‘Elvis of birds’: clue found in hunt for elusive parrot
Abe Maddison |
An audio recording of one of the world’s most elusive birds has sparked a race against time to find and protect a rare population of the critically endangered night parrot.
Ecologist Steve Murphy said after searching for the bird for years, he was pretty excited to hear their distinct “dink, dink” call.
“It was high-fives all around … we finally found it,” he told AAP.
The night parrot is a nocturnal desert creature that has gained legendary status as arid Australia’s “ghost bird”.
There were no confirmed sightings of it between 1912 and 1979, leading to fears it was extinct.
The secret location where the audio was recorded in September 2025 is more than 150km from the other known Queensland population, at Pullen Pullen nature reserve in the state’s central west.
The discovery of that population 13 years ago was “incredibly exciting … and gave us a rare chance to prevent extinction”, Dr Murphy said.
Conservation Partners had been searching for the bird in western Queensland for 10 years using acoustic recorders.
“From hundreds of locations over a massive area, we’ve got one detection so far,” Dr Murphy said.
“We’ve got an algorithm that pulls out detections … I was the one who listened to it, and immediately … I knew it had all of the hallmarks of being a night parrot.”
He sent it to colleague Nick Leseberg, who had completed his PhD on night parrot acoustics.
“He was absolutely convinced … we’ve got no doubt that this is a night parrot,” Dr Murphy said.
There was a great sense of relief for Dr Murphy, who said the worst-case scenario for an endangered species was that it existed in a single, tiny population.
“Because any random event – fire, disease, feral cats – can just come through and wipe everything out,” he said.
Birdlife Australia has previously described confirmed sightings of the night parrot to be “the bird-watching equivalent of finding Elvis flipping burgers in an outback roadhouse”.
While the discovery was “a glimmer of hope”, there was now a sense of urgency to locate and protect the birds.
“Because the birds nest on the ground, they are particularly vulnerable to being killed by feral cats,” Dr Murphy said.
“We need to get back out there and identify the breeding site … then we will undertake feral cat control around the site, to stop the vulnerable breeding birds and chicks from being killed.”
While the Queensland Government had funded two years of intensive searching, Dr Murphy said the researchers needed to raise further funds to support their work.
“Without it, the population could wink out before we even learn much about it,” he said.
AAP