A common and well-loved bird of bush and garden could go extinct within 30-40 years due to the weather impacts of climate change, researchers say.

Data derived from nearly 30 years of weekly observations tracked the lives of superb fairy wrens in Canberra’s botanic gardens, noting the changing weather’s impacts on them.

The wren was twice voted Australia’s favourite bird, in the 2013 and the 2021 Guardian/BirdLife Australia bird of the year polls.

However researchers warn it might be a “canary in a coalmine” for many lesser-known species facing similar climate change threats.

James Cook University ecologist Martijn van de Pol was the senior author of the study, conducted with the Australian National University and Hainan University in China.

The longtime observations by researcher Helen Osmond showed that impacts of different types of weather had a cumulative effect on the birds’ survival prospects, Van de Pol said.

“What’s really dangerous for these birds is that there are all these climate impacts throughout the year and together they start to add up and affect them.

“We suspect it will be the case in other common species but we don’t have the detailed data for them.”

The superb wren was a common species but now the researchers predict it will go extinct very quickly.

The paper found “population extinction is likely to happen very fast; within the next 30–40 years in the intermediate and very high [carbon] emission scenario”.

“Using various climate models, we found that human-induced climate change is likely to cause a high risk of population extinction within the next 50 years, even with optimistic emission scenarios,” Van de Pol said.

“The wren suffered low breeding success during dry springs and reduced adult survival following unusually warm winters and hot summers.”

Dr Holly Parsons, a manager of priority sites at BirdLife Australia, said many Australians felt a connection to the species, which was “cute”, “colourful” and fun to watch hopping around on the lawn.

Superb fairy wrens occurred in south-eastern Australia, including many towns and cities, she said. In addition to the threat of climate change, their small size made them vulnerable to predators like cats and foxes. Urban development has also encroached on their habitat.

“As we have built bigger houses on smaller blocks, as we sort of tidy up - remove the sort of habitat they like, which is lots of dense shrubby areas – we’ve seen that the species is much less common in our urban areas than they once were,” Parsons, who was not involved with the study, said.

The paper revealed climate change impacts across all of the bird’s life stages, which was “quite alarming” for a species thought to be relatively common, she said.

People thought rare birds were the ones to be concerned about, Van de Pol said.

“But the common species are also declining a lot and we might need to start worrying about them as well.”

The findings echo widespread declines in insect-eating birds across Europe and North America, where species reliant on that food source have suffered the steepest losses as insect numbers decline.

“Hopefully it’s a wake-up call for people because we share our space with our wildlife,” Parsons said. “When we’re seeing serious threats to our common birds, you know it’s just the tip of the iceberg as to what’s happening amongst wildlife as a whole.”

Climate change needed to be addressed, she said, but there were also steps people could take to help their local birds, including making water available and adding plants and dense shrubs to provide shelter from the heat.