Extinct No More – Rare and Beautiful Bird Rediscovered After 100 Years Without Sightings

The night parrot is one of Australia’s most mysterious birds, and for a long time, many people even doubted it still existed. Small, green-and-yellow, and strictly nocturnal, it prefers to hide deep within dense desert grasses, especially during the day. Spotting one is like finding a needle in a haystack — especially when that haystack is the vast, wild interior of the Australian outback.

So how do you protect a bird that’s almost never seen? On Ngururrpa Country, a team of Indigenous rangers and scientists decided to stop waiting around and start searching smart. Between 2020 and 2023, they launched a carefully planned project to figure out where the night parrot lives, what threatens it, and what could be done to save it.

Detection

The team knew chance sightings weren’t enough. So they got creative. They used rugged audio recorders — devices that could survive desert conditions and capture sound 24/7. These were placed at dozens of remote sites across Ngururrpa Country.

Why sound? Night parrots have a unique set of calls. Some mimic a telephone’s ring; others sound like a bell. Each recording gave the team a clue — a pin on the map saying, “Yes, they’re here.”

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Once a call was confirmed, the team added camera traps to monitor what else was hanging around. That helped reveal whether predators were nearby, and predator scat was collected to find out what those predators were eating. Fire history was another key factor, so the researchers also dug into satellite imagery to track how often each site had burned.

Habitat

Night parrots don’t just pick any old place to sleep. They hide in thick clumps of a native grass called bull spinifex (Triodia longiceps). These dome-shaped clusters offer shade, coolness, and invisibility — basically, everything a night parrot needs to stay safe during the blazing daytime heat.

But here’s the catch: only old spinifex works. Young grass is too sparse, and it can take years for the mature domes to form. If fire sweeps through too often, the grass never gets a chance to grow old. The result? The birds lose their shelter, and there’s no quick fix.

Fire

The desert naturally burns. Lightning strikes, dry seasons, and wind all combine to create fast-moving fires. But when fires return too frequently, they keep the spinifex young and unsuitable for parrots.

The study found that areas with roosting parrots often burn every few years — too often for the grass to mature. But there’s a solution. Cool-season burns, done in the right spots and times, can break up the landscape into safer zones. That reduces the risk of a single fire destroying everything.

This patchwork approach, guided by the rangers’ traditional knowledge and modern satellite data, gives spinifex the breathing space it needs to grow old.

Predators

Cameras near the roosts often caught dingoes roaming around. At first, that seems bad — a wild dog near a small bird? But dig into the scat, and things look different. The remains of feral cats showed up, not birds.

Feral cats are a real danger. They hunt at night, move silently, and can easily kill young birds. But dingoes seem to keep cat numbers in check, either by direct attacks or by making cats feel unsafe.

So in this case, dingoes are the unlikely heroes. Reducing dingo numbers could lead to a spike in cats, which would be bad news for the parrots.

Numbers

By analyzing calls and using location data, researchers estimate there may be about 50 night parrots in this region. That might not sound like much, but for a species with only scattered confirmed populations across Australia, this is huge.

Ngururrpa Country might be one of the bird’s most important strongholds. But a stronghold can still fall. One severe fire season or the wrong predator management decision could tip the balance.

Actions

So what can be done? Here’s what the team recommends:

• Use local ranger knowledge to plan cool, patchy burns
• Avoid harming dingoes, since they help control feral cats
• Keep livestock out of key habitats
• Minimize disturbance from vehicles or infrastructure
• Look into new tools like feather DNA or GPS tags for tracking

With a mix of tradition, science, and care, this desert bird might have a real shot at survival. The story of the night parrot is a reminder that some of the rarest things in the world aren’t lost — they’re just hiding, waiting for someone to look in the right way.

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