The rainbow lorikeet and its colourful plumage has topped Australia’s largest citizen science event as the most numerous bird recorded across the country.
More than 4.1m birds were counted as part of BirdLife Australia’s annual Aussie Bird Count, a week-long event which involved 57,000 participants across the country last October.
The vibrant rainbow lorikeet has reigned supreme atop the count since it began in 2014.
The noisy miner – a honeyeater native to the eastern states which is sometimes mistaken for the common myna, an introduced species – came second.
The Australian magpie came in third. While its numbers couldn’t knock the rainbow lorikeet off its top perch, the unfaithful black-and-white swooper was spotted by more bird count participants than any other species.
Sean Dooley, BirdLife Australia’s senior public affairs advisor and self-avowed “chief bird nerd”, described the magpie, which won Australia’s inaugural bird of the year poll in 2017, as our “most familiar bird”.
“One in two people who did the Aussie Bird Count recorded seeing a magpie,” he said. “The reason they’re not the number one bird is because when you see magpies, they’re usually in pairs or small family groups, whereas when you encounter rainbow lorikeets they’re in flocks up to hundreds.”
No states or territories shared the same top three birds, a result BirdLife Australia described as “a reminder of how integral birds are to the unique character and identity of each state”.
Nationally, the 10 most common birds were:
Rainbow lorikeet
Noisy miner
Australian magpie
Sulphur-crested cockatoo
Welcome swallow
Galah
Silver gull
Australian white ibis
House sparrow
Little corella
The house sparrow was the only bird on the list that was introduced to Australia. The little corella rounded out the top 10, besting the red wattlebird which had ranked 10th in the 2023 count.
“Interestingly, if we had done the Aussie bird count 50 years ago there would have been more introduced species in the top 10. You would have had things like the common myna which started in the top 10 in the first five counts,” Dooley said.
“The fascinating thing about this count is that you can infer and decipher what’s going on with the landscape by what types of birds are around,” he added. “Birds really track what’s happening in the environment, even the urban environment we think of as pretty hostile to nature.
“Pretty much all of the birds in the top 10 … tend to be the successful birds in urban areas.”
But even the most abundant and successful birds face threats. In the past year, thousands of rainbow lorikeets have been struck down in Queensland by a mysterious paralysis syndrome, first identified in 2012, which veterinarians have described as significantly affecting the birds’ welfare.
“In Western Australia, in the last year or so, there’s been a black-and-white bird disease, which has seen magpies and magpie larks and butcher birds suffer paralysis and death as well,” Dooley said.
“From what we can tell with the Aussie Bird Count results, we haven’t noticed any of those diseases having an impact on on the overall numbers.”
The 2025 Aussie Bird Count takes place from 20 to 26 October. For citizen scientists eager to contribute before then, BirdLife Australia runs an online bird monitoring platform, Birdata, which contributes to the nonprofit’s conservation work.
The next biennial Guardian Australia/BirdLife bird of the year poll will take place in October. The swift parrot won in 2023.
