For the first time in years spent listening for its chime-like call and finding only feathers, rangers in Western Australia's Great Sandy Desert have laid eyes on a living night parrot — and it was a chick.

  • 2013 — the year night parrots were rediscovered after being feared extinct for over a century
  • 1 live bird — the first some Ngururrpa Rangers had ever personally seen, despite years searching
  • 2 new detection tools now in development: AI call-recognition and eDNA water testing
  • Critically endangered — the IUCN status of Pezoporus occidentalis

The night parrot is one of the most elusive birds on Earth. It was presumed extinct for more than a century until a chance rediscovery in Queensland in 2013. Even in strongholds like the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