Discovering the Night Parrot at Pullen Pullen Reserve
by: Chris Grubb - Former President, Bush Heritage Australia
If you were a parrot, looking for the easy life, why would you choose to live in the semi-arid hinterland of Australia with its intense heat, massive but infrequent rain events that bring plagues of mosquitoes and native rats? A place where humans have to wear fly nets over their heads to keep the flies out of their eyes and mouths?
Add in the challenge of being a nocturnal, ground dwelling bird whose main food source is tiny grass seeds, which you have to locate in the dark. Especially difficult when introduced, hard-hoofed cattle are eating all the grasses before they can set seed. Then there are feral cats stalking you at night looking for a tasty parrot supper.
What a life!
Well, it’s the Night Parrot (Pezoporous occidentalis) that has chosen this lifestyle and Bush Heritage Australia who purchased a 138,000 acre piece of pastoral country in outback Queensland in Australia to protect a bird that appeared to have risen from the dead – having been considered extinct for decades – but rediscovered in 2013 by naturalist John Young.
Pullen Pullen Reserve is on Maiawali country and Pullen Pullen is the Maiawali name for Night Parrot. It protects the only known (at the time) population of perhaps a few dozen individual birds. Our visit to Pullen Pullen this August was a follow up to a previous visit at the time of purchase in 2016. We wanted to observe progress and learn more from Dr Nick Leseberg who did his PhD on the Night Parrot and is an acknowledged world expert. Bush Heritage has a permanent Reserve Manager on site and we were also accompanied by Judith Harrison, a Maiawali Traditional Owner who talked of her historical connections to the land and how Bush Heritage was helping her people restore those cultural connections. The property has a cave with extensive historical rock art now well documented and a fascinating stone circle on a small mesa which was used for special indigenous ceremonies. Many artefacts such as grinding stones, axe heads, stone knives etc continue to be found.
The Night Parrot is a smallish member of the parrot family, about 7 inches long, with a hunched-up posture, sporting the national Australian colours of green and gold. By day these birds roost deep inside a clump of spinifex grass for protection.
This is a very spiny grass that grows in clumps on soft sandy soils across much of inland Australia. It is very unfriendly to humans, its spikes are painful and since it grows in interconnecting clumps it has to be walked around rather than through. For the ground dwelling Night Parrot on the other hand it is critical habitat and the birds are only found where Spinifex is found. And not just any old spinifex, it has to be old growth, unburnt spinifex that has formed large clumps. Apart from offering predator protection during the day the Night Parrot nest is built deep inside a spinifex clump with access via a perfectly rounded narrow tunnel some 15-20 inches deep with up to 4 eggs laid on a platform of sticks on or near the ground. How a small beak on a small bird manages to create this tunnel never ceases to amaze me – spinifex spines are up to a few inches long and very hard!
As dusk comes we head out some 30 minutes from the newly installed ecologist and guest cabins at the Arid Zone Conservation Centre which is the only physical infrastructure on this conservation reserve. We drive along a track badly eroded by the recent flooding of the Diamantina River. We notice the boundary fence has white reflective tape strung along the top wire and are told by Nick that Night Parrot vision is probably not good enough to pick up fence wires at night. He tells us that it was the discovery of a bird found impaled on a fence in this area some 20 years ago that initiated the search for a local population, having been unobserved for decades and presumed extinct.
As the light fades we stand silently, tuning our ears to the natural sounds as the day shift of birds and insects settle in for the night and the night shift start waking up. Being wintertime it is cooling down rapidly and we are looking out over a low rise mesa with the all-important spinifex growing along its flanks.
We hear the occasional sound of other birds finding a tree or bush in which to roost and no one talks. Darkness comes slowly and then we hear it to our left – the distinctive call which Nick has recorded and identified as that of a Night Parrot. The excitement is palpable as we all smile at this so rarely heard event. Nick silently raises a finger, so we all continue to listen intently. Nothing for a few minutes, then a response from our right, but a slightly different call. Definitely another bird. Then nothing for another several minutes. Now it’s pitch dark and then a third call is heard clearly through the quiet night air. Was it an earlier bird changing position or a third bird? We didn’t know? However, Nick has been able to identify several distinctive calls particular to certain individuals which may inform further learning. As we turn to the vehicles to head home there is a swish and a parrot shaped blur flies past at about 20 feet elevation and quickly disappears. Was that a Night Parrot? We can’t be sure! Not for nothing did the Smithsonian Institute call this ‘one of planet’s most elusive birds’.
It took 10 years of active searching by John Young to discover the tiny population of Night Parrots at Pullen Pullen. The big question then was “Are there any others out there?” It took several further years of fieldwork and research by Dr Nick Leseberg and his predecessor Dr Steve Murphy to identify a suite of diagnostic calls that are the only ‘easy’ way of locating these birds. Working with Aboriginal ranger groups across the Night Parrot’s vast former range eventually yielded results. A handful of other populations of Night Parrot have now been located in spinifex country in remote parts of inland Western Australia.
We also now know that the bird flies out at night from its spinifex hideaway for up to 5 to 6 miles to feed on various grass seeds and seek water, returning before dawn.
The bird numbers are depressingly few at each location, but greater protections now exist and companies are now obliged to survey for Night Parrots when seeking new mining approvals across inland Australia.
In 2020, Pullen Pullen achieved another win for conservation in when the Government of the state of Queensland designated it the first “Special Wildlife Reserve” . This transformative status means that no mining, forestry or farming activities are permissible – in perpetuity. In return Bush Heritage has regular reporting and management requirements to show it is a responsible land manager. For areas of high conservation value this is a welcome recognition that the natural environment can coexist with the resources and farming industries.
We returned by light plane to Longreach, the home of the Qantas Flight Museum where Australia’s national airline started life as “Queensland and Northern Territory Airline System”, hence why there is no U after Q.
The Night Parrot’s habitat once stretched right across the Australian inland before land clearing and introduced species such as camels, pigs, goats, foxes and especially feral cats forced it into ever shrinking pockets of land. So genetic diversity is a key concern today, but at least this enigmatic bird, once thought to be extinct, continues to survive in outback Australia thanks to organisations like Bush Heritage, scientists and the many Aboriginal ranger groups and others searching for more populations.
It has found a way to survive, even if it has had to choose a very inhospitable environment to do so.
Read more about the latest spotting of the Night Parrot on Bush Heritage’s Pullen Pullen reserve HERE.
