Secrecy shrouds world's most 'mysterious' bird

Some good discussion is happening over at The Conversation's website about the Night Parrot - the short answer, of course, is for its own protection!

The Night Parrot has been called the “world’s most mysterious bird”. First discovered in 1845, it was rarely seen alive for most of the next hundred and seventy years, but it has been rediscovered in 2013 by Queensland naturalist John Young.

The rediscovery has been shrouded in secrecy; photo and video evidence of the parrot was presented at an invitation-only viewing, and the Queensland government hasn’t been told the location of the parrot. So, why all the secrecy?

In 2013, Queensland naturalist John Young found what he thinks might be two pairs of Night Parrots, and, to top it off, a nest with three nestlings. Young recently presented a select group of experts with photographic and video evidence of Night Parrots from May 2013, confirming that these were indeed Night Parrots.

Young also made recordings of the parrot’s vocalisations, which he used to draw the birds close enough to photograph.

Young is keeping the Night Parrots’ western Queensland location secret for now. The fragile environments at the locality, if revealed, could be damaged by well-meaning but perhaps over-enthusiastic birdwatchers. The birds appear to have recently bred, and even relatively small numbers of people could have a serious impact. Disturbance could also interfere with research.

There is also the ongoing threat of illegal bird trade. Secrecy at least provides some restraint on this unscrupulous activity.

Read more at: http://theconversation.com/found-worlds-most-mysterious-bird-but-why-all-the-secrecy-18000

Night Parrot not extinct - proof emerges in Queensland!

The rare Australian Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) has been caught - on camera, that is - by a Queensland wildlife photographer.

We have posted numerous stories on this blog over the years about the nocturnal ground-dwelling bird (that some have unkindly described as a fat budgie), which had seemingly vanished from its outback Australian haunts, the spinifex grasses of the dry interior of the country.

Wildlife photographer John Young has spent more than 17,000 hours out in the field and notched up 15 years of searching, and says he has finally captured several photos and a 17-second video of the bird in western Queensland.

Last week he presented his evidence to more than 100 excited bird enthusiasts at the Queensland Museum under a cloak of secrecy, forbidding photographs and video. A commercial deal with a media company means Mr Young cannot publicly distribute the pictures.

Australian Birdlife Magazine editor Sean Dooley hailed the revelation as an extraordinary development.

"The night parrot is the Holy Grail of world bird-watching, it's probably the hardest bird in the world to see," he told the ABC.

Mr Young will not say exactly where the photos were taken in the hope it will protect the bird from poachers.

Watch the ABC's interview with Mr Young here.

Night Parrot stories collected for documentary

Ecologist Julian Reid and filmmaker Rob Nugent from the Australian National University are travelling Outback Australia in search of evidence of the elusive Night Parrot for their documentary.

Only a handful of sightings have been recorded in the last century.

"I like the mystery of the bird, how it lives only an inferred existence," Rob Nugent recently told ABC Radio.

"It's story also speaks to extinctions, the idea that this animal may or may not exist, and we live in an age when loss is accepted."

In 2012 the night parrot was declared one of the world's five most mysterious birds by the Smithsonian Institute in the United States.

The last specimen to be handed in, a decapitated bird, was found in 2006 by a grader driver in the Diamantina Lakes National Park.

You can read about their trip and share your own stories on their Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/NightParrotStories

Night Parrot makes Smithsonian's Top 5

The Smithsonian has included Australia's Night Parrot in its list of the top 5 most mysterious bird species. Find out who else made the cut here.

Between 1912 and 1979, birders spotted this elusive species, native to the interior of Australia, exactly zero times—leading most scientists to believe it had gone extinct.

Since then, a tiny handful of sightings of the nocturnal, yellow-green bird have occurred, and experts now estimate that the population is somewhere between 50 and 250 mature individuals.

After the last verified sighting in November 2006, when park rangers in the state of Queensland turned up a decapitated specimen that had died after flying into a barbed-wire fence, the Australian government chose to keep the find temporarily secret while they searched for more night parrots, so as to avoid an influx of birders flooding the remote park in hopes of spotting one of the world’s rarest birds.

Search for Night Parrot continues

Night parrots were thought to be extinct for a time, however there have been a small number of sightings in recent years in south west Queensland, the far north of South Australia and the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

Mike Griffiths has recently travelled to our region from Western Australia on a quest to film the endangered bird.

“It is highly likely that there are still night parrots in the area,” Mr Griffiths said.

“A few of the locals have relayed stories of sightings in the past.”

Night parrots are nocturnal, ground-dwelling birds.

They take to the air only when disturbed or in search of water.

They are a fairly small parrot that is a yellowish-green colour and with mottled dark brown, black and yellow.

Mr Griffiths’ aim was to get in touch with landholders who may know of night parrots.

He plans to then work with those people to set up motion triggered cameras to film or photograph the rare birds.

It’s Mr Griffiths’ passion and hobby to film unusual birds and small animals.

“People on the land know far more about local wildlife than they are given credit for,” he said.

“There is nothing more interesting than listening to their stories.” Mr Griffiths will again be in the area in September to check cameras and set up more observation sites.

