Where to now for the Night Parrot?

Night Parrot (Image by John Young)

Updated 29 March 2019

Management plans to bring the Night Parrot back from the brink will need to be revamped and the birding community is set to be deeply divided after Australia's biggest private conservation group dismissed a raft of records of the critically endangered bird claimed by north Queensland naturalist John Young.

The move by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, Young's former employer, means authorities will be forced to consider whether the Night Parrot may be restricted to tiny, remnant populations in the Pullen Pullen Reserve - owned by Bush Heritage Australia in Queensland's Channel Country - and two widely separated sites in Western Australia.

Young obtained the first photographs of the Night Parrot in 2013 at Pullen Pullen - before the property was acquired by BHA - on what was then the Brighton Downs cattle holding. His discovery was of international significance; for more than a century, the species was known from just a handful of sightings and separate findings of two dead birds.

Young eventually fell out with BHA and his co-researcher on Pullen Pullen, Steve Murphy. Young was hired in 2016 by the AWC to continue researching the parrot in Diamantina National Park, which adjoins Pullen Pullen. Young subsequently reported finding several nests and egg clutches of the parrot in the park along with numerous sound and sight recordings. He also reported the Night Parrot from Goneaway National Park, east of Diamantina, and from Kalamurina, an AWC-owned property in northern South Australia.

Last year, Canberra scientist Penny Olsen suggested in her controversial book, Night Parrot, that the parrot photographed by Young in 2013 had an injured wing and was set up for a staged photographic session, perhaps in an enclosure. Young and fellow naturalist John Stewart, who was with him at the time, insisted the bird had not been captured. They indicated they were surprised it did not fly off at the time, instead allowing numerous photographs and video footage to be obtained of the bird on the ground. Young tells supporters that the parrot may have been injured, which would explain its reluctance or inability to fly.

Last year, the National Audubon Society in the United States published a lengthy article on John Young and the Night Parrot. An image of the 2013 parrot, provided by Young, showed a portion of wire netting in one corner, prompting critics to claim that he had, after all, caught the bird and stage-managed photographs. Young insists to supporters that the netting was a corner of a cat trap that was strategically placed between spinifex tussocks to prevent the parrot from scurrying away while photographs were taken.

John Young

Amid a furore on social media as critics and supporters of Young battled it out over who was telling the truth, Young resigned from the AWC last September. His supporters say he was sacked. The organisation insists he left of his own accord, adding: “John Young was not dismissed. He offered his resignation numerous times and AWC finally accepted.”

Young's critics upped the ante by circulating fresh allegations against Young on social media. Young had claimed in 2017 to have discovered the Night Parrot at Kalamurina. A camera trap at the site captured an image of a bird that was thought to be a Night Parrot in 2016. A feather found a year later in a Zebra Finch nest by Young, subsequently sent to the South Australian Museum, was said to be confirmation of the parrot's presence at Kalamurina. However, critics raised doubts about the provenance of the feather.

A Night Parrot call from an acoustic monitor at the site in 2017 was downloaded and published on the AWC website. Critics pointed out that the recording was identical to that of a bird found in the East Murchison area of Western Australia earlier that year. 

Young's critics also cast doubt on the naturalist's many reports of the species from at least seven sites in Diamantina National Park by turning their attention to photographs published on the AWC website. A clutch of eggs from one nest was asserted to be fake by some, including Olsen, and questions were raised about whether a nest in another photograph was that of a Night Parrot.

The AWC responded by establishing an inquiry into the claims by a panel of four scientists: Peter Menkorst (chair), James Fitzsimons, Richard Loyn and John Woinarski. The panel did not investigate the wire netting in the 2013 photograph because that event preceded Young's employment by the AWC. The results of that investigation are now revealed.

In relation to Kalamurina, the panel found that the feather lodged with the South Australian Museum was not the same feather photographed in the finch nest, adding: “Consequently, the panel concluded that the feather provided significant but, given some unresolved issues, not definitive evidence of Night Parrots at the site.” Young tells supporters the Zebra Finch feather was genuine and that it was sent to the AWC and forwarded from there to the museum; he has no explanation for why the wrong feather was dispatched to Adelaide.

The panel confirmed that the recording was the result of playback of publicly available recordings of the Western Australian birds. The panel concluded: “At present, there is no reliable acoustic evidence for the presence of Night Parrots on Kalamurina. This conclusion may change as results from all deployed acoustic recorders are downloaded and analysed.” That process is continuing. Young tells supporters he may have played a recording of the WA call in the field at Kalamurina, which would have been picked up by the monitor, but he has no recollection of doing so.

