Have you ever seen a gang-gang cockatoo?
They're hard to mistake with their bright pink faces and sooty grey wings and they are found through south-eastern Australia. They feature on the ACT animal emblem.
Sadly, the iconic bird could be in trouble after the Threatened Species Scientific Committee recommended it be listed as endangered.
But there is hope that a new citizen science project on the NSW South Coast will help save the precious bird with ecologists like Michael Mulvaney calling on everyone across the state to get involved.
"It's up to us to make sure we can keep the gang-gang."
"We really want to get inundated with thousands of photos to make the research work."
The project hoped to encourage people to look out for and take a photo of gang-gang nesting sites or hollows to upload to citizen scientist site "iNaturalist."
Nearly 70 per cent decline
While gang-gang numbers have remained steady in Canberra for the last 30 years, other areas have seen significant declines.
Professor Sarah Legge is part of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee that recently recommended the small cockatoo should be listed as endangered.
She said the population has seen a dramatic decline in the past few decades across areas of NSW.
"We think that they were declining before the fires already as a result of climate change-related factors," Professor Sarah Legge said.
Committee member of Far South Coast Birdwatching Leo Berzins said the more people looking out for birds, the better.
"You take some of the common birds for granted and a few years later you like and think 'why aren't they around as much as they used to be.'"
"And before long, they're on an endangered list."
The citizen science project to track gang-gangs will start up across the South East of NSW next week after been launched in Canberra four years ago.
