To see how much our city's environment has changed in recent years, one need only to look out the window.
Canberra's backyards have always harboured plenty of birds. This has long been recognised by Canberra's enthusiastic community of birdwatchers and ornithologists. Thanks to these knowledgeable locals and other organisations, such as Birds Australia, we have a wealth of publicly available backyard bird survey data spanning over 50 years. What this data shows us is how much our own backyard has changed in the last few decades.
To illustrate this point, we can compare observations taken from backyard bird surveys over the past five years (2015 - 2020) with backyard surveys taken 30 years ago (1985 - 1990). Some birds of course are relatively unaffected by the winds of change: magpies, galahs and wattlebirds, for example, remain roughly as abundant today as they did 30 years ago. But this is only a superficial view of our local avifauna. While the currawong has and still is one of the most abundant species, its annual migration to the mountains around Canberra is a memory.
In the 1980's, the two most common birds in our backyards were introduced species (the common starling and the house sparrow). These species are far less common nowadays, and are not even among the 10 most common species seen in our backyards. The cause, or causes, of this decline in introduced species can be debated, but is a positive outcome for our native species.
Other species have colonised Canberra from the arid west, capitalising on a drying landscape. The crested pigeon, the superb parrot and both little and long billed corellas were once so rare in the ACT that the Canberra Ornithologists Group asked people to report any sighting. Now, we see these birds in our neighbourhoods on a daily basis. It is no coincidence that all three of these species are arid country specialists.
Other species are colonising Canberra from coastal regions. This includes a stark increase in the abundance of the common koel, now often heard during summer. Whether the recent visits by rainbow lorikeets will follow a similar path remains to be seen.
Other species are in decline, like many species of honeyeater, which were once common in backyards, and are now confined to the Murrumbidgee river corridor.
Canberra's title as the bush capital has adorned the city with abundant bird life, something which we should see as a privilege as it enriches our daily lives. But with a changing climate and five million hectares of burnt country, Canberra's birds are showing us in no uncertain terms the ongoing changes to our environment.
They rely on our backyards amongst an uncertain future.
