Night Parrot: Death by Barbed Wire

The Night Parrot found by Shorty Cupitt

Robert (“Shorty”) Cupitt remembers well the warm September day in 2006 when he was doing maintenance work around stock routes and fences in the vicinity of Diamantina National Park in western Queensland. He found a small dead parrot on the ground that looked unfamiliar. It turned out to be a Night Parrot - just the second confirmed record of this enigmatic species recorded over the previous century. The parrot was below a barbed wire fence. “There were feathers from the bird stuck on the top strand of barbed wire,” Cupitt tells me. “It was decapitated, killed by flying and hitting the fence.”

Night Parrot

In a 2008 paper in Australian Field Ornithology that published the historic finding, Cupitt issued a clear warning: “It highlights the danger posed to birds, including rare or threatened species, by the many kilometres of barbed wire traversing the landscape.” Cupitt’s find led to the bird being photographed for the first time by John Young in 2013, and the creation of the 56,000ha Pullen Pullen Reserve encompassing critical Night Parrot habitat by Bush Heritage Australia in 2016. 

Pullen Pullen

As I noted in an article in the latest edition of The Weekend Australian, another Night Parrot was killed after striking a barbed wire boundary fence on Pullen Pullen in 2019. With the region’s parrot population estimated at a total of 10-20 birds, that is a significant loss. Says Cupitt: “It’s barbed wire all the way along some of those boundary fences, including the top strand.” A barbed wire fence separates the 3-4 known roosting Night Parrot sites of the Pullen Pullen parrot population from each other and from feeding grounds they fly to each night. Until this week, BHA had little to say about the fatality (more on that later).

Pullen Pullen boundary fence

Outside Pullen Pullen, small numbers of parrots have been located in Western Australia. Last year, a Night Parrot was retrieved by traditional owners after being found injured, hanging by its wing from a barbed wire fence; it died soon after. The Night Parrot is critically endangered: we now know of three individuals killed by barbed wire fences, and the death toll is certain to be higher. 

Prepared specimen of recently killed Night Parrot in WA: WA Museum

In 2016, then Night Parrot Recovery Team Allan Burbidge head warned of the consequences of a plan by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy to build a predator-proof fenced enclosure in Diamantina National Park, more than 20km from Pullen Pullen. Said Burbidge: “It seems likely that a predator-proof fence within night parrot habitat might pose a threat to a bird that flies 15 km or so each night. For a population with perilously low numbers, the effect could be highly significant.” The plan was scuttled. Yet the recovery team has had nothing to say about the Pullen Pullen fencing.

Diamantina National Park

BHA has run white electric tape along the top of some fences in a bid to deter parrots from striking them. In a statement published on the BHA website this week - following The Weekend Australian story - Pullen Pullen ecologist Nick Leseberg offers further details about the 2019 victim. Says Leseberg: “This section of the fence hadn’t been flagged, as we didn’t think it was an area where the Night Parrots would be traversing. By this time we’d removed tens of kilometres of unnecessary fence, including the entire southern boundary with Diamantina National Park, but this really brought home the risk these fences pose. We’d love to remove all of them, but the reality is this is pastoral country and we need fences to keep cattle out of Pullen Pullen.” 

Leseberg and his colleagues have done some fine research work on Pullen Pullen. They are not helped by the peculiar perspective that BHA has of public relations. The organisation has taken a leaf out of the Donald Trump playbook by ignoring journalists it doesn’t fancy - like me. BHA told me bluntly it would not be responding to anything I put to them. BHA’s silence becoming part of the story in the national broadsheet newspaper speaks volumes.

It also speaks to a cultural problem that has been evident since BHA’s acquisition of Pullen Pullen. The wider birding community is often regarded with a degree of contempt. Twitchers are collectively considered a potential threat to the species. Those outside BHA’s inner sanctum of scientists are unwelcome. BHA said this in a revealing statement last October: “In 2013, in the remote corners of western Queensland on Maiawali Country where spinifex grows in abundance – the perfect habitat for the bird – the Night Parrot was rediscovered by scientists.” It was in fact rediscovered in 2006 by Shorty Cupitt, and photographed in 2013 by John Young; neither are scientists. 

