Mysterious Australian Night Parrots may not see in the dead of night

Australia's most elusive bird, the Night Parrot, may not be much better at seeing in the dark than other parrots active during the day

Date: June 9, 2020

Source: Flinders University

Australia's most elusive bird, the Night Parrot, may not be much better at seeing in the dark than other parrots active during the day.

An international study, co-led by Flinders University's Dr Vera Weisbecker, has revealed the critically endangered parrot's visual system is not as well-adapted to life in the dark as would be expected for a nocturnal bird, raising concerns it might be adversely impacted by fencing in the Australian outback.

"Night Parrots must be able to find their way at night -- to find food, avoid obstacles while flying, and escape predators," says Dr Weisbecker.

"We therefore expect their visual system to show adaptations for seeing in the dark, similar to other nocturnal birds -- New Zealand's Kakapo parrot and owls with enlarged eyes for example. However, we found that this wasn't the case."

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Night parrot's Kimberley location under wraps after rare bird snapped for just the second time

By Eliza Borrello

Posted Fri at 10:36pm

The night parrot has been dubbed one of the world's most mysterious birds.

It is endangered and known to exist in very small numbers in Western Queensland.

But in October, Indigenous rangers in Western Australia's Kimberley region captured the second-known photo of the bird in the Great Sandy Desert in just over a year.

Paruku ranger coordinator Jamie Brown said they were keeping the exact location of their discovery a secret, in order to protect the species.

"We're keeping it under the mat sort of thing … because it was so popular and everyone's looking for it, we were just a bit frightened of a big wave of people just coming in and just looking everywhere and trying to find it," he said.

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Loss of second night parrot triggers calls for action

GREG ROBERTS

The Australian

12:00AM March 10, 2018

A second critically endangered night parrot disappeared after its mate vanished when it was caught and fitted with a radio transmitter by a team of experts charged with saving the birds from extinction.

The revelation prompted calls for the federal government to sack the night parrot recovery team and appoint a senior public servant to oversee the conservation program. The night parrot is one of the rarest birds in the world. It had scarcely been reported for more than a century before naturalist John Young photographed one in Queensland in 2013.

A pair of night parrots was discovered in Western Australia last March. The Weekend Australian reported last week that recovery team chief Allan Burbidge led an expedition to the site five months later. The team caught one of the parrots and fitted it with a transmitter, but no trace of the bird was found subsequently. ­Recovery team sources said for the next three nights, a second parrot called frequently at the site in search of its mate. The second bird then evidently vanished.

Dr Burbidge says the transmitter failed, and there is no evidence the bird fled because it was traumatised, or fell victim to a predator because it was injured or encumbered by the device. But one of his team, Tasmanian zoologist Mark Holdsworth, said it was possible the parrot perished. “That couldn’t be ruled out.” he said.

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Rare night parrot vanishes after intervention by recovery team

GREG ROBERTS

The Australian

12:00AM February 24, 2018

A critically endangered night parrot disappeared after being fitted with a radio transmitter by a team of experts charged with saving the birds from extinction.

No surveys were undertaken to determine how many parrots there were in the remote East Murchison area of Western Australia before the parrot recovery team netted the bird.

The news emerged as it was ­revealed almost half the nests of night parrots discovered in Queensland were abandoned after being discovered by ­scientists. Critics say mis­directed, if well-meaning, interference in managing the species may contribute to its demise.

The parrot was once widespread across Australia, but numbers plummeted from the late-1800s. The first photograph of a night parrot was taken only in 2013, by naturalist John Young.

As few as 20 night parrots survive in a small area near Pullen Pullen Reserve in western Queensland where Mr Young took his photographs. Three nests uncovered by scientists working for Bush Heritage Australia, which owns Pullen Pullen, subsequently failed to produce offspring. BHA says one nest failed due to heat stress; a snake is believed to have eaten the eggs in another nest; and it is not known why a single chick in the third nest died. A BHA spokeswoman said five other nests successfully produced birds.

In March last year, the night parrot was discovered at the East Murchison site in WA by four ornithologists. Details of the site were sent to recovery team head Allan Burbidge, who led an expedition to the area last August.

Dr Burbidge and his team strung fine nets in an area of spinifex where ornithologist Bruce Greatwich has photographed a night parrot. ­Researchers walked through the spinifex in a line, hoping to drive parrots from their day roosts into the nets.

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Baby night parrot sighted in drought-ridden outback Queensland puzzles researchers

By Eric Barker and Melanie Groves

Posted about 11 hours ago

The sighting of a newly-hatched night parrot in drought-ridden western Queensland has surprised researchers, raising more questions than answers.

The bird, thought to be two to three months old in December, was photographed on Pullen Pullen reserve by PhD candidate Nicolas Leseberg, who has been studying the elusive species for the past two years.

"It's really interesting that even though it had been a really dry year that this desert bird was still willing to keep breeding," Mr Leseberg said.

"Based on its age we can tell that it was born around September and in the area there'd been no serious rain for seven, eight or even nine months."

Baby night parrots were last sighted in November 2016 after the area had received extensive winter rain.