If you think you have seen a night parrot or any rare and unusual fauna, you can have them recorded by contacting Mike Griffiths on: 0428 530 989 or the local regional Landcare facilitator Anne Holst on 02 6872 2144.

The location of these birds and animals can be kept confidential if preferred.

For any Landcare-related enquiries contact the regional Landcare facilitator for your area:

Anne Holst 6872 2144 (Western), Tanya Slack-Smith 6828 0121 (Namoi) or Danielle Littlewood 6840 7805 (Central West).

http://www.westernmagazine.com.au/news/local/news/general/extinct-night-parrot-seen-in-central-west/2625332.aspx

Kakapo puke sparks bidding war

Sirocco the Kakapo first shot to international fame after getting frisky with British celebrity Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwadine in the acclaimed TV series Last Chance to See in 2009.

Sirocco found Carwadine's hair inexplicably attractive, prompting Fry to exclaim: "You are being shagged by a rare parrot!"

Recently, and somewhat bizarrely, bidders on Trade Me clamoured to buy a unique piece of Sirocco-related history - his rejected 'pine chews' being sold on the popular online auction site. The 'parrot puke' eventually fetched $400!

The posting stated: "Not to be found anywhere else on the Mainland - this is a truly unique item. Impress your friends. Perturb your mother in law. Made of tenderly masticated pine needle and infused with the saliva of an extremely rare native parrot - and not just any old rare native parrot but Sirocco the famous head shagging parrot!"

Well, there you go. It was all for a good cause though - the money will be used to fund kakapo recovery.

Will the Night Parrot come in from the cold in 2011?

Just about any conversation between bird watchers anywhere in central Australia will almost certainly turn to a discussion about Night Parrots.

But with so much rain Down Under in recent times (and Night Parrots love wet places), could 2011 be the year someone, somewhere, finally shines a light on the Night Parrot? Steve Murphy, over at Australia birding website Bird-o, thinks it's a possibility.

"They are mystical birds, bordering on mythical beasts. Few other birds anywhere in the world are as intriguing. There are no photographs of living birds and no recordings of their calls.

"A Night Parrot was once transported alive by ship to London Zoo and observed to be strictly nocturnal. Much of what we know about the birds is from these early encounters.

"No person alive can set out to find them with success. Consequently, a rich and enticing folk-lore has accumulated. Like the one that flew into the cabin of a truck in the Pilbara in 1975. The driver put it into a box, but it escaped during the night. Or the one that was recovered from a water tank at Haast’s Bluff in 1957…

"The last confirmed living Night Parrot was observed at Nichol Spring, WA in 1912; it was observed, and then shot and skinned. Its crop was filled with spinifex seed and “limestone herbage”. The following 80 or so years yielded so few substantiated records that many people believed that Night Parrots had followed Paradise Parrots into extinction."

Ecologist identifies lost species in new book

DR Ian Abbott may be semi-retired but that has not slowed his enthusiasm for the field of ecology.

The West Leederville resident played a pivotal role in the new volume from the WA exploration series, The Finest Goldfields in the World, documenting Robert Austin’s 1854 Murchison River expedition. Dr Abbott’s research compiled the Noongar names of animal species in the south-west of WA and was used to identify animal species observed by Austin.

During the 1854 expedition, from Avon Valley to Mt Magnet and Shark Bay, Austin recorded 36 species of native animals, which Dr Abbott identified by their Noongar names.

“The process of identifying animals was fairly easy,” Dr Abbott said. “Everything was referred to by their Noongar names, which were documented very well by early colonists and newspapers.”

Invited by the WA Exploration committee to join several years ago, Dr Abbott volunteers several hours of his time each week.

“The team gets on very well and everyone brings their own competence to the project.

“I was asked to join just as they were finishing the first volume to help identify animal and bird species,” he said.

The book uncovers many species that were thought to be extinct, including the recently rediscovered night parrot.

“Austin’s expedition runs parallel to the other volumes because it was too big to be included in the others,” Dr Abbott said.

The volume was released this year and is available online.

http://www.inmycommunity.com.au/news-and-views/local-heroes/Ecologist-identifies-lost-species-for-book/7532485/

Ode to the Night Parrot

What a talented Canberra trio - listen to this beautiful ode to the Night Parrot...
http://www.pool.org.au/audio/paulm/the_glorious_but_futile_search_for_the_night_parrot
"Pete, Paul and Simon wrote this tune for a number of reasons; to pay homage to a beautiful and remote landscape, and to honour those hardy souls who spend days, weeks, scouring the more inaccessible parts of Australia's vast interior for this very elusive and enigmatic bird - all in order to gain some understanding of its ecology, distribution, movements, threats....snippets of information that might help it persist.

"We also wanted to capture in music and words the mystery of a bird that has been pushed to the edge of extinction and yet still occasionally surfaces in far flung parts of this arid land.

"Most of all we wished to distil the message that by gradually unravelling and diminishing the natural world we are diminishing ourselves."
Well said gentlemen - find these soulful lads here: http://www.myspace.com/nightparrot
Find A CFZ visual and audio tribute to the Night Parrot here.