Feral cat

BHA refused to respond to questions I put to them about current population estimates; the consequences for the population of successive years of good summer rains; and the impacts of population booms of feral cats and long-haired rats in the area. Those issues are to some extent now belatedly addressed in this week’s statement. Leseberg confirms that the bountiful years of wet weather were a plus: “The floodplains were really benefiting from the exclusion of cattle and there were as many Night Parrots on Pullen Pullen and (neighbouring property) Mt Windsor as I had ever seen. There were four known sites with birds, and potentially two others where we heard birds on a couple of occasions. I think there could have been as many as twelve or fourteen birds across the two properties.” 

The good times led to a big increase in cat numbers. BHA tripled the number of planned cat control trips. Trips would typically be for two weeks, with each trip removing 50 cats by mid-2023. Says Leseberg: “It wasn’t all bad news though. The stomachs of the cats were examined to determine what they were eating, and we were only finding rats, nothing else.” By the end of 2023, rat numbers were dwindling and although cat numbers remained high, there was evidence they were losing condition with fewer pregnant females. Referring to the bird’s present status, he adds: “We’re still detecting them across three to four sites, but at some of those sites the detections are not as regular. We don’t know if these mean there are fewer birds, or if they are moving around more.”

Long-haired Rat

It would be interesting to know if the long-haired rat plague had its own impacts, although that issue is not addressed in this week’s statement. Rats are voracious predators of eggs and nesting birds. Might that be a factor in the latest population shift that Leseberg refers to? Instead of regarding questions like that as threatening or inappropriate or whatever, BHA could be doing the bird a service with a little more inclusiveness and dialogue.

Pullen Pullen

Notes on the outlook for Coxen’s Fig-Parrot, Night Parrot & Buff-breasted Buttonquail: links between their fate and the “Blue-browed Fig-Parrot” fiasco

 

The following is the transcript of my news feature in The Weekend Australian of 10-11 February, 2024.

Coxen's Fig-Parrot

A 17-year-old mystery surrounding the identity of a tiny parrot is having unforeseen consequences for the welfare of endangered Australian wildlife. Self-promotion by high profile individuals and poor decision-making by Queensland Government authorities have combined to threaten rare and mysterious species, and deep divisions within the natural history community are laid bare.

Just one variety of bird, the paradise parrot, is confirmed as having become extinct on the Australian mainland since European settlement; it was last seen in the 1930s in south-east Queensland. Now, the fate of three more birds – the Coxen’s fig-parrot, night parrot and buff-breasted buttonquail - hangs in the balance. Two of the three are possibly extinct, contrary to confused government advice, with the third teetering precariously on the brink.

Buff-breasted Buttonquail

The celebrated naturalist Steve Irwin died in September 2006 when he was struck in the heart by a stingray barb on the Great Barrier Reef. Soon after, as a journalist working for The Australian, I was phoned by Tom Biggs, a Brisbane medical specialist who was providing commercial advice to controversial north Queensland naturalist John Young and his company, John Young Enterprises. Biggs asked if I was interested in breaking a “really big” story for this masthead concerning Young and a parrot; no further details were offered.

Biggs and Young were aware I had publicly suggested the Coxen’s fig-parrot might be extinct. The brightly coloured parrot once frequented the rainforests of south-east Queensland and north-east New South Wales but there had been no confirmed records of the bird for three decades at the time. Young claimed in the 1990s to have photographed the fig-parrot in NSW but did not produce convincing images. Young also asserted in the 1970s that he found a population of paradise parrots in north Queensland, but no evidence was forthcoming. Assuming Young was again claiming to have rediscovered the Coxen’s fig-parrot or paradise parrot, I politely declined Biggs’s offer.

