Red-legged Crake, Blue-winged Pitta in Singapore

Red-legged Crake

We had a 3-day stopover in Singapore en route to Africa, staying at the Robertson Quay Hotel. The first morning we hooked up with Martin Kennewell, a well-known local birder, who took us to a spot in north-west Singapore, in Lim Chu Kang. Here we eventually got on to a Blue-winged Pitta that had been hanging around for a couple of weeks in a small patch of regrowth forest. This species is usually rare in Singapore at this time of year and one Bill and I had both missed previously in Asia, so we were pretty chuffed. Unfortunately it didn't pose for an image.

Red-legged Crake

The next morning we were off to Singapore's Botanic Gardens, probably the best place in the world to see Red-legged Crake, another much-wanted bird both of us had missed previously. We found one exactly where Martin said - just south-east of Lake Symphony. It was strutting around among the Heliconia patches between the lake and forest - quite in the open and oblivious to the many passers-by. It was in fact no less shy than the White-breasted Waterhens that were about. Evidently it is only relatively recent years that the crakes have moved in to the gardens.

Blue-winged Pitta twitch

White-breasted Waterhen 

Singapore Botanic Gardens

Night Parrot: More bits and pieces from the new book

Night Parrot - pic by John Young

I wrote about Penny Olsen's new book, Night Parrot, in The Weekend Australian of 11-12 August, 2018, highlighting research issues between Bush Heritage Australia and Australian Wildlife Conservacy; ongoing controversy over John Young's 2013 rediscovery; and the disappointingly low number of Night Parrots recorded since then. There is much more to the book, however. I'm outlining here a grab bag of notes from the book, with a bit of commentary woven through.

Captain Charles Sturt mounted two expeditions through the Australian outback in search of an inland sea. He didn't find a sea, but his expedition naturalist, John McDouall Stuart, collected the first specimen of a night parrot in 1845 on the second of these forays. The bird was shot on the western edge of Lake Lady Blanche in northern South Australia. Thought initially to be a Ground Parrot, it was not until 1861 that John Gould recognised it as a new species. Sturt noted the bird had “dark green plumage mottled with black”.

A total of just 28 Night Parrot specimens are known, 22 collected by Frederick Andrews in South Australia. All but one of Andrews' birds were taken in the Gawler Ranges of northern Eyre Peninsula in the 1870s and early-1880s. Andrews made observations similar to those noted at Pullen Pullen Reserve in south-west Queensland, where Young made his discovery. For instance, Andrews says “in some instances I have known them to fly a distance of 4 or 5 miles”; the distance of 6.4-8km is similar to that undertaken nightly by parrots at Pullen Pullen. 

In the book, Olsen chronicles numerous expeditions mounted to search for the bird after its numbers crashed in the 1880s, when the last confirmed specimen was collected. A specimen claimed in 1912 by Martin Bourgoin from Western Australia was lost and cannot be verified, although Olsen appears to accept its authenticity.

Among the more enthusiastic Night Parrot searchers was Boer War veteran Samuel White, who conducted numerous expeditions in the 1910s and 1920s to “every haunt where there was a record of the bird having been seen in the early days”. Often White was accompanied by his wife Ethel, who was such a novelty in the outback that she often was the first white woman seen by Aborigines. Olsen clearly has a soft spot for Australian history. While some of her accounts of the early ornithogists are entertaining, there is a great deal of biographical information in the book that has nothing to do with Night Parrots.

While no Night Parrots were recorded with certainty in Queensland until a dead bird was found near Boulia in 1990, there were plenty of unconfirmed reports. Doctor-cum-ornithologist William Macgillivray wrote in 1920 that four “extremely rare spinifex or night parrots” were seen on Nappa Merrie Station by Clive Conrick around the Cooper Creek in the Channel Country. Conrick's neighbour, Albert Walker, managed the neighbouring Innamincka Station across across the border in South Australia; Walker recorded that he “frequently” saw Night Parrots until 1885, when there was an invasion of feral cats.

