The Australian magpie is the country’s most commonly spotted bird, registering in about half the reported bird sightings in the latest annual count.
More than 64,000 enthusiastic twitchers took part in BirdLife Australia’s Aussie Bird Count over a week in October, counting and recording 5.27 million birds.
Rainbow lorikeets, which came in second, were the most abundant birds spotted by citizen scientists during the week-long count.
“Because rainbow lorikeets are more social, hanging out in flocks, when we see them, we see more of them,” said BirdLife Australia’s national public affairs advisor Sean Dooley.
“But the magpie is the bird we encounter most often. Every second person who did the count last year added a magpie to their list.”
Native noisy miners, known for their territorial swooping and aggressive behaviour towards other birds, were the third-most spotted bird.
Research led by Latrobe University in 2024 showed small and vulnerable native birds, including yellow-faced honeyeaters, rose robins and dusky wood-swallows, have begun to disappear from suburban parks and residential gardens in Melbourne, pushed out of their foraging grounds by aggressive miners that are thriving in urban environments.
Researchers said the design of city streetscapes and gardens, with open lawn areas and rows of gumtrees, favoured noisy miners.
Australia’s most commonly seen birds in the 2025 Aussie Bird Count
- Australian magpie
- Rainbow lorikeet
- Noisy miner
- Sulphur-crested cockatoo
- Magpie-lark
- Galah
- Red wattlebird
- Crested pigeon
- Welcome swallow
- Common myna
While birdwatchers recorded sightings in remote areas including Christmas and Cocos Islands, and sub-Antarctic Heard Island, about 70 per cent of the birds counted during October 19-25 were in urban areas.
The birds most frequently identified were thus urban dwellers and, in some cases, highlighted how birds are adapting to human behaviour.
For example, Australian white ibises climbed from being the 23rd most-spotted bird in 2021 to the 14th most-spotted in the most recent count.
“Everybody knows the bin chicken, especially in Sydney and Brisbane, where they’re doing well in the city,” Dooley said.
“Birds like these have found ways to take advantage of urban growth, and it’s encouraging to see native species adapting like this.”
Australian brush turkeys are also increasingly seen in NSW and Queensland, particularly in major urban centres that are home to more than 100,000 people.
In NSW, they jumped from 38th on the list in 2021 to 32nd in the most recent count, while sightings doubled in Sydney. Brush turkeys, hunted nearly to extinction last century, are now a protected species.
“Sadly, the flipside to that story is the birds in need of other kinds of habitat, like smaller bush birds, get pushed into decline as their habitats are destroyed,” Dooley said.
“It’s a reminder that the changes we make have an impact. Adding native plants to your garden can offer a lifeline to those other Australian native birds that we’re more worried about.”
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Bianca Hall is The Age’s environment and climate reporter, and has worked in a range of roles including as a senior writer, city editor, and in the federal politics bureau in Canberra.Connect via X, Facebook or email.