Ngururrpa Rangers have used their knowledge of Country to find the largest known population of one of the world's most endangered and elusive birds, the night parrot.
The rangers have been working with the National Environmental Science Program's Resilient Landscapes Hub looking for the rare ground-dwelling parrots.
"First, we thought they were only living in one area, on our neighbour’s Country," ranger Clifford Sunfly said.
"But then we started checking in our area and ended up finding evidence that they are here. We are still looking for them, to make sure they are safe, and we are still finding them."
There may be as many as 50 night parrots living in the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) in the far east of Western Australia's Pilbara region, according to researchers, who say it is the largest known population in the world.
Thriving population decimated by colonisation
Once distributed throughout this country's arid inland, the night parrot underwent a significant decline in the late 19th century, coinciding with the arrival of feral predators and the spread of pastoralism.
There were no definitive records of the parrots for more than 100 years, until a small population was found in south-western Queensland in 2013.
Scientists say night parrots have limited night vision but an asymmetrical skull and enlarged ears give them evolutionary adaptions that enable them to make their way around the desert in the dark.
The researchers used songmeters (a type of sound recorder) and found evidence of night parrots at 17 of the 31 sites they checked on the Ngururrpa IPA.
When the rangers found night parrot feathers, they knew it was a good sign.
"So we all went around and looked around for night parrots and, sure enough, we found more feathers and nests with eggs," ranger Kathryn Njamme said.
At sites where parrots were detected, the group used camera-traps to survey predators and collected predator scats for dietary analysis.
They found that a key threat to the birds' habitat - a specific type of spinifex - is fire, which occurs in the surrounding sandplains every six to 10 years.
They also found that dingoes are common in night parrot habitat, regularly feeding on feral cats, which could be helping the survival of several endangered species.
Ngururrpa Rangers setting a Felixer – a type of trap for cats – in night parrot habitat. Credit: Indigenous Desert Alliance
"We saw lots of scalps of cats. The dingoes are eating them," she said.
"We're lucky to have dingo.
"There was dingo kuna (poo) everywhere, and there was a lot of black and gray cat fur inside the scats."
Cultural knowledge details parrot's elusivenes
Before this survey, night parrots had been found at fewer than 10 locations in central and northern WA, mostly on Indigenous-managed lands.
The known population is fewer than 100 birds.
There is some cultural knowledge of the species, including stories about how difficult the bird is to find, not revealing itself during fires, floods or hailstorms.
There are also whispered stories about the night parrot’s call, typically heard at night, being used as a warning to children not to stray from the fire as it was the sound of an evil spirit.
The rangers shared their great depth of knowledge about the bird’s habitats and how to manage them, including the distribution of spinifex, required for roosting and breeding, and seed and water resources required for foraging.
"We, as rangers, are working together with the scientists to learn two-ways – the science way and the traditional way," Clifford Sunfly said.
"For the traditional way, we read the Country – by looking at the area and knowing where there could be water around, and looking at the plants they might eat and measuring the distance from where they could have their home to the water, to where they eat.
"We are also using technology, science way, to look for nests, and protecting their area from cats, camels and bush fires."
Cats and dingoes are common throughout the Ngururrpa IPA.
Pairs of dingoes were often captured on camera and a family of dingoes with three pups was photographed within 500m of a songmeter that recorded frequent night parrot calls.
"Another quiet one is the fox," Clifford Sunfly said.
"We only saw one fox on the camera, dingoes are probably keeping them away too."
While the Ngururrpa IPA has never been used to graze stock, camels are everywhere in the night parrot habitat.
"We see them disturbing the spinifex," Clifford Sunfly said.
"If you learn how to read the Country you can see that hidden highway for them following around the claypans."
Before the group detected night parrot calls on the Ngururrpa IPA in 2020, there was little awareness that this nocturnal bird was still persisting in the area.
Once the song of the bird was played, Traditional Owners recalled hearing its whistle as children, and being told that it was an evil spirit.
"Before we knew about night parrots we used to burn everywhere, every hunting trip we would light fires, but now we are being more careful about where we are burning," ranger Ryan Sunfly said.
"We still need to do a lot of burning though."
In the Ngururrpa IPA cats are regarded as a significant threat to night parrots, ngalku (bilbies), kakarratul (marsupial mole), murrtja (brush-tailed mulgara) and the great desert skink.
The rangers use traps to keep the cat population down, but they're also concerned about large herds of camels.
"If there’s too many camels there might be less water for the dingoes," Clifford Sunfly said.
"If there’s less dingoes there might be more cats and more predation on night parrots."
Buoyed by the success of the night parrot project, the rangers would like to do more research - and they're dreaming big.
"We would like to spend more time on Country to find where they are and understand what they are doing, and listen to their calls to try to work out what they are saying to each other," Clifford Sunfly said.
"We want those scientists to come and help us catch some night parrots and tag them.
"We want their expert advice."
They'd also like more cameras, songmeters and equipment to collect scats for DNA analysis.
"One day we would love to have our own research facility for doing our night parrot surveys," Clifford Sunfly said.
"It could be a research station for all the endangered species.
"It would be our dream to have our own research base on Ngururrpa."