Night Parrot

A few days later, in November 2006, Brisbane’s The Courier Mail newspaper splashed the story across its front and inside pages. It was not about those two birds but something more eye-catching: Young had supposedly discovered a species of parrot unknown to science - the blue-browed fig-parrot. The “discovery” was announced amid much fanfare at a function at O’Reillys Guesthouse in the Gold Coast hinterland by Queensland Environment Minister Lindy Nelson-Carr. Scientists from the state government’s threatened species unit hailed the discovery as ground-breaking and pledged to work with Young on publishing scientific papers.

But it wasn’t true. Investigations by The Australian, aided by Melbourne ornithologists Jeff Davies and Andrew Isles, indicated that Young’s image was an altered photograph of a much more common species – the double-eyed fig-parrot from north Queensland. Gale Spring, a leading forensic photographic expert, concluded there was little doubt the image was altered. Ornithological experts from a range of disciplines were unanimous in dismissing the claim. The Queensland Government withdrew its support for Young.

John Young

Young’s large number of supporters in the wider natural history community were furious. Fellow North Queensland naturalist and author Lloyd Nielsen declared on the online platform birding-aus that articles in The Australian were “despicable”, insisting Young’s claim was genuine: “This special bird really does exist as depicted in the published photograph.”

Now it is possible to throw further light on the matter. Nielsen relates how the day after the O’Reilly’s announcement, he and others were led by Young on a long hike through Lamington National Park to be shown a “blue-browed fig-parrot nest”. Young pointed to a small hole at the top of a tall tree and said it was the nest entrance. When no birds appeared after a short time, the group headed back. Nobody saw the bird, including government scientists who had endorsed Young’s claims.

Young pledged on his website in February 2007 to produce a "body of evidence, including photographs of multiple birds, recordings and biological material together with a nest site" at some future date. The evidence has failed to materialise 17 years on, but many nature enthusiasts continue to believe Young’s new parrot is out there. The big unanswered question: “Why would a claim like this be manufactured?”

Lloyd Nielsen

Young has told me and others in recent years that the bird he photographed was in fact a Coxen’s fig-parrot. He admitted that his claims of a new species were bogus. Young showed me a photograph of a dead bird in a nest hollow that resembled a Coxen’s fig-parrot - a species that has never been photographed. Nielsen told me he was also aware the new species claim was false, even when he was publicly asserting the opposite. Nielsen remains unsure if Young photographed a Coxen’s fig-parrot or if he “coloured in” a double-eyed fig-parrot image. Colours aside, parrot experts point to descriptive features, such as the bill shape in the pictured bird, indicating a double-eyed fig-parrot.

Young and Nielsen say Young succumbed to pressure to make his false claim. There were discussions about him emerging as the “new Steve Irwin” after the naturalist’s death and that a natural history discovery of epic proportions was needed to boost his profile. Something sexier than a Coxen’s fig-parrot. Young told me his “commercial backers” hatched the idea that he discovered a new species. Nielsen agrees, insisting he and Young did not want to go along with the ruse.

Coxedn's Fig-Parrot specimens (Neil Hart)

Tom Biggs rejects the suggestion that he urged Young to manufacture the parrot claim. Biggs tells Inquirer: “I am far from an expert. I don’t have 100th the experience that John has, and I am disinclined to think it was my suggestion. I have no recollection of suggesting it was a new species. I doubt that I would have suggested that on the basis of John’s claim, based on a photograph, that it was a different species from Coxen’s.” Biggs adds: “To the extent that he photo-shopped or deliberately manipulated colours, I wouldn’t know. It’s easily done these days.”

Young and Nielsen are among many naturalists who insist the Coxen’s fig-parrot is doing well in the wild. That view resounds with officialdom: Queensland Government threatened species experts – the same ones who believed in Young’s blue-browed fig-parrot - insist there are scores of reliable records of the species in recent decades. In 2018, the state took the extraordinary step of downgrading the status of the fig-parrot from Critically Endangered on the basis that its estimated population of between 50 and 250 had not changed for many years. The estimate was and remains misguided; not one of the reports has been confirmed by a photograph, sound recording or other evidence. The downgrading was executed at a time when many experts believe Coxen’s fig-parrot was likely to be extinct.

