We’re now into the final week of Bird of the Year and the competition is, just like the unseasonably warm weather, HOTTING UP.
So far in the competition more than 200,000 votes have been cast and one thing is clear: the tawny frogmouth is the favourite as we near the home stretch. However, it may yet be knocked off its perch by a late surge from the swift parrot.
Here you can see the rank of each bird at the closing of each voting round, with only the Top 10 birds from the first and last rounds included:
The frogmouth has been No 1 for most of the competition, with the exception of round three, in which the gang-gang cockatoo usurped the top spot.
However, fans of previously eliminated birds may be gathering behind the critically endangered swift parrot. It has risen from hovering around the 10th spot to No 2 on Monday, and as at the time of writing, was ahead of the tawny frogmouth – albeit only by twentysomething votes.
Both birds have had a high profile in the competition this year. The tawny frogmouth benefited from the celebrity endorsement of Guardian Australia cartoonist and national treasure First Dog on the Moon. The swift parrot, meanwhile, has been in the headlines for far more serious reasons with the news that the swift parrot recovery plan – recently announced by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek – was not actually finalised and had not been shared with the experts who helped to develop it.
Here, you can see the cumulative number of votes received by the Top 10 birds, animated over each round:
Guardian Australia has also thwarted two attempts at automated vote rigging in the 2023 poll. Andy Ball, our chief of bird of the year voter security, reports that attempts at fraudulent voting for the pied currawong and bush turkey have been detected and neutralised.
Much like attempts in previous years, such as the 2019 cockatoo incident and the 2017 powerful owl scandal, these bids involved a large volume of votes from the same source.
Senior Australian bird of the year insiders refused to speculate on what would motivate someone to attempt to hijack a poll about birds, or comment on suggestions the alleged vote-riggers needed to get a life.
And just as a reminder, here’s what we said about the trade-off between making voting easier and voting security in the 2019 poll, which remains true today:
While we do perform some checks on the validity of votes before automatically displaying the count on our site, there is always a trade-off between making it easy for regular people to vote, and ensuring the process is relatively secure.
For example, we could add an email verification step for each vote (as the New Zealand bird of the year poll does), but we’d like to keep the process as simple as possible and do most of our validity checking once the votes have been received. And, at the end of the day, this isn’t a political election – it’s a bit of fun.
Cast your vote in the Australian bird of the year poll today
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