Bird of the year is an antidote to an increasingly grim news cycle, and a celebration of Australia’s extraordinary and unique native wildlife. But it’s also a numbers game.

Taking history as a guide, more than 300,000 votes could be lodged over nine days, starting at 6am AEDT on 6 October, as people from across the globe vote for their favourite Australian bird species for 2025.

The victorious aviator (assuming it is a bird that flies – likely, but not guaranteed) will be elevated alongside previous winners: the Australian magpie, the black-throated finch, the superb fairy-wren and 2023’s champion, the swift parrot.

Australia has about 850 native bird species. Nearly half are not found anywhere else on the planet. That total has been whittled down to 50 for this year’s voting, based in part on thousands of reader nominations.

While you are thinking about how to vote, here are some other numbers to consider.

A growing number of bird species are not in a great way. The federal government lists 164 as threatened. According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, 11 birds have been added to the list since the last bird of the year vote two years ago.

At least 22 species and subspecies have already been driven to extinction, mostly in the decades after European colonisation.

Most pressingly, there are 18 bird species listed as critically endangered, placing them just one step from lost. They include some bird-of-the-year perennials: the regent honeyeater, the far eastern curlew and the swift and orange-bellied parrots. They may soon be joined by others, such as Baudin’s black cockatoo.

Hopefully, what to do to save them – and the roughly 2,000 other species and ecological communities considered at risk – will be at the centre of the Albanese government’s work to overhaul the national nature law later this year.

Why this matters, and what birds mean to people, has already been the focus of a wave of scene-setting stories, photos, videos and artwork on the Guardian over the past three weeks. There’s plenty more to come.

But, for now, the number to focus on is: one.

Each day, everyone has one vote to allocate to their favourite bird that remains in the competition.

At the end of each day, the five birds that received the fewest votes will be removed from the race. The final round of voting will take place on Tuesday the 14th, when just 10 birds will remain. That voting closes at 6am on Wednesday the 15th.

The winner will be announced in a live stream at midday the following day.

In the words of BirdLife Australia’s Sean Dooley – a driving force behind bird of the year – the next week-and-a-bit will be a “joyous celebration of the birds that save us” and a “rallying cry for us to work harder to save them”.

It should also be plenty of fun. Time to get voting.