Young’s focus of attention shifted soon after the blue-browed fig-parrot debacle when The Australian revealed in February 2007 that a dead night parrot was found in Diamantina National Park in north-west Queensland by Robert “Shorty” Cupitt, a bulldozer operator. The bird was decapitated by flying into a barbed wire fence. Other than another dead bird found in 1990, also in north-west Queensland, the night parrot had not been reliably recorded for a century. At the time, it was considered more rare and mysterious that the Coxen’s fig-parrot.

John Young at the site where he photographed the Night Parrot in 2013

The Queensland Government had suppressed news of this remarkable discovery for several months, and would have continued to do so indefinitely, while failing to make meaningful efforts to find and protect populations of birds in the wake of Cupitt’s find.

The discovery was potentially a golden opportunity for Young to restore his bruised reputation by tracking down this enigmatic species - one of just two nocturnal parrots in the world and apart from Coxen’s fig-parrot, the only parrot never to be photographed. Young located parrots by call in the Diamantina area and eventually photographed a night parrot in 2013 - a remarkable feat that attracted international recognition. The site where the parrots live was acquired by Bush Heritage Australia and called the Pullen Pullen Reserve. BHA and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy are Australia’s two big organisations devoted to acquiring properties for wildlife conservation.

Young’s initial close working relationship with BHA was short-lived and he was hired by AWC to search for night parrots. Young quit the AWC in 2018 when an inquiry commissioned by the organisation expressed doubts about photographs he claimed to be of night parrot nests and eggs. The inquiry doubted Young’s claims to have discovered the parrot in South Australia. The AWC ditched two years’ worth of material that Young had gathered. Nielsen again came to his defence, saying at the time: “It's shameful that all that work was discarded.” Young continues to claim new night parrot records: in a blog post last April, he said he had discovered birds at 11 additional sites in outback Queensland since his 2013 photographs.

Fence at Pullen Pullen where a Night Parrot was killed

Parrot experts believe Young and his backers have set back the cause of night parrot conservation with unsubstantiated claims of finding them at multiple sites. “Young’s data was being used to inform decisions about funding and planning for night parrot conservation,” Australian National University researcher Penny Olsen told the ANU Reporter last March. “The bird might feel mythical but it lives in the real world, and the consequences of misrepresenting its population size and distribution are serious.” Young and Nielsen declined to respond to requests to comment.

At Pullen Pullen, the outlook is bleak: the total parrot population was estimated in 2022 to be between 10 and 20. Numbers have not increased since the 2013 photographs, and surveys have failed to locate additional populations in Queensland. BHA refuses to say what the population is now, or to comment on whether a recent explosion of feral cat numbers on and around Pullen Pullen has had adverse consequences for the tiny population.

In 2019, another night parrot was killed after flying into a barbed wire fence on Pullen Pullen; the fatality may have constituted between 10 and 20 percent of the population. Barbed wire fences on the property separate night parrot roosts from each other and from surrounding feeding grounds. Fences are located within a few hundred metres of parrot roosts. BHA built a new barbed wire fence along Pullen Pullen’s western boundary in 2017.

Entrance to Pullen Pullen

Useful data was provided when researches in the reserve put transmitters on two night parrots which were tracked, one in 2015 and one in 2016. That work revealed parrots fly long distances at night from day roosts to feeding grounds. Pullen Pullen researchers travelled to Western Australia to do the same with a third bird at a newly discovered site in 2018. As lead researcher Nick Leseberg told podcast host Thomas Doerig in 2022: “We went over there, put the tag on it and never saw it again. It flew away and disappeared.” Extensive searches failed to find the bird and it was not heard calling again at its roost.

BHA has now thrown a veil of secrecy over its Pullen Pullen operations. The organisation will not say if other parrots have died on barbed wire fences or been lost after being fitted with transmitters. “Unfortunately none of our staff are available to help with this story,” said BHA spokeswoman Coco McGrath. BHA has in the past declared that its operations are “utterly transparent”, but the secrecy surrounding the night parrot that kicked off with Cupitt’s find continues. BHA has the back of the Queensland Government, which introduced a $353,400 fine or two-year jail sentence for entering the 56,000ha Pullen Pullen Reserve without permission.