Cats feature also in the writings of CH McLennan in 1907 about the Night Parrot in the mallee of the sunset country in western Victoria. McLennan noted the bird's “plaintive whistling note heard in the still of night”. The parrots were “unfortunately becoming extinct” because hundreds of cats had been released in the mallee to control rabbits. Cats appear to be scarce in the Queensland area frequented by parrots; perhaps their numbers are kept in check by dingoes, which had not been heavily persecuted by local pastoralists.

Night Parrot habitat - Diamantina National Park

The night parrot expeditions continued as the decades rolled by. In 1972, 26 technical college students travelling in two mini-buses camped for three weeks by the Diamantina River looking for the birds. They had to give up when bulldust clogged one of their engines.

News of the 1990 Boulia discovery was broken by me in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald. The semi-mummified carcass was found on the roadside by Walter Boles, Wayne Longmore and Max Thompson, who were on an Australian Museum expedition. The year before, in 1989, entrepreneur Dick Smith had offered $50,000 for scientific evidence of the bird surviving. Smith was initially reluctant to part with the money; after “spirited discussion” over whether a dead parrot met his requirements, Smith's Australian Geographic Society handed over a cheque to the museum.

A second semi-mummified corpse was found in September 2006 in Diamantina National Park, 200km from Boulia, by ranger Robert (Shorty) Cupitt. That find was made public by me in the pages of The Australian in February 2007. The Queensland Government had kept it a secret for five months for reasons it has never properly explained.

It is perhaps surprising, with the benefit of hindsight, that John Young was the first and only person to follow up Cupitt's find, other than a bit of cursory looking around by park rangers. It was in this breakaway country of the Mayne Range, where the boundaries of Brighton Downs Station and Diamantina National Park meet, that Young focused his search in 2007, although he says he had searched other places earlier. The bird first photographed by Young was just 11 kilometres from Cupitt's dead parrot (that's not in the book).

Olsen is no friend of Young and is relentless in her attacks on him in the book. She says he had in the past made “unbelievable” claims about owl survey numbers and discovering Paradise Parrots with eggs. His claim in 2006 to have discovered a new bird, the Blue-browed Fig-Parrot, in the rainforests of north-east NSW was “based on a fabricated photo and a story that grew with the telling”.

Olsen concedes, however, that the July 2013 announcement by Young that he had photographed a Night Parrot for the first time was the “avian find of the century and a personal triumph for Young”. She notes no living person had definitely seen a Night Parrot until then. But in a video screened as the discovery was announced at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, there was “something amiss… a wing appeared to hang slightly and the bird's gait was odd”.

Night Parrot nest - pic by Steve Murphy

I detail in The Weekend Australian how Olsen and ecologist Steve Murphy, who once collaborated with Young but fell out of favour with him, suggest Young's bird was injured and captured to be set up for a photographic session. John Stewart, who was with Young at the time of the discovery, went public to insist the bird came in of its own accord and that the pair was unaware of any injuries.

Olsen says Young had “indisputably put in some hard yards in tough country”, but his claims to have spent 17,000 hours searching over 15 years, riding 11,000km on a bike and driving 320,000 km in a vehicle “seem embellished”. Of Young's first photographs, Olsen says: “These were not obviously doctored images, as had been the case with the fabulous fig-parrot.”

Olsen relates how Young took Steve Murphy into his confidence, showing him the bird in a part of Brighton Downs Station that was to be acquired by Bush Heritage Australia and named Pullen Pullen Reserve. In Cairns in 2011, Young played Murphy a recording of a four-note call from what he believed was a Night Parrot. Young called Murphy in 2013, before the announcement, to tell him “with great excitement that he had 600 images and 200 feathers” from a Night Parrot. As the two worked together in subsequent months, Murphy “felt that he was on a tightrope… knowing that John Young quickly dropped anyone who challenged him”. Murphy told Olsen he wanted a follow-up plan for further research focused on habitat requirements, detection, threats and nesting.

