A University of New South Wales research team calculates, there are 50 billion individual wild birds and more than 9,700 (nine thousand and seven hundred) different bird species in the world.
The researchers used data collected by 600,000 six hundred thousand citizen scientists to come to the figure in the world-first study.
The findings show there are about six birds per human being on the planet and there are only four species with a population greater than one billion.