In arid inland Australia lives one of Australia's rarest birds: the night parrot. Missing for more than a century, a live population was rediscovered in 2013. But the species remains elusive.
Authors
Rachel Paltridge
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, ecology, The University of Western Australia
Clifford Sunfly
Ngururrpa Ranger, Indigenous Knowledge
Nicholas Leseberg
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland
Until recently, Australia's known night parrot population numbered in the tens of birds, scattered across desert in Queensland and Western Australia.
But our research team - consisting of Indigenous rangers and scientists - has made a breakthrough discovery. We've detected the largest known night parrot population in the world: perhaps as many as 50, living in WA's Great Sandy Desert, on land managed by the Ngururrpa people. Our results are published today.
Urgent action is needed to protect these vulnerable populations and ensure the night parrot doesn't go missing a second time, perhaps for good.
A highly mysterious species
The night parrot was once found throughout Australia's arid inland, but its numbers plummeted in the late 19th century.
The bird was not definitely recorded for more than 100 years, until a dead bird was found near Boulia in western Queensland in 1990. Another dead bird was found in Diamantina National Park, also in western Queensland, in 2006.
In 2013 a small population was found by naturalist John Young in south-western Queensland. That area is now a wildlife reserve.
Night parrots are notoriously difficult to detect. They build tunnels in dense spinifex and hide there by day, emerging at night to forage. They are known only from populations in remote south-west Queensland and central and northern Western Australia. The species is critically endangered.
In Western Australia, Indigenous cultural knowledge about the species includes stories about how difficult the bird is to find. There are also whispered stories of mothers telling children the night parrot's call was the sound of an evil spirit, and warning them not to stray from camp.
What we did
The Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area is in the Great Sandy Desert. It comprises vast areas of sandplains and dunefields, and smaller areas of floodplain and spinifex which are key night parrot habitats.
Ngururrpa Rangers worked with scientists to learn how to use sound recorders to search for night parrots. We then searched for the birds on Country between 2018 and 2023.
We combined the rangers' detailed knowledge of habitats, water and seed resources with geology maps, satellite imagery and fire history data. From this we selected 31 potential roosting areas, then deployed sound recorders called "songmeters" at those sites.
We wanted to detect the night parrots' distinctive calls which consist of whistles, croaks and bell-like sounds.
The acoustic data we gathered was then analysed to extract any bird calls in the night parrot's frequency range. Potential detections were verified using a reference library of known night parrot calls.
Our results
We detected night parrot calls at 17 of 31 sites. Of these, ten were roost sites, where night parrot calls were detected in the hour after sunset and the hour before sunrise.
Individual night parrots are thought to have unique calls. We analysed how many different calls we could hear, and how loud they were (which can tell us when birds are calling from different locations). From this we built a picture of the identity and number of individuals regularly occupying a site.
We extrapolated this across the 58 patches of potential night parrot habitat on the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area. We concluded up to 20 roosting areas may be occupied by night parrots.
Based on the numbers at roosting sites where we recorded calls, we estimate 40-50 night parrots could be present in the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area.
Fire and predators pose grave threats
Once we found the night parrot populations, we wanted to know what threats they faced.
We used camera-traps to identify predators and also collected their scats (poos) to analyse their diets.
Dingoes were the predator detected most frequently in night parrot roosting habitat. Our cameras captured them ten times more often than feral cats. And we found dingoes regularly eat feral cats at night parrot sites.
Based on information from other areas, we suspect cats are a key predator of night parrots. Dingoes could be important in suppressing cat numbers and helping the parrots survive. So, attempts to limit predators in night parrot habitat should not harm dingoes.
We also analysed 40 years of satellite imagery to assess the threat of fire to night parrots' roosting habitat. Based on the vegetation types and flammability of surrounding landscapes, we found bushfires sparked by lightning are a much bigger threat to night parrots in the Great Sandy Desert than in Queensland.
Strategic aerial and ground burning, to reduce fuel loads, already occurs in the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area. As our knowledge of night parrots improves, these programs can become more targeted to protect key night parrot areas.
Keeping night parrots alive
A long-term monitoring program for night parrots on Ngururrpa Country should be established to help better understand and protect this vitally important population.
And the remote, wild nature of the landscape should be retained. This means minimising disturbance from people and vehicles, and continuing to exclude livestock and weeds.
Clifford Sunfly has articulated how the rangers want to help protect night parrots into the future:
We would like to spend more time on Country to find where [night parrots] are and understand what they are doing.
We want those scientists to come and help us catch some night parrots and tag them. We also need more snake-cams (inspection cameras) too and more songmeters. And a kit for collecting scats for DNA.
One day we would love to have our own research facility for doing our night parrot surveys. It would be our dream to have our own research base on Ngururrpa.
Rachel Paltridge receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program's Resilient Landscapes Hub, and the Indigenous Desert Alliance.
Clifford Sunfly is a Ngururrpa Ranger. The ranger program receives funding from the WA government's Aboriginal Ranger Program and the State NRM Program.
Nicholas Leseberg receives funding from the Australian and Queensland Governments. He works for Bush Heritage Australia, and as a consultant on night parrots for many projects.
