There had been no confirmed live night parrot reports for over 140 years.
It was one of the greatest stories of species rediscovery in recent times when John Young produced evidence of the near-mythic bird in a remote corner of Australia.
It was the equivalent of finding Elvis flipping burgers in a roadhouse, according to Sean Dooley of BirdLife Australia.
The discovery got stranger when it became questionable.
Over the next eight years, the find set off a series of discoveries in the field of tracking the ghost bird. It would take teams of Indigenous rangers, working with scientists in Australia's most unforgiving and remote landscapes, to accelerate the discovery of more night parrot populations in recent months.
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John Young was in the Australian Wildlife Conservancy's Brooklyn Sanctuary.
The night parrot was considered the holy grail of Australian birdwatching. Mr. Young took a picture of the parrot at a cattle station in Australia. According to Australian Geographic magazine, when he presented his pictures at the museum, he elicited a collective gasp and murmur.
Mr. Young made questionable claims. He claimed to have rediscovered the paradise parrot in 1980, but could not prove it. The blue-fronted fig parrot was announced in 2006 but the authenticity of his photographs was questioned. Mr. Young once said that he didn't know it was a crime to exaggerate about a find. He didn't want to be interviewed for this article.
His night parrot triumph gave him a measure of redemption. News reports were positive about Mr. Young's find. He became a senior field ecologist at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.
Scandal was always close. Mr. Young's night parrot photograph was published in Audubon Magazine, but this version was uncropped. Readers of the magazine noticed the mesh in the corner of the photo and accused him of illegally and excessively detaining the bird. He denied the accusations.
Mr. Young had found a bird. An independent review found that he had faked audio recordings of the birds, and that one of his photographs of a possible night parrot nest contained fake eggs. Mr. Young quit his job.
Other investigators were searching for the night parrot while the disputes of Mr. Young's methods played out.
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A night parrot is in the Pullen Pullen Reserve.
The night parrot is a bird that is hard to track. In Australia's most isolated and harshest regions, the birds shelter amid thick clumps of dry, spiky grass, some more than 1,000 miles from the closest city.
Most of the information about the night parrot came from amateur ornithologists and a small number of museum specimens.
The ground parrot was flushed by the English explorer Charles Sturt on his 1845 expedition to find a mythical inland sea in the center of Australia. It fell like a quail. The night parrot was described by John Gould.
Few were successful in finding the bird. In the 1870s, Frederick Andrews, who worked for the South Australian Museum, collected more than a dozen specimen across the arid north of the state.
The trail was cold. There were some things that were reported, but no confirmed. In 1990 and 2006 a night parrot carcass was found. The night parrot was placed at the top of the world's most mysterious bird list by the magazine.
Nick Leseberg, a night parrot researcher and a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, said that scientists only knew about a pair of birds after Mr. Young's initial discovery. Two night parrots are in the universe.
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Nick Leseberg tested a night vision scope before going into the Pullen Pullen Night Parrot Reserve.
That changed in 2015. A group of scientists on an expedition funded by a mining company and led by Steve Murphy, an ecologist and night parrot expert, found a small number of night parrots close to the site of Mr. Young's discovery. Dr. Murphy was able to attach a gps tag to one of the birds, but the battery lasted just over 11 minutes, so he was able to briefly capture the movements of one of the world's rarest birds.
It was found that the prime night parrot habitat in the state was comprised of areas of tussock grass that had been untouched by fire and close to water sources. In Australia, triodia is called "spinifex", but it comes from a different family of grasses.
Night parrots are very vocal just after sunset and just before sunrise. Mr. Leseberg and Dr. Murphy had audio recording equipment in areas where night parrots might be present. Mr. Leseberg programmed software to recognize night parrot calls from thousands of hours of recordings.
The scientists were making progress in identifying small night parrot populations, but other groups were gaining ground as well.
The night parrot was photographed using a camera trap by the Indigenous rangers in Paruku. The discovery of night parrots led to new interest in the groups.
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The Pullen Pullen Reserve is home to night parrot roosting.
Australia has vast swaths of Indigenous protected areas, which are owned and managed by a variety of Aboriginal groups. Indigenous ranger programs aim to protect the area's flora and fauna by relying on the knowledge of community elders.
The Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia contains an 11,500- square-mile area of protected Indigenous land. There are camera traps south of Paruku that captured photos of a night parrot.
Mr. Sunfly grew up watching nature documentaries. He was the first person from Ngururrpa to graduate high school. He was the first Ranger in his community to see a night parrot.
The nearest town is six hundred miles away. The largest known population of night parrots may be contained in the number of bird calls recorded.
The number of known night parrot populations grew slowly after the Paruku discovery, with a few in the south and a few in the north.
A new approach changed everything. Mr. Leseberg and Dr. Murphy were invited to Balgo, a community on the northern edge of the Great Sandy Desert, to help the rangers. The scientists taught the rangers how to set up the audio recorders, so they could find night parrots.
The number of newly discovered populations has gone up a lot. There are 14 known night parrot populations in Western Australia after the first night parrot calls were detected on Ngururrpa in 2019.
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Mr. Leseberg and a volunteer research assistant installed acoustic recording devices in the Pullen Pullen reserve.
Neil Lane, a Ranger on Martu country, became the first Indigenous Ranger to see a night parrot after searching for a site that his community elders had identified. Mr. Lane said that they know the country.
A night parrot flew up from a clump of spinifex as he got down from the vehicle. The other rangers formed a line and walked through the grass. Everyone saw the bird after they flushed it.
A night parrot expedition was mounted by a team of Ngururrpa rangers. The rangers were 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217
Mr. Sunfly was the first Ngururrpa Ranger to see a night parrot. He said that it flew across him. It was flying very quietly. I heard the flapping of the wings. I saw its outline in the stars.
The rangers are aware of all aspects of the environment that their people have been living in for over a millennium. The observational-based science that they built up was very detailed.
Malcolm Lindsay is a program manager at the nonprofit that works with the rangers in the Great Sandy Desert. He said that their approach was moreholistic. They want to conserve the night parrot, but also protect their cultural knowledge, practice, communities and landscapes that sustain the birds.
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The night parrot was a topic of conversation for Njamme. They used to say to us, 'You hear that?' She said someone was whistling for her. They did it to scare us when we were naughty.
Night parrots are critically threatened despite recent breakthrough. Mr. Leseberg said that only 15 birds survive in the state. Bush Heritage Australia runs the Pullen Pullen Reserve, which is in the state's west. Mr. Leseberg said he waits for sunset every time he goes out there. We always find them in the end, but your heart is always in your mouth.
The situation in Western Australia is more promising, but there may be less than 250 night parrots in the area. Mr. Sunfly and his team found tracks left by cats on Ngururrpa. Mr. Leseberg believes that cats kill most young night parrots.
He said that a rise in the number of cats can knock them out quickly.
Ranger involvement is more than just helping the night parrot. The programs are connecting desert communities to traditional lands.
Traditional stories about the night parrot are emerging as more rangers are involved. They used to say to us, 'You hear that?' Someone is whistling for you. They used to scare us when we were naughty, according to Njamme, a Ngururrpa Ranger who is widely respected for her traditional knowledge.
Ms. Njamme said they were happy to be back in country. Our work out here is looking after the land and our spirits belong to this country. The next generation can take over if we get all the young people out on country.
Mr. Sunfly has learned a lot from both the scientists and his own community. He said that they use technology to find night parrots. The old people are asked everything. Everything comes from the old people.