"That was the first time a baby had ever been photographed and that was fascinating but that was sort of expected," Mr Leseberg said.

More questions than answers

The night parrot was considered extinct for more than 75 years but in 2013 it was rediscovered at Pullen Pullen nature reserve, a location that has been kept secret.

The 56,000-hectare property in western Queensland has been designated specifically for the purpose of protecting the parrot.

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Presumed extinct, night parrot colony uncovered near Lake Eyre

A SIMPLE feather found in the lining of a bird’s nest near Lake Eyre has stunned the nation’s scientists and rewritten a part of our state’s history.

Jade Gailberger

The AdvertiserSEPTEMBER 14, 20178:19AM

A SIMPLE feather found in the lining of a bird’s nest near Lake Eyre has stunned the nation’s scientists and rewritten a part of our state’s history.

The feather led to the discovery of a night parrot population — a bird presumed extinct with no recorded sighting in South Australia for more than a century.

It is one of Australia’s most mysterious birds. Australian Wildlife Conservancy ecologists made the discovery in July after using a helicopter to fly over 600km of land in search of its prospective habitat.

Conservancy chief Atticus Fleming said: “While it’s been rediscovered after effectively having gone missing for 100 years, its probably cryptic as much as it is endangered.”

The first sign of the night parrot occurred during an annual ecological audit of the Kalamurina Wildlife Sanctuary in 2016, when a camera trap picked up a shape replicating the bird.

Ecologist John Young, who rediscovered the Night Parrot in Queensland a few years earlier, knew the shape was not clear enough to be certain, and looked at historical records.

In 1883, night parrots had been recorded in similar samphire — plants associated with water — habitat near Lake Eyre.

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Rare ‘night parrot’ sighted in Western Australia

Calla Wahlquist
March 24, 2017 00:00 IST
Updated: March 24, 2017 04:21 IST

The discovery was made by a group of friends determined to spot the bird thought to be extinct

A night parrot has been photographed in Western Australia, adding another twist to the mysterious history of the species that was presumed extinct until it was rediscovered in Queensland four years ago .

It is the first verified sighting of the bird in WA for almost 100 years and follows a history of unverified sightings, disbelieved reports and futile ecological surveys that rivals the hunt for the (presumably still) extinct Thylacine in Tasmania.

The discovery was made by a group of four friends from Broome who have dedicated the better part of seven years to locating the bird, examining detailed maps, trekking into likely habitats, and spending evenings in the state’s arid interior listening for unusual bird calls.

“The calls to us were unfamiliar,” one of the group, Bruce Greatwich, said. “We are quite experienced in these habitats so to hear something new was quite exciting.”

The calls were different to those recorded in the Queensland night parrot population, described by researchers in 2005 as “a ‘ding-ding’ call similar to that of a bell miner” followed by “a short frog-like ‘grieet’,” but were enough to indicate the bird might be present.

The next morning a night parrot darted out in front of one of the group, George Swann, while he was walking through spinifex looking for entirely different birds.

It was green and yellow with black barred feathers. The common description is of a big, dumpy budgerigar, about the same size as a rainbow lorikeet.

Cameras at the ready

“We were able to go down and re-find it and we had our cameras at the ready to get a photo,” Mr. Greatwich said.

Ordinarily, he added, they would never disturb a nocturnal bird in the daytime, “but in this instance we knew we had to get a photo”.



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Night parrot population discovered in Queensland national park

Discovery of elusive bird, thought to be extinct for a century until 2013, leads scientists to believe the ‘dumpy budgerigar’ may be more common than thought

A large population of night parrots have been discovered in Queensland’s Diamantina 

Calla Wahlquist

Tuesday 25 October 2016 07.10 BST Last modified on Tuesday 25 October 2016 07.11 BST

The elusive night parrot has been recorded in Diamantina national park in central-west Queensland, expanding its known range and leading scientists to believe it may not be as rare as previously thought.

The bird, described by Bush Heritage Australia’s Jim Radford as a “dumpy budgerigar” or a “podgy, sort of smallish, green and yellow parrot”, was thought to be extinct for more than 100 years before ornithologist John Young managed to photograph it in 2013. 

That discovery was made on an area of reclaimed pastoral lease now known as Pullen Pullen nature reserve.

This month, another team of researchers from the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, led by Young, announced they had found what they believe to be a larger population of night parrots in the nearby national park.

The birds were discovered as part of a broader survey of threatened species in the park. Researchers made seven records of the bird this year: four sightings, three of which included nests with eggs, and three recorded calls.

“My immediate reaction was excitement – this is great, there are more birds out there than we thought,” Atticus Fleming, chief executive of AWC told Guardian Australia.

“But when you start to analyse it, the really significant thing about this is that these birds may be more common than we thought. That is something that we will be developing in the next few years as the study extends into other areas.” 

The parrots were discovered in an area of the park bordered by the Diamantina and Mayne rivers. 

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Scientists take first picture of night parrot nest. But who ate the eggs?

Bridie Smith

Scientists confronted the crime scene before them with disbelief. There was no mistaking it. Precious lives had been lost here in Queensland's vast, isolated desert. But what or who was behind this outback murder-mystery?