Murphy was so distrustful of Young that he secretly recorded playback of the bird's call on a USB stick when Young first played it while the pair was together in the field, “just in case their arrangement went pear-shaped”. In his field notes, however, Murphy praises Young: “Despite his obtuse manner, can't help but like the guy. Most incredible field ornithologist ever. Egg collecting past really allowed him to hone his skills to an awesome degree.”

The Night Parrot Recovery Team was established in 2014. Writes Olsen: “Finally, the time was right – there was: a known Night Parrot location; funding; an advisory panel; Murphy with his survey experience and scientific skills and political sensibilities; and Young, the talented and tenacious field naturalist.”

Murphy and Bush Heritage Australia refused initially to release playback of the bird's call – or precious little other information - so others could search for parrots in new localities. That stance was criticised by many birders, who felt secrecy over calls and the bird's general whereabouts (without giving away specific site information) could hamper discovery efforts.

Olsen reveals Young was not invited to a secret meeting between Peter Britton, the owner of Brighton Downs, and BHA which resulted in Britton subdividing 56,000ha of the station to establish Pullen Pullen; BHA acquired the reserve in 2016. In a glaring case of bureaucratic idiocy, the excision was initially opposed by the Queensland Government on the grounds the 56,000ha was not viable as a pastoral lease.

BHA got off to a bad start by evidently stuffing up the naming of the reserve. Pullen Pullen is supposedly the local Aboriginal name for Night Parrot. Olsen says it is an “erroneous moniker”; leading linguists could find no evidence for it in the literature and indigenous languages in the area did not have final consonants.

Meanwhile, relations between Young and Murphy deteriorated. Olsen writes of how Young became “disgruntled at his increasing loss of control of the situation and the research project”. Young and Murphy were part of a research effort funded by an offsets grant from Fortescue Metals. Young finally quit in early-2015 following a row with Murphy over the placement of sound recorders.

Twelve months later, Young was hired as a senior ecologist by Australian Wildlife Conservancy. Part of his job is to research Night Parrots in Diamantina National Park, which adjoins Pullen Pullen. BHA and AWC are Australia's two biggest private conservation groups. They work in close proximity to each other on Night Parrot research but do not share information.

Olsen gets stuck into me for revealing in May 2016 in The Australian that Brighton Downs was where Young rediscovered his Night Parrot. At the time, the information was not publicly available. Olsen said I “truly overstepped the mark”. BHA was forced to install surveillance cameras and implement other security measures to guard against, among others, “overenthusiastic birdwatchers”.

I and others argued that birders could be BHA's biggest ally in its efforts to protect the Night Parrot, but as Alice Springs birding guide Mark Carter said, “instead we're treated like lepers”. I did not in fact reveal where the birds were; instead I identified a sprawling 420,00ha property in the hope that other searches would be mounted in that region in search of further populations. As it transpires, the hordes of destructive twitchers did not materialise; just a handful of groups have ventured to the remote area to look for Night Parrots.

Penny Olsen

Olsen notes that while the reserve was being established, Britton asked Murphy to write a list of rules for BHA staff after volunteers brought dogs into the area, which was still being grazed by cattle at the time.

Olsen has another go at me because in March 2017 I reported that “glamping” trips to Pullen Pullen were being hawked among wealthy birders overseas, offering a visit for $25,000 a head. Olsen accuses me of a “blatant misrepresentation” of BHA policy, which takes wealthy donors to reserves “to see what they are funding”. Olsen ignores the email which prompted my story in The Australian; it was sent by Adam Riley, the head of South African bird tour company Rockjumper. For the record, Riley says in the email he was invited on an exclusive six-person trip “to see the Night Parrot” and he was in contact because “with your interest in the bird, I thought I would offer you the opportunity”.

Olsen records how it was with relief, given how tiny the south-west Queensland population remained years after Young's announcement, that the bird was found 2000km away in the Murchison area of Western Australia in March 2017 by Nigel Jackett, Bruce Greatwich, George Swann and Adrian Boyle. Olsen makes no reference to the controversy generated by the disappearance of two birds at that site when one was later netted and fitted with a radio transmitter by the Night Parrot Recovery Team.

