-3% of the world population in what people always used to call the "dirty old swamp". It's incredible. And what I find incredible, and I'm really grateful for entering the worlds of birds and birdwatching, is it's given me so much joy in my life and just it's enriched my life so much by just going out to see it ever since I was ten and recording what I saw along with other people, through things like BirdLife Australia's Bird Data scheme. Also in the 1980s and 1990s there was a national waterbird survey and migratory shorebird surveys. Just me and a couple of other people recording all of these things, that's how those areas came to notice has been really important. There was proposals to drain the Edithvale-Seaford Wetlands and turn it into maybe an ornamental pond or put housing on it. And if it wasn't for these incredible birds and their journeys and spending part of their life at the wetlands, that would have happened and we would have lost that forever. And that only happened because quirky little kids like me and other other quirky birdwatchers actually cared about it and watched them and recorded them. And it just shows the power of observation and monitoring that we were able to add that information to the people who were trying to save those wetlands. And now they're world famous - one of the few urban wetlands that are internationally recognised. And so the land managers, which is Kingston and Frankston councils and Melbourne Water, now are obliged to maintain those areas for those wetland values. And they're doing generally a really good job of it.
Kirsty: Stay tuned for an upcoming Weekend Birder episode that celebrates the Edithvale-Seaford Wetlands. Sean is a twitcher and has travelled around the world to go birdwatching. He's had many experiences that will forever be etched in his memory. One of the most powerful though, was a local bird that other people might overlook.
Sean: It was a bird called a Glossy Ibis, which is the third of Australia's ibises. A lot of people probably know the Australian White Ibis (or the bin chicken as it gets called these days). And people may also be aware of the Straw-necked Ibis, which is similar size but it has a beautiful glossy kind of greeny-black on its wings and it does have feathers in the neck that look like yellow straw. And they're really cool birds, actually. But this one, the Glossy Ibis, is a lot smaller and it's found all around the world. It's quite common in northern Australia but I knew even as even as an 11 year old that it was very rare in Victoria. So I went down one, I think it was a lunchtime (it was either in the before school or at lunchtime), went down at school and sat on the fence and looked out and there was a Glossy Ibis, just one feeding and and it was feeding through the shallows. And they're not, they're quite handsome birds. They're sort of almost like a chocolatey colour but when you catch them in the right light, they have green in their wings and that's quite iridescent. In the right light, they are indeed glossy, although in bad light they're just a kind of poo-brown sort of colour. But they're pretty handsome birds when you see them up close, which me and my friends did, and I was just blown away by this bird. It was so exciting for two reasons. One - it was an unusual bird, unusual looking, and unusual to be there. The other thing, though, was the fact that me as an 11 year old, I knew that it was a rare bird and it normally isn't there. And that was such an adrenalin rush and that, I joke, got me addicted to seeing rare birds. I became what's known as a twitcher. Twitchers, for those who don't know, it's sort of like the extreme sport of birdwatching. If you think about birdwatching as being very gentle and passive activity, twitching is where you want to see a new bird no matter what. And when you're starting out birdwatching, it's really easy to see new birds. Every bird is a new bird and I envy people who are just beginning to be birdwatchers because every day is really exciting and birds that you later find really common when you see them for the first time, there's nothing like it. It's so exciting. But in order to see more new birds, you have to start going further and further afield. You get to know the birds in your neighbourhood and then the birds in your in your state and then go further around the country. And then once you run out of those, you can go overseas I guess. But then you start waiting to hear or going out looking for birds that turn up here that shouldn't be here like the Glossy Ibis. But on that continent scale, birds that aren't normally in Australia. So you hear about something like a Black-headed Gull, which is a Northern Hemisphere gull turning up in Darwin. You might want to jump on a plane and try and see that. And that's what twitching is - it's going to extreme lengths to find rare birds or, even if they're not rare, to find birds that you've never seen before.
Kirsty: You might have heard of BirdLife Australia's Aussie Bird Count. It's held over one week every year in mid-October, and thousands of people participate by watching and recording the names of the birds that they see around them. Sean has been part of this project from the start and can explain how the Aussie Bird Count took off.