Days earlier ecologist Steve Murphy had knelt down and peered through a scrubby spinifex tunnel to a nursery stocked with two eggs.

Ecologists from Bush Heritage Australia are working to create a safe place for the one-of-a-kind parrot found in Queensland.

This was the first time since the 1880s that anyone had seen an active nest belonging to a night parrot, one of the world's most elusive birds.

It was a big deal. The eggs promised new life. And new life promised a boost to the prospects of the endangered night parrot, which until 2013 hadn't been recorded for 75 years and was believed extinct.

But the promise would never be fulfilled. Six days later Dr Murphy discovered the nest had been raided; the contents of both porcelain-white eggs plundered.

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Secret reserve for rare Qld parrot

April 16, 2016 8:27pm

AAP

Secret reserve for rare Qld parrot

An elusive outback parrot barely seen for a century will now have a secret reserve dedicated to its survival.

The low-flying night parrot was thought extinct, virtually disappearing in the 1900s with only fleeting sightings in the past three decades.

That was until a chance photo resulted in the capture of the nocturnal bird in April last year.

This week, government approval for a 56,000 hectare sanctuary in southwestern Queensland was granted to Bush Heritage Australia to safeguard the rare bird.

It will be fitted with a handful of surveillance cameras to deter poachers, as well as traps to keep feral animals at bay.

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Parrot Feared Extinct For 100 Years Is Found

The night parrot, believed extinct since the last confirmed sighting in 1912, is found to be alive in arid desert in Queensland.

10:45, UK,Tuesday 11 August 2015

A breed of parrot thought to be extinct since the early 20th century has been rediscovered.

Scientists in the Australian state of Queensland had long believed the rare night parrot was no more.

The breed, endemic to Australia, was feared extinct after there were no recorded sightings after 1912.

The discovery of two dead birds between 1990 and 2006 only added to the belief that the parrot was no more.

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Night parrot conservation reserve created in Queensland for endangered and elusive bird

7.30 BY KATHY MCLEISHUPDATED ABOUT 2 HOURS AGO

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VIDEO 6:41 

See the search for the elusive night parrot, which was rediscovered in Queensland two years ago with conservationists likening the moment to finding the holy grail

VIEW TRANSCRIPT7.30

A secretive 56,000-hectare conservation reserve has been established in Queensland in an effort to protect a tiny population of endangered night parrots.

Two years ago, the elusive night parrot was rediscovered after being thought lost for more than 75 years. It was big news in the bird world.

The editor of Birdlife Magazine Sean Dooley summed it up as: "The bird watching equivalent of finding Elvis flipping burgers in an outback roadhouse".

South Australian Museum collection manager Dr Philippa Horton called the find: "One of the holy grails, one of the world's rarest species probably".

After a long search, naturalist John Young found the bird and some feathers on a property west of the town of Longreach in July 2013.

He revealed his photographs and evidence to the world, but not the location.

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RARE BIRD SPECIES: Naturalist keeps rare bird location a secret

By Chrissy Arthur

A Queensland naturalist says work is continuing in the state's outback to find out more about one of the world's rarest birds.

John Young last year revealed he had captured images of a pair of night parrots on a private property in western Queensland.

Mr Young says he is working with ecologist Dr Steve Murphy but so far camera traps and recording equipment have failed to find evidence of birds in any other location.

He says it would be too risky to reveal details of the site.

"The most important thing that Steve and I are trying to do at the moment is to try and work out a detection method and learn enough about this bird to be able to go into another place, to be able to pull a habitat up on satellite and say that looks similar, and to be able to go there and detect another pair [of birds]," he said.

"Now that is what this whole research is about.

"We are playing with one of the rarest birds on the planet, there is no question about that."

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Night parrot, the Holy Grail of Australian birding, has been found

Night Parrot emerges from the shadows

July 2013. Legendary Australian naturalist John Young has apparently found the holy grail of Australian bird watching, the elusive and long-sought after Night parrot. Young has, he claims, several photos and even a short video of the bird. He has not yet revealed the location of the sightings as it would no doubt create a great rush to see the bird.

A deceased Night Parrot— only the second specimen to be found
in nearly 100 years. Australian naturalist John Young has
apparently captured the first ever images and video of live birds.

Night parrot

In September 2006, Robert ‘Shorty' Cupitt, the ranger-on-duty of Diamantina National Park in south-west Queensland, was grading an interior road of the reserve when the blade of his vehicle exposed the yellow underbelly of a bird he didn't recognise. It was a deceased Night Parrot - only the second specimen to be found in nearly 100 years, coming after the celebrated discovery of a road killed bird south of nearby Boulia in 1990.

There has always been some controversy over the bird's existence, and it has been thought on at least one occasion that the Night parrot might have become extinct (If it had ever existed). It is thought to live in some extremely remote locations in Queensland, and for the population to number no more than 250 birds.

BirdLife Australia congratulates John Young for obtaining the first ever photographs of the elusive Night Parrot. Long regarded as the ghost bird of the outback, there has been no definitive evidence of live Night Parrots since the 1880s.

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