In May 2017, Mark Carter and fellow Alice Springs ornithologist Chris Watson “probably” detected a Night Parrot call on a sound recorder south of Alice Springs. Olsen says it is ironic that Carter and Watson vowed not to share location data for the site given they were “among the most vocal critics of the need for initial secrecy regarding Pullen Pullen”. Carter says in response that the issue at the time of the Pullen Pullen stand-off was whether call recordings should be released, not whether the site should remain secret.

In October 2017, a Night Parrot in flight was captured in a camera trip near Mulan in the Great Sandy Desert of WA. Young says he has found Night Parrots at several sites in Diamantina National Park as well as in the Goneaway National Park further east, and in Kalamurina Sanctuary in northern South Australia. Olsen claims in the book that none of these records are confirmed but AWC, ecologist Rod Kavanagh and academic Peter Valentine have disputed this.

Young was not interviewed by Olsen for the book although Murphy was, and at length. Olsen says Young was invited to contribute an account of his discovery but nothing was received. There is a good deal of material about the birds' behaviour and movements in Pullen Pullen, almost all of it from Murphy, which I won't repeat here as it is already in the public arena. The book will be published next month by CSIRO Publishing, RRP $50, 360pages.

Night Parrot - New book stirs fresh controversy

The following are transcripts of my news story and feature in the 11-12 August, 2018 edition of The Weekend Australian about Penny Olsen's new book Night Parrot.

News - Night parrot on brink of extinction as its watchers enter bitter feud

Five years after its rediscovery shook the natural history world, the confirmed population of the critically endangered night parrot is fewer than 20, indicating the species teeters on the brink of extinction.

A grim outlook for what is described as the world's most mysterious bird is emerging as bitter divisions among experts are exposed in a new book, Night Parrot, by Australian National University academic Penny Olsen, to be published soon by the CSIRO.

Dr Olsen launches a stinging attack on North Queensland naturalist John Young, whose publication of the first photographs of a night parrot in 2013 in south-west Queensland is described as the avian find of the century.

Dr Olsen suggests in the book that the bird had an injured wing and was set up for a staged photographic session.

Dr Olsen casts doubt on claims by Mr Young and his employer, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, that night parrots were found subsequently at other sites.

Supporters of Mr Young hit back, accusing critics of waging a personal vendetta against him.

Mr Young discovered the parrot in what is now known as the Pullen Pullen Reserve, owned by Bush Heritage Australia.

BHA and AWC are Australia's two biggest private conservation groups, owning millions of hectares of wildlife reserves. While BHA runs a night parrot research program in Pullen Pullen, the AWC and Mr Young are undertaking research in the neighbouring Diamantina National Park.

The two groups do not work co-operatively or share information to develop plans to protect the species.

Long-serving AWC chief executive and night parrot advocate Atticus Fleming quit the organisation abruptly last week, giving no reasons.

Mr Fleming's successor as AWC chief executive, Tim Allard, said he hoped to work co-operatively with BHA on night parrot research in future.

Mr Allard said there was no doubt about the validity of night parrot records collected by Mr Young at new sites.

The Pullen Pullen researchers have found fewer than 10 night parrots. A small but unknown number are recorded from Diamantina National Park. Four birds were discovered in the Murchison region of Western Australia last year; two disappeared after one was netted and fitted with a radio transmitter.

Dr Olsen says in her book that ecologist Steve Murphy, who once worked with Mr Young but fell out with him, advised the naturalist to remove a segment of a video of the bird to be screened publicly in 2013 because it was “wonkily staggering through the spinifex with one wing hanging”.

Dr Murphy claimed some of Mr Young's photographs were labelled at a time suggesting the parrot was caught many hours earlier.

Naturalist John Stewart, who was with Mr Young when the images and video footage were taken, described the claims as “nonsense”.

“That bird came in of its own accord, it wasn't caught,” Mr Stewart said. “It didn't look as if it was wonkily staggering. I can't understand why some people are out to get John.”