Sean: I think the idea for the Aussie Bird Count started around ten years ago. BirdLife Australia had recently formed after a merger between the two national cird organisations, which was Birds Australia (which were much more focused on the science and the research into birds for conservation) and BALCO (which was the old Bird Observers Club that was originally more for the social side of birdwatching). We came together and we were looking for something we knew from the work we'd done during the merger that there were an enormous amount of people who really loved birds but didn't consider themselves birdwatchers because birdwatching has always had a bit of a daggy reputation or a nerdy one in the sense that people feel like you need to be an expert. And that's not the case. We knew that there are literally millions of Australians who have a major love and affection for Australia's native birds, but less than 10% of them would have classed themselves as birdwatchers in any way. But really everyone who loves birds is a birdwatcher because you look at them or you listen to them and you have this connection to them. So we were trying to work out an event, something where we could really get people to connect in a positive way with birds. And when you say to people that you're a birdwatcher, people have always said, "Oh, where do you go birdwatching? Like Kakadu or the Outback or the Daintree?". And it's like, "Well, yes, I love to go birdwatching in those places". They're all amazing... but you're birdwatching all the time because that's the great thing about birds is they are everywhere. They're literally in every continent, every habitat on earth, and they're even in the main cities. At BirdLife Australia, we focus primarily on threatened species. Our mission is to prevent extinctions of native birds. Necessarily, all of our work is tends to go towards studying, monitoring and helping implement conservation measures to save endangered species. And we sort of realised that we actually know more about some of our most critically endangered birds than we did about birds that people see every day. And it's the birds that people see every day that is usually what gets people into birds. That's what sparks the love of birds. For some people it might be they go to the Daintree and they see a cassowary and they go, "Oh my God, that's a bird? That's incredible. I want to know more!". Or they see a Bird of Paradise or something like that on an Attenborough documentary. But for most people, the bird that inspires them is something you see every day. And when you think about what people in Australia see every day, we just are so lucky in this country, like our common birds. I know this for a fact that birdwatchers overseas would just kill to be able to see even once. Our most common bird that we see that's recorded in the Aussie Bird Count every year has been the Rainbow Lorikeet. That's the most numerous urban bird in Australia. Now that might make us complacent about that. We we think, "Oh yeah, that's a bird you see every day". But when you stop and look at a Rainbow Lorikeets - it is a gloriously coloured bird and I've literally seen overseas birdwatchers weep, actually burst into tears, when they saw their first Rainbow Lorikeets. And we take that for granted. They're our most common bird. We wanted to, with the Bird Count, get something together that combined that idea of really celebrating the birds that we see every day because they are so special. But also from selfishly from a BirdLife Australia point of view, if we could get people to become citizen scientists and tell us what they're seeing, that was that meant we'd get this trove of information about how our how our most common birds are going without having to find the necessary funds to pay people to go out and do it (because it would just be impossible). You would never get enough funding to be able to do a massive survey like this without people volunteering what they were seeing. So hence, in 2014, the Aussie Bird Count was created.
Kirsty: The citizen science data collected through the Aussie Bird Count helps organisations like BirdLife Australia assess the health of Australia's ecosystems. As much as they are loved, the data is revealing that Rainbow Lorikeets are becoming a bit of a problem in our urban areas.
