Birds with Altitude 2024 Challenge Competition winner

Ceri Pearce | Birds with Altitude Project Leader

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2024 Birds with Altitude Challenge Competition is:

🏆 Margaret Muoio 🏆

As the competition winner, Margaret will enjoy a two-hour cruise on the Daintree River with the renowned Daintree River Boatman, Murray Hunt. 

This prize offers a chance to explore the natural beauty and iconic wildlife of the spectacular Daintree River.

Margaret Muoio (right) with birding friend Elinor Scambler (left). Photo by Heather Lazarus.

Margaret is relatively new to birding but is eager to learn and contribute. This is clearly demonstrated by the number of bird surveys she completed in the Atherton Tablelands Key Biodiversity Area (KBA). At several sites, Margaret undertook repeat surveys monthly, adding value to the site data she collected.

As a granddaughter of renowned local birdwatcher, Jim Bravery (1896–1975), a love for birding clearly runs in Margaret’s family. Jim Bravery is especially remembered for his significant contribution as a bird observer, noting and reporting on local bird species, numbers and behaviour, and notably for reporting the first Sarus Cranes on the Atherton Tablelands in 1970.

Margaret received her prize at the BirdLife Northern Queensland Annual General Meeting and Award Ceremony held at Cominos House, Cairns on 13 April 2025. Read more here.

Ceri Pearce (left), Margaret Muoio (centre with her Award Certificate) and Elinor Scambler. Photo by Lindsay Fisher.

Congratulations once again to Margaret Muoio on her win!

A special thank you also goes out to the 28 competition participants who completed 2ha 20-minute bird surveys, and/or 500m area search bird surveys, across the five Wet Tropics Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA). These areas include the Atherton Tablelands, Coastal Wet Tropics, Daintree, Paluma, and Wooroonooran KBAs. All survey data was entered into the Birdata app in 2025.

We’d also like to acknowledge the support of the many volunteers who assisted our 28 Birdata contributors. Some groups were as large as 10–20 people, such as during the Malanda Bioblitz.

In total, 226 bird surveys were completed in the Wet Tropics Key Biodiversity Areas in 2024. While slightly less than the 239 surveys completed in 2023, this is still an excellent outcome given the significant regional flooding in December 2023, and the prolonged impact it had on road access to many national park and conservation area birding sites.

A heartfelt thank you to Murray Hunt, the esteemed owner-operator of Daintree Boatman Wildlife Cruises, for his generous support of the Birds With Altitude Project.

For more information about the Birds With Altitude Project visit the project page here.