Double-eyed Fig-Parrot

John Young had been through the windmill with the Coxen’s fig-parrot and night parrot controversies. Next he set his sights on the third critically endangered species in this saga – the buff-breasted buttonquail. Young and Nielsen claimed to have had multiple encounters with the small ground bird since the early-1990s in a large area of woodland north of the Atherton Tableland in north Queensland. Those reports set the birding world on fire. Hundreds of bird enthusiasts from around the world claimed to have spotted the buttonquail after travelling to the area.

It was seemingly a mirage. Again, not a single record was supported by a photograph or other evidence. University of Queensland researcher Patrick Webster undertook extensive surveys of the area and found no evidence of the bird’s presence, instead repeatedly seeing a closely related and much more common species - the painted buttonquail. Webster and his colleagues conclude that none of the reports are likely to be genuine.

Painted Buttonquail

This made no difference to Queensland Government authorities which, largely on the basis of records from Young and Nielsen, refused over many years to upgrade the status of the species to Critically Endangered. The last confirmed record of the bird was in 1922, when specimens were collected near Coen on Cape York. The government’s faith in the integrity of claims by the two naturalists was unaffected by the fig-parrot and night parrot rows.

In the face of Webster’s research, Young and Nielsen doubled down on their buttonquail records. Like the night parrot until 2013 and the Coxen’s fig-parrot, the buttonquail had never been photographed. But Young said he had photographs of the nest and eggs of a buff-breasted buttonquail as well as multiple images of the bird itself, which he shared with Nielsen. In July 2022 Inquirer called into question a published image of what Young described as a buff-breasted buttonquail nest that proved to be the nest of a painted buttonquail.

The nest that John Young claims to be that of a Buff-breasted Buttonquail

I later published one of his images of the bird on my blog, sunshinecoastbirds. Experts agreed it was likely a painted buttonquail. Nielsen again responding angrily, saying on Facebook he was “thoroughly disgusted” at what he described as “gutter journalism”. However, following these revelations, the Queensland Government was finally motivated to intervene and upgrade the status of the buff-breasted buttonquail to Critically Endangered, in November 2022. At the same time, it reversed its 2018 decision to downgrade the status of Coxen’s fig-parrot, restoring it to Critically Endangered. It may be too late, however, for all three special birds.

Night Parrot records from Diamantina National Park

The critically endangered Night Parrot (image above by John Young) has been found in at least three sites in Queensland’s Diamantina National Park where they were recorded earlier by north Queensland naturalist John Young. The revelation, in a 2019 report to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, raises questions about suggestions by authorities that there is no evidence of the bird being resident in the park. Young was sacked from his job in September 2018 as a senior ecologist with the AWC amid allegations that he fabricated evidence of Night Parrot records in Diamantina National Park and in Kalamurina Wildlife Sanctuary in South Australia. The AWC said it was retracting all its Night Parrot records from Diamantina National Park and other sites. In a report to the AWC in June 2019 - eight months after Young’s sacking - researchers Nick Leseberg, Steve Murphy and James Watson reported that song meters set up in the northern section of the park had confirmed the presence of Night Parrots.

Young (above) famously took the first photographs of a Night Parrot in 2013 in what is now the Pullen Pullen Reserve, which adjoins the northern boundary of Diamantina National Park. The bird photographed was also the first confirmed sighting of a live Night Parrot for about a century. The 2019 report shows that automated recording units (ARUs) were set up at 20 sites in the national park in April 2018. “Definite Night Parrot calls were detected on two ARUs during the April survey period, and one ARU during the August survey period,” the report says. “Possible Night Parrot calls were detected on one additional ARU during the April survey period, and three additional ARUs in the August survey period.” At one site, according to the report, there was “definite” recording of “multiple calls over multiple nights”. This site is just a few kilometres from where Young photographed his 2013 parrot (below). Calls detected were one-note and two-note whistles, hollow whistles, and on one occasion a pair of croak calls.

