Tawny Frogmouth (Podargus strigoides) Photo By Cabrils – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106346441

Dear Readers, I do love a good competition – we’ve had Tree of the Year and Fat Bear of the Year and even Insect of the Year. However, the winner of this year’s Australian Bird of the Year has been described as the most Instagrammable bird on the planet, and looking at the face above, you can see why. I once saw three of them at London Zoo, and couldn’t believe that they were actually alive – they look like demonic glove puppets. Bless them. However, they are remarkable birds – their closest relatives include nightjars and potoos, but they are evolutionarily very distinct. They only occur in Australia, and their camouflage makes them very hard to find, even more so when they imitate a dry branch when alarmed. 

Family of four Tawny Frogmouths pretending to be sticks (Photo By Garrytre – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115428337)

Until this year, the Tawny Frogmouth had been runner up three times (in 2019, 2021 and 2023), but in 2025 it trounced the opposition, beating the Baudin’s Black Cockatoo into second place….

Baudin’s Black Cockatoo (Photo by By Photo by: Ganatron – paulweberphoto.com – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=164597203)

and the Gang-gang Cockatoo into third place.

Two young Gang-gang Cockatoos (male on the left, female on the right) Photo by By David Cook Wildlife Photography – originally posted to Flickr as Gang-gang Cockatoos (Callocephalon fimbriatum), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6025730

The Gang-gang Cockatoo is said to have a call that sounds like a rusty gate hinge….see what you think. It certainly woke up my foster cats!

Anyhoo, what’s lovely about this Australian competition is that, this year, over 300,000 people voted – it means that, for a brief period at least, 300,000 Australians thought about birds long enough to decide which one to vote for. Furthermore, all the birds in the top three are endangered or critically endangered, so it gives all of them a bit of much-needed publicity. So what’s not to like? Maybe we should try something similar here.

And have a look at this cartoon on the subject of Bird of the Year  – if you haven’t come across it before, ‘First Dog on the Moon’ is a most excellent cartoon strip.In fact, there’s another Bird of the Year cartoon here too. And as someone with a great love of trees, I also appreciated this one. See what you think!