Tasmania’s most common birds: a long way from home but here to stay

The results are in from a national citizen science project that counted birds around the country, revealing the most common birds in Tasmania are a tenacious legacy of colonial times

Blue Wren, a rare sight on mainland Australia but relatively common in Tasmania.

A COUNT of backyard birds in Tasmania has found most of them originally came from a long way away.

The results of the “Aussie Bird Count” show the top three most spotted birds in Tasmania are introduced species.

In top spot is the house sparrow, followed by the common starling and the common blackbird.

Tasmania spotted almost 7976 house sparrows during the count in October, 6372 common starlings and 6363 common blackbirds.

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BirdLife Tasmania convener Eric Woehler said the fact all three top spots were taken by non-native species was a reflection of the adaptive ability of the birds, originally brought from Britain by early colonists.

But they were now here to stay.

“They are part of the ecosystem now,” Dr Woehler said.

Dr Woehler said it was heartening to see the next most common birds were native species: silver gulls (spotted 5994 times) and superb fairy wrens (3967).

The superb fairy wren has been voted as Australia’s favourite bird. Picture: SUPPLIED

“It’s nice to see these birds at least poking their noses into the top five,” he said.

The annual Bird Week tally count created an entirely different national picture, where the top five most common birds were: rainbow lorikeets, noisy miners, Australian magpies, sulphur-crested cockatoos and house sparrows.

In Tasmania, rainbow lorikeets were in 57th position. The birds are an introduced species in Tasmania and experts warn they could pose a threat if numbers build up.

The count asked citizen scientists across Australia to log sightings of birds in their backyards.

Organisers said there would be a particular focus on the nation’s favourite bird, the superb fairywren (or blue wren), which is seen more often in Tasmanian backyards than nationally (where it ranked number 21).

A total of 83,129 birds were counted in Tasmania over the week-long count.

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