Achievements and History

Awards

• 2008 Eureka Prize Winner: Alan Strom Eureka Prize for Sustainability Education
• 2007 Eureka Prize Finalist: Alan Strom Eureka Prize for Sustainability Education
• 2007 Commendation, Premiers Public Sector Awards “Environment for Living
• 2006 Honorable Mention Best Research Site “Best of the Web” Awards, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Achievements and History

• 1998 Conceived:  Birds in Backyards was first conceived by members of Birds Australia early in 1998. By the end of that year a Steering Committee had been appointed and seeding funds of $6,000 obtained through the NSW Twitchathon.
• 2000  The first research module was undertaken throughout Sydney which included community participation
• 2001–2004  Research:  was directly involved with several research activities in association with Universities of Sydney and Wollongong.  These were mostly a part of either Honors or PhD degrees with extra funding from individual donations
• 2001–2004 Community Education: Most research involved community education components, predominantly the collection and submission of data.
• 2003 ABC Gardening Australia Exhibition: in association with NSW NPWS and the Australian Museum. Estimated direct contact with over 5000 individuals was made (12% of total attendees) and prolonged contact with 1150 individuals.
• 2005 Partnership Agreement with Australian Museum and launch of website: http://www.birdsinbackyards.net
• 2006-2007 The “Best Practice Guidelines for the Enhancement of Urban Bird Habitat:” Funded by the NSW Environment Trust.  These Guidelines are now present on the website.  They form the basis for ongoing workshops that continue to be conducted for Councils and community throughout NSW.
• 2007 Program Manager employed: Dr Holly Parsons, employed by Birds Australia, with annual funding provided by a family and member of Birds Australia.
• 2008-2009 Sharing Spaces: Dissemination of the Guidelines for Urban Bird Habitat This project was also funded by the NSW Environment Trust as an extension of the 2006-7 Project, at their request. Workshops were conducted for both Council workers and community in six major NSW townships including Nowra, Dubbo, Wagga Wagga and Tamworth
• 2010 Partnership with Australian Museum renegotiated: Agreement to continue to work together in association.  This Partnership was a very useful and important step forward for the program and the support given by the Australian Museum much appreciated by Birds Australia.
• 2010-2018 BIGUB: Birds in Backyards was invited to become a founding member of BIGUB – Birdlife International Urban Bird Working Group. The first meeting of this group was held in Leiden, The Netherlands. The second meeting took place in Auckland, New Zealand in October 2011. Birds in Backyards attended the fifth meeting in Almere, The Netherlands in March 2017.
• 2010-2011 “Does Biodiversity Work? A Case Study Using Urban Birds”: Funded by the NSW Environmental Trust. This project will evaluate the effectiveness to change behaviours, will provide an evaluation package useful for projects other than BIBY as well as those that are utilising or are within BIBY
• 2007-ongoing Face to Face Work: Over 100 interactive workshops, presentations and seminars have been conducted for a variety of audiences (e.g. local councils, bird clubs, garden clubs, scientific and education conferences) predominantly in the greater Sydney area but also at conferences and events throughout the country.
• 2011 - ongoing The Powerful Owl Project: A pilot project was conducted over the 2011 breeding season with funding from the NSW Environmental Trust and the BASNA Twitchathon awarded to expand the project in 2012. The project is still ongoing and funded by the NSW Environment Trust's Lead Community grants.
• 2012 Re-launch of the Birds in Backyards Website
• 2014-2015 Birds in Schools Sydney: A fabulous 18 month project involving 16 primary schools throughout Sydney. We worked with Year 5 and 6 students as well as a brilliant team of volunteers to teach the students how to identify birds and monitor them on their school grounds. The students analysed their results and created an Action Plan to help protect their local birds. We created bird-friendly gardens on 9 of those schools.
• 2014-2015 Bathing Birds: We partnered with National Parks Association of NSW and the University of Sydney to conduct a summer and winter survey whereby citizen scientists recorded the birds visiting their bird baths.
• 2017 Backyard Bird surveys join Birdata
• 2018 Celebrating 20 years: Birds in Backyards celebrates 20 years under the enthusiasm of Program Co-Managers Dr Holly Parsons (in Sydney) and Dr Monica Awasthy (in Brisbane)
• 2018 Birds in Schools North Queensland: We are working with schools in Mackay, Townsville and Cairns.