“The short duration of most of the calling periods, and the two main call types, suggest a pair of birds moving through,” the report says. At two other sites, there were “definite” recordings of call events. At a further four sites there were possible recordings, including one of multiple calls. “These detections provide evidence that Night Parrots are using the eastern section of the park,” the report says. “Although no long-term stable roost sites were detected, these results suggest it is likely that Night Parrots are roosting and breeding on Diamantina National Park.”

Given that a dead Night Parrot was found in the same part of the park in 2006 (above), the outcome confirms that parrots have been using the eastern section of the park “presumably continually for the past 13 years”. The AWC has not released the report.

Night Parrot restrictions to stay in place as John Young speaks out

John Young in Diamantina National Park

The Queensland Government has pledged to continue locking up indefinitely hundreds of thousands of hectares of Diamantina National Park in the Channel Country in a move it claims will help protect the critically endangered Night Parrot.

The government's stand comes as north Queensland naturalist John Young broke his silence over criticism of his Night Parrot research. Young announced he was launching a fresh search for the Night Parrot with Winton publican Paul Nielsen. He compared his treatment with the failure of authorities to act over the disappearance of two Night Parrots in Western Australia after one was fitted with a radio transmitter.

Young resigned from his job as a field ecologist with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy last year amid a furore when critics questioned some of his records. An investigation by the AWC last month raised doubts about a clutch of eggs and a nest found by Young in Diamantina National Park and his reports of the species from Kalamurina in South Australia. Young has told supporters that he stands by his records.

The AWC scrapped not only the records in question but all research data gathered by Young in Diamantina National Park and elsewhere. Young's records of the Night Parrot in the park while working for the AWC were responsible for a 2016 decision by the Queensland Government to declare half the 500,000 hectare park a Restricted Access Area. Anyone entering the area may face heavy fines or a jail sentence.

Although those records are now disowned by the AWC, the state Department of Environment and Science said this week the restrictions would remain in place. The department rejected any suggestion there was now no firm evidence of the parrot's continuing presence in the national park, with a spokesman saying: “Evidence shows the existence of Night Parrots in Diamantina National Park. Given the critically endangered status of the Night Parrot and the potential disturbance to these birds from members of the public, the RAA over the eastern part of Diamantina is strongly justified.”

The spokesman added the RAA also helped restrict access to the adjoining Pullen Pullen Nature Refuge, where Young sensationally rediscovered the Night Parrot and took the first photographs of the species in 2013.

A Night Parrot vanished after it was caught in a mist-net and fitted with a radio transmitter in 2017 by a team headed by Night Parrot Recovery Team chief Allan Burbidge in the Each Murchison region of Western Australia. The bird's mate disappeared soon after. The pair was discovered several months earlier by a group of four WA birders.

Young took to Facebook this week to claim that the “fiasco” had gone unchallenged. “This beggars belief,” he said. “A lot of questions need to be asked here as to why on earth it was allowed in the first place and why has it been just brushed under the carpet...” Young added: “That WA capture of the most mythical bird in the world was completely out of line. Those two birds should have never been interfered with after the brilliant work Nigel [Jackett]and Bruce [Greatwich] put into finding them. Before the slightest hint of even contemplating such a thing, there should have been a long monitoring program to see how many more there were.”

Young described his critics during the AWC row as “vengeful”. He said: “You wonder whether they wake up with demons in their eyes wondering who they can take down to their level... We should all be supporting each other, not trying to undermine each other or trying to walk over each other to show how smart we are. In the process the natural world suffers and I am not going to be part of that.”

Young said he had decided to share publicly much of the information he has gathered about the Night Parrot. “Time to open the doors to give you all a chance to see this priceless bird. Much that is coming will never have been shown or told. I am going to leave no stone unturned. I made the mistake of trying to keep the locations out of site to protect the birds and was damned for it. Time to completely open the floodgates.” Over the next few weeks he would “show as much as I can and give as many hints as possible” on how to find the Night Parrot, but he would not be disclosing specific site information.

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.

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.