Potential Night Parrot habitat in Diamantina National Park

Referring to claims about nests and eggs, the panel noted there were “very few Night Parrot nests and eggs ever sighted as a basis for comparison”. The claim about false eggs was referred to nine ornithologists with “wide experience on the nests and eggs of Australian birds”, along with a long-term poultry farmer and a distinguished bird veterinarian. Although not unanimous, a majority of those approached concluded that the “observable physical characteristics of the eggs in one nest were not consistent with natural eggs”.

The eggs in two other photographs were small parrot eggs and “not inconsistent” with the eggs of the Night Parrot, but did “not constitute robust evidence of the presence of breeding Night Parrots”. The panel found the nests were inconsistent in structure and placement, with one nest being “substantially different” to the few confirmed nests. The report of that nest should therefore be regarded as unconfirmed until a larger number of nests are found, the panel found, to achieve a greater understanding of the variability in nest structure and positioning. Young insists to supporters that all his nest and egg records are genuine and that we would never have photographed fake eggs or manufactured a nest.

The AWC responded to the findings by wiping all of Young's parrot reports from its records. AWC chief executive officer Tim Allard said: “Due to the findings, AWC is retracting records of the Night Parrot published by AWC. The methods used in this work were not consistent with AWC’s usual procedures... We are disappointed that our processes in relation to this work were not sufficient, and we are committed to ensuring that all of our staff implement and comply with appropriate standards for recording significant scientific data.”

However, the AWC is ditching not just the parrot records but any other material gathered by Young, including the reported finding of nests and eggs of the extremely rare Buff-breasted Buttonquail in north Queensland.

Where to now? Sight and sound records of the species in Diamantina National Park reported by Young, who provided a statement to the panel, were corroborated by a number of independent observers in the field. The records are now discarded, although the bird was reported in the park by Murphy, Young's former research colleague, and one of the two dead birds came from there.

It was in response to Young's records that the Queensland Government declared half the vast 500,000-hectare park off-limits to the public, threatening jail sentences and hefty fines for anyone entering its eastern sector. The state government has yet to indicate if it will revoke this declaration, which arguably will hinder further searches, in light of the AWC findings. The AWC will not say if it has passed those findings on to Queensland authorities with the self-evident recommendation that access restrictions in Diamantina National Park can now be lifted. 

Dismissed also are records of the parrot that Young claimed further east in Goneaway National Park, again in the company of other observers.  Knowledge of what could be critically important insurance populations of the species is extinguished. Banished also are the reports from South Australia. The AWC has given no indication it is prepared to resume Night Parrot research.

Just as many were hoping the Night Parrot may be surviving in better shape than feared, the result of the AWC probe is to effectively assert that the bird's confirmed existence may not extend beyond Pullen Pullen - where fewer than 30 birds occur - and the two Western Australian sites, where even fewer birds are known. Birds at one of the those sites, in the East Murchison, disappeared after one was netted and fitted with a transmitter by a team headed by Night Parrot Recovery Team chief Allan Burbidge in 2017. Young and his supporters question why that incident was not subject to investigation.

North Queensland naturalist Lloyd Nielsen, who has worked extensively in the field with Young, says he has no doubt about the integrity of his friend's records. “I think it's shameful and very disappointing that all that work has been discarded,” Nielsen says. “These scientists might be experts in their own field but when it comes to finding these things in the field, they've got to rely on people like John. It's crazy to just drop those records. He is one of the best field naturalists that this country has seen.”


Retired James Cook University professor Peter Valentine, who has been in the field with Young in Diamantina National Park, criticised the AWC over the findings. “I wonder what good this will do for the Night Parrot, the supposed focus of their concern?” Valentine asks. “It is indeed disappointing but almost a foregone conclusion given the animosity towards John by some people within the ornithological world. I do not think this will do AWC any good… I am confident the Night Parrot is at Diamantina as I have the evidence of my own ears plus a full account of another person who was with John when nests and eggs were discovered. Will AWC be brave enough to admit error in the future?”

Here is the AWC's statement. This blog post was published a day before the airing on radio by the ABC of its "exclusive" report . Unfortunately, media coverage of the AWC's inquiry has generally been ill-informed and unproductive. As a result, a view is circulating in the public arena that all   records of the Night Parrot in recent years are fraudulent.