While subsequent research shows the night parrot is quick to take flight, Mr Stewart said the bird was not seen flying before or after it was photographed, possibly indicating it was injured prior to the encounter.

Asked if she had put the allegations to Mr Young, Dr Olsen said she invited him to contribute an account of his encounter for the book but nothing was offered.

Feature - Feathers ruffled as pursuers clash over avian holy grail

Australia's two biggest nature conservation organisations are pitted against each other in a turf war that is likely to determine the future of what the prestigious Smithsonian Institute describes as the world's most mysterious bird.In a new book, Australian National University scientist Penny Olsen lays bare the bitter rivalry between bird experts that is marring efforts to bring the night parrot back from the brink of extinction.

Olsen takes aim at North Queensland naturalist John Young, who stunned the natural history world by producing the first photographs of the critically endangered parrot in 2013. Olsen suggests the parrot was injured and set up for a staged photo session, prompting denials and an angry response from Young's supporters.

As Olsen explains in Night Parrot, Captain Charles Sturt failed to find a mythical inland sea during his celebrated expeditions through Australia's arid interior, but he did discover in 1845 what he described as a “beautiful ground parrot” that “rose and fell like a quail” when disturbed from its daytime roost.

The night parrot has for more than a century been the centre of often fevered attention among nature lovers internationally. Since populations of the species crashed in the late-1800s, scores of expeditions to far-flung parts of the continent have failed to rediscover it. The capture by Young of the first photographs and video footage of a night parrot is described as the avian find of the century. The holy grail of the birding world had come home to roost. Other than two mummified corpses found in 1990 and 2006, no solid evidence of the parrot's existence had surfaced since the last confirmed specimen was collected in 1884.

Before photographing his parrot, Young recorded its call in breakaway country of breath-taking beauty in the Mayne Range of Queensland's remote Channel Country. When announcing the find, Young told an excited audience at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane that the bird approached him and a colleague, John Stewart, in response to playing its call. Said Young at the time: “To sit there and watch this holy grail come out, like some sort of mythical ghost… it puffed itself up in some sort of alien shape, almost doubling its size, shaped like an echidna, raking its head on the ground… it was electrifying.”

Olsen questions Young's claim about how the bird was photographed, suggesting it was captured hours earlier and was injured, writing in her book: “It was highly unlikely that a wild, uncontained bird would stay around long enough to be filmed so precisely and from such an angle in torchlight.” Wildlife ecologist Steve Murphy was working with Young at the time but has fallen out with the naturalist; the pair are bitter foes today. Murphy told Olsen he advised Young to edit the video footage before airing it, suggesting he “remove a segment that showed the bird wonkily staggering through the spinifex with one wing hanging”.

John Young

Murphy claimed some of Young's photographs were digitally labelled as being taken at 5pm - long before the nocturnal bird would be moving about naturally. The implication was that it was caught the previous night, probably in a net, and kept until arrangements were in place for a staged photographic session. If confirmed, these allegations would seriously damage Young's reputation as arguably Australia's finest field naturalist. Asked whether she put the claims to Young, Olsen says she invited him to write an account for the book but nothing was provided.

Young declines to respond to Olsen, with whom he has clashed previously. His field assistant, John Stewart, speaks publicly for the first time to dispute the claims. Stewart told Inquirer the parrot was not caught; it approached him and Young in response to playing back its call. “It came at us quite aggressively,” Stewart says. “It was stamping on the ground and carrying on, putting on quite a show… There are some people who just seem to be out to get John.” Night parrots are skittish and quick to take flight, but Stewart says the bird did not fly, either before or after it was photographed, suggesting its wing may have been injured prior to the encounter.

