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Eastern Ground Parrot (Pezoporus w. wallicus), family Psittaculidae, NSW, Australia

photograph by Keagan Mason

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Night parrot sighting confirmed in Western Australia for first time in 100 years | The Guardian

A night parrot has been photographed in Western Australia, adding another twist to the mysterious history of the species that was presumed extinct until it was rediscovered in Queensland four years ago. It is the first verified sighting of the bird in WA for almost 100 years and follows a history of unverified sightings, disbelieved reports and futile ecological surveys that rivals the hunt for the (presumably still) extinct Thylacine in Tasmania.

The discovery was made by a group of four friends from Broome who have dedicated the better part of seven years to locating the bird, examining detailed maps, trekking into likely habitats, and spending evenings in the state’s arid interior listening for unusual bird calls. This month, two days into a trip to an undisclosed location near a salt lake somewhere in inland WA, they heard “some really interesting calls”. “The calls to us were unfamiliar,” one of the group, Bruce Greatwich, told Guardian Australia. “We are quite experienced in these habitats so to hear something new was quite exciting.”

The calls were different to those recorded in the Queensland night parrot population, described by researchers in 2005 as “a ‘ding-ding’ call similar to that of a bell miner” followed by “a short frog-like ‘grieet’,” but were enough to indicate the bird might be present. The next morning a night parrot darted out in front of one of the group, George Swann, while he was walking through spinifex looking for entirely different birds.

It was green and yellow with black barred feathers. The common description is of a big, dumpy budgerigar, about the same size as a rainbow lorikeet.