What birds are up to this autumn — and how you can help them

As winter approaches, birds across Australia are on the move — but migration in Australia is far more complex than the epic journeys typical of Russia and the Americas. New research from the University of Queensland has uncovered a hidden world of flexible, short-distance and altitudinal migrations using weather radar. See what you can do to help birds navigate safely.

Approaching winter means that many birds are starting their seasonal migration. When you think of bird migration, the Eastern Curlew might come to mind, travelling extremely long distances from Russia to the eastern seaboard of Australia. But the truth is, there’s so much more to bird migration than massive feats like that of the curlew.

A paper from the Fuller Lab at UQ in 2024 discovered a very clever way to study bird migration in Australia. They used data from 10 weather radars across the eastern coastline, collected over 16 years, to reveal some complex secrets of Australian birds.

It turns out, dozens of Aussie birds take advantage of seasonal changes across the continent throughout the year. There are latitudinal migrants, travelling north-south, such as robins, fantails and silvereyes, but there are also altitudinal migrants, travelling up and down in elevation, such as Noisy Pittas. The altitudinal movements of birds occurred mostly below 600m above sea level. Most bird movements occur in the autumn and spring, but most Australian land birds travel relatively short distances, rather than being long-distance migrants.

So how does this compare to bird migration in the Americas? Well, in Australia we have far greater variability in the direction and magnitude of bird migration. With our diverse and variable environments, our birds need to be flexible in their movement patterns, adjusting their timing, distance and even deciding whether to migrate at all each year!

The incredible thing about this study is that it reveals the timing, routes and amount of bird migration — something that banding, tracking and observational data could not do. All while using existing data: weather radar!

Quick-flying birds, such as kingfishers, are particularly vulnerable to accidentally striking windows. They make up 30% of the reported window strikes across Australia (out of 177 strike events reported). Fruit-eating doves and cuckoos come in next at 9% of window strikes. These are preventable deaths — all we need to do is either keep our windows dirty (so the birds recognise them as not being a clear flight path), or add vertical stripes (using stickers or temporary window-paint pen), 5–10cm apart throughout problematic windows.

Click here for our guide to preventing bird strike. Make your windows bird safe. Shop our Anti-collision Bird Stickers.