Sean: We're actually seeing that the Lorikeets are still doing really well in all our cities, including cities where they are native like Perth and Hobart. That's creating problems for some of the other parrots and that's what we're hoping to find out this year. We're really theming the whole Bird Count this year around our parrots because they're they're the most colourful birds and easy to see birds because they just stand out so much and people do notice them. But we've looking at the first eight years of data that we've got from our Aussie Bird Counters and then comparing that with some other studies that are going on, we can see that some of the parrots are doing really well and our Aussie Bird Count data. Shows us that that Rainbow Lorikeets and Sulphur-crested cockatoos and the little koala, they're doing really well almost universally across the country. But there's other parrots which are starting to to disappear. And that's not the rare parrots. It's parrots that even ten years ago were pretty common. Some some of our parents have done pretty well around urban and suburban areas, but we've noticed that it looks like things like the beautiful eastern Rosella, which is probably, I think, the most underrated parrot in Australia, They are just gorgeous birds and they're certainly disappearing. And we're seeing this in the Aussie Bird Count figures, particularly in New South Wales, but also parts of South Australia. The eastern Rosella reporting rates in our Bird Counts is going down and once we know things are changing, we can start to speculate as to why and look into it. And we thought, well, it makes sense in Sydney because there's a lot of development for housing on the edges of Sydney, especially in Western Sydney where there was sort of lightly wooded country like open woodlands is sort of what Eastern Rosella's like. And we thought, well, there's your example, you know, you lose that habitat. It virtually expresses what's going on in the landscape. And the fact that there are less reports of Eastern Rosellas is that there are fewer Eastern Rosellas being reported shows that something's happening. And so we thought well for Western Sydney it must be land clearance. But we can't really explain at this stage. How come Eastern Rosellas seem to be dropping off in numbers all around New South Wales? We don't really know what's going on but we would never have known to start looking unless we had this information from people just doing their backyard bird counts.
Kirsty: When I started birdwatching a few years ago, I use the Aussie Bird Count to practise my skills and knowledge. It's very accessible and perfect for beginner birdwatchers and people with more experience.
Sean: Basically anybody can participate and we welcome everybody. And this is why the appeal for the Aussie Bird Count is that you don't need to be a bird expert. We've tried to make it as easy and as fun as possible, so that's why we've got the app. And the app is the best way to do your Bird Count. You don't have to, but it's so much better, especially if you're beginning because it's got a couple of things. One is that when you enter the data into the app of what you're seeing, it goes straight to us at BirdLife Australia so that we can we can use it for our information about getting that snapshot of Australia's birds. But the other thing is if you're just a beginner birdwatcher, it can be really easy to be put off by the very thing that attracts a lot of people. There are so many different types of birds in Australia and if you see a parrot and you don't know what it is, you go to a traditional field guide or something and you open the parrot page, it's like, I think there is 57 different parrots in Australia! So it can be really overwhelming. So what we've done with the app is we have the two sections - one where you do your survey, which we've made as easy and fun to use as possible, especially for the kids who are on screens. We all want kids outside in nature. You get outside, but you've still got a screen to play with. And even my kids who who are fairly bird aware but you know, put off because their dad's into it. So they don't want to do that. They liked doing the Bird Count because they got to use the phone and enter what we saw. So there's that aspect. The other part of the app is the find a bird section, which is like, it's not really a field guide. But what it does is if you see a bird (say if you saw a parrot) but you don't know what it is, instead of having to flick through the pages of the field guide or a bird identification app, you just enter the size, the shape and the colours that you're seeing. And the app is programmed to give you a range of options of what bird that could possibly be in your area and depending on what you input, it will bring up a whole bunch of different descriptions and also photos of birds. You can scroll through those and work out which one is the best match. If you think it's a certain bird and put it in, it's not really likely in your area. The app will tell you so you can go back and have a look. So basically you don't need to know all that much about birds. Even if you're not a birdwatcher, everyone knows probably at least five bird names... You might know magpie, you might know a pelican, you might know the ibis. And that's a start. And that's something for beginner birdwatchers that I always I think that the easiest tip that you can have is don't try and learn everything at once. Learn the stuff that you're familiar with, because bird ID is all about picking out the differences and there's so much information about every bird that you'll just get swamped with it all. But if you know a few birds you can start to see they're different. Which ones are different? So say, you know, the magpie, which I assume pretty much everybody knows the magpie. But you might see another bird that's about the same size, but it's got more black on it than the magpie. And so you sort of think, well, you know, is that just the black? Magpie like or something like that. But then if you get like, then go to the app and put in those colours, you'll see other birds that come up that have black and white in them and you might scroll through and you might see that there's another type of bird that you didn't know about called the currawong. The Pied Currawong is in the magpie family and it's I guess it's a bigger bird with a bigger bill and a yellow eye has a lot more black and a lot less white than a magpie. But you would, it would be very hard to find that any other way. This way you might see the picture of it. Now you know two birds, then you can expand out from there. Don't get overwhelmed with the possibilities because it just can get too much. You don't need to learn everything at once. And the thing is, if you take it one bird at a time, you actually really get to enjoy those birds. And as fantastic and fun as it can be, twitching and adding new birds to your list, it becomes even better when you add a new bird to your list. When you really understand the differences and you get to know your common birds and they're fascinating, especially Australian birds. Overseas birdwatchers can't believe the behaviour of Australian birds. They're so much more bold in generally in colour but also in personality. And you get overseas, even hardcore ornithologists (you know, real big research people), who just are astonished at what our birds get up to. So it's just brilliant watching what they're doing as much as trying to work out who they are.