In response to Murphy's claim that Young's images were taken at 5pm, Stewart says the bird was photographed about 7pm. “I don't know where he got that time from. It was well after sunset before we saw it.” Responding to Murphy's claim that the video was edited to remove a segment showing what appeared to be an injured bird, a source close to Young says: “Bits were taken out of the video for use later. It's as simple as that. “

Young generated controversy in 2006 when he claimed to have discovered a new species of fig-parrot in the rainforests of north-east NSW. The claim was challenged by The Australian and photographic experts suggested Young's image of the fig-parrot had been digitally altered. Referring to what she describes as the “fabricated” fig-parrot photograph, Olsen writes of Young's night parrot image: “Unbelievably, close inspection of the photograph revealed that it too had been digitally altered.” The suggestion is that the image was doctored to hide an injury or evidence of man-handling. But Young says he “tweaked” the image to remove a spinifex twig from feathers that spoiled it.

Young discovered the night parrot in the spinifex-clad ranges of the vast Brighton Downs cattle property. Bush Heritage Australia in 2016 bought a 56,000 area frequented by the parrot called Pullen Pullen Reserve. University of Queensland scientists have taken over research begun by Young and Murphy on the reserve to assess the status and behaviour of the bird. Adjacent to Pullen Pullen, a similar research project is under way in the 507,000ha Diamantina National Park.

After Young parted company with Murphy and Bush Heritage Australia, he was hired in 2016 by Atticus Fleming, the long-serving chief executive of another big private conservation group, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. Under an agreement between the AWC and the Queensland Government, Young is undertaking night parrot research in the park. Fleming abruptly quit the organisation last week for unknown reasons; the AWC issued a brief statement saying it had accepted his resignation.

Although two teams of night parrot researchers are working close to each other, they are not co-operating or exchanging crucial information that would enhance the prospects of mapping out plans to protect the bird. Young was working with the AWC for several months when the organisation announced he had found parrots at seven sites, including three nests, in Diamantina National Park. The AWC has also announced that Young discovered new parrot populations at Goneaway National Park, east of Diamantina, and in northern South Australia.

Steve Murphy

Olsen says none of these records have been independently corroborated. She says the South Australian claim was based on an “extremely blurry” image of a night parrot feather “perched atop the solid, matted contents” of a finch nest. In the absence of confirmation of Young's records, Olsen says the known parrot population is “small and extremely vulnerable”.

James Cook University adjunct professor Peter Valentine refutes Olsen's claim, saying he was with Young in Diamantina National Park in October 2016 when he heard a call identical to one of the recorded parrot calls. AWC senior ecologist Rod Kavanagh says he has heard night parrots several times at two sites in the park, adding: “I don't understand why these people continue to attack John. We would not be any the wiser about this bird if he had not found it in the first place.”

A tiny population of night parrots was discovered in the Murchison region of Western Australia last year. As The Weekend Australian revealed, one of those birds disappeared after it was caught in a net and fitted with a radio transmitter; its mate vanished soon after. It is not known how many - if any - birds remain at the site. Another night parrot was photographed last year in the Great Sandy Desert of WA when it was caught in a camera trap.

On the basis of published information, the confirmed world population of the night parrot is less than 20 - far fewer than was hoped at the time of Young's 2013 announcement. In her book, Olsen documents how feral cats, and probably foxes, are likely to have played a key role in the parrot's demise. In 1907, the naturalist CH McLennan wrote that it was becoming extinct in the mallee of western Victoria: “...when I find feathers or remains of the night parrot, there are generally fox or cat traces in the soil.” Foxes are absent from the Queensland night parrot sites and cat numbers are kept in check by dingoes. 

Feral cat in camera trap at Pullen Pullen - Pic by Steve Murphy

Olsen describes how degradation by livestock grazing of habitat and changed fire regimes across the Australian outback have had dire consequences for the species and other wildlife. There has fortuitously been little grazing in areas where the parrots occur today. The old growth spinifex clumps they use for roosting and nesting are separated by extensive areas of rock, so the habitat has been spared the ravages of uncontrolled wildfires that wreak environmental havoc across the bird's once vast range.

Still, there are no guarantees that the few sites where the birds survive will remain safe from cats and other threats. As mysterious as ever, the night parrot is hanging by a thread.

END OF FEATURE

Further information from the book can be found here.