PRESS RELEASE

Today, 24 May, the month-long internet-based Birdeurovision voting for the sweetest bird song of Europe ended. The public vote favoured the non-song birdcall of the Golden Plover. But through the attention to birds that the competition has brought, friends of nature all over the world were the winners.

After the Golden Plover Europeans rated highly the beautiful songs of Bluethroat (Belgium) and European Oystercatcher (Faroe Islands).

Simultaneous with the public voting via the Internet, a jury of European ornithologists voted for their favourite, giving points to the candidates based on the same system as is used in the peoples Eurovision song contest.

The chart of the European ornithologists’ has the Thrush Nightingale, the bird selected by internet vote to represent Estonia, at the top.

During the one-month voting period nearly 400,000 hits were made on the contest’s internet site. On the homepage www.birdeurovision.org one could listen to the songs of the feathered artists from 21 European countries. The artists were judged based on a 30-second bird song or call recording submitted by each country’s bird societies.

Robert Oetjen, Chairman of the Executive Committee of Estonian Fund for Nature said, “important is that tens of thousands of Europeans discovered, in the background of a pop music event, their small, but musically very talented bird neighbors. It’s possible that a large number of visitors of the internet site www.birdeurovision.org learned for the first time to distinguish the songs of the Blackbird from the Thrush Nightingale and heard the calls of the Golden Plover for the fist time.”

The purpose for organising the Birdeurovision song contest has been to draw attention of the Estonian and European public to the diversity of birds that are living beside us and to the need for their protection.

Estonia is very important site in Europe for migrating birds. Every spring and autumn about 10 million migratory birds stop in Estonia, which is many times more than the number of tourists visiting Estonia.

Estonian Post released a special post card, which portrays all 21 birds participating in the birdeurovision contest and for which the postage cost for sending to any country in the world is included in the price.

The organising of Birdeurovision cost approximately 12,500 EUR. The internet homepage www.birdeurovision.org was visited 400,000 times, and votes were registered 30,000 times.

Organisers of the event thank Estonian Television, Estonian Post, Tallinn Zoo and all of the participating ornithological societies from 20 European countries for supporting the event.

Birdeurovision was organised by the Estonian Fund for Nature, the Estonian Ornithological Society, and the telecommunications company TELE2.

The Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF) is an non-profit independent environmental organisation working in nature conservation, nature education and sustainable development projects. ELF is the partner organisation of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Estonia. Info: www.elfond.ee, elf@elfond.ee

The Estonian Ornithological Society is a non-profit Estonian bird protection organisation and the Estonian partner of the international bird protection network Birdlife International. Info: www.eoy.ee

Tele2 is the leading alternative pan-European telecommunications company offering fixed and mobile telephony, data network and Internet services to 15.8 million people in 21 countries. Info: www.tele2.ee

Press conference presenters:
Robert Oetjen – Estonian Fund for Nature, Chairman of the Executive Committee
Mati Kaal – Tallinn Zoo, Director
Mati Kose – Estonian Ornithological Society
Andres Jõesaar – TELE2, Director of E-commerce