Kirsty: I can personally vouch for what Sean is saying. I find the app really easy to use and it's helped me to develop my knowledge and appreciation for the birds around me. The first time I participated, I didn't use a pair of binoculars and I was still able to report heaps of birds. I've now discovered other programs like the Superb Citywren Project, which you can find out about in a previous Weekend Birder episode. I've also become a regular user of eBird and BirdLife Australia's Bird Data apps. I'm still a beginner, but I'm building my confidence and this, Sean says, is part of the role of the Aussie Bird Count.
Sean: Hopefully what it does as the years go by and people get more comfortable with, with identifying birds they move on to other sort of monitoring programs and continue to to do Bird Counts. One of the big complaints we get from the Aussie Bird Count people is, "Why can't it be every month of the year? Why does it just have to be once a year?". And it's like, "Well, we do have other programs like our we've had our Birds in Backyard Surveys going for 20 years that people can do once every season. And we have for the birdwatchers, the more serious birdwatchers, we have our Bird Data system, which has been going for decades now and is one of the most important databases of wildlife information. So you can keep going and doing that". The actual information from the Bird Count itself, in and of itself, is really useful. And there's been a couple of big research papers in the last couple of years that have come out and they haven't been done by us (maybe some of our BirdLife staff have been involved). It's really interesting to see that how they compare to the data that we're getting from the Aussie Bird Count and basically they're confirming what the others are doing. So we know that we're on the right track. The really good thing about this is it creates a big nationwide picture. We work with a lot of councils who participate in the Aussie Bird Count and we prepare reports for those councils each year on what birds are being seen in their local government area. And some of those councils are coming on board and talking to us about, well, how can we improve the situation for some of these birds? What do we need to do? And particularly for our small birds in the cities? This is stuff that we're picking up through the Aussie Bird Count, the decline in small birds, particularly small bush birds, the insect eaters like fairywrens and thornbills and Silver Eyes (which also eat a bit of fruit) - those birds are in decline. And we're seeing that through the information we get from the Aussie Bird Count. And so working with local councils who can affect much more of the local environment than individual landholders can, we certainly encouraging people to plant bird-friendly gardens in their own yards. But if we're dealing with councils who are planting street trees but also maintaining parks and doing revegetation in open spaces and things, they're now using that information to plan how they manage their, their open spaces and make them more bird-friendly. And that's a great thing - the Aussie Bird Count is really helping aid local councils who want to do the right thing but didn't know where to start.
Kirsty: It's always great to hear from our guests what their advice is for beginner birdwatchers. Here is Sean's.
Sean: My advice is take it bird by bird and enjoy the bird you're looking at for two reasons. One is that you get so much more pleasure out of out of the experience rather than constantly searching for the next bird that will come. There will always be another bird coming (hopefully) but it also means you get to know those birds really well so that when you do see something different, you will know that it's different. And you'll know why. You'll know why it's different and where. Even if you don't know what that bird is, you'll be able to work it out much more easily. Everybody wants to see rare birds and it doesn't matter whether they're a scientist or teacher or whatever. There's always something about the exotic that you want a new experience and, you know, the likelihood is that you're generally not going to see that. But once you know all your common stuff, you're going to be so much surer about when you do see something genuinely unusual and interesting.
Kirsty: I am so grateful for Sean Dooley's big heart and big smarts. What a legacy! I'm also really thankful to the whole team at BirdLife Australia for their ongoing work in bird conservation and their coordination of the Aussie Bird Count, which is a total delight. Visit weekendbirder.com To find links to the Aussie Bird Count and Sean's incredible body of work. And you can find us by searching at @birderpod on your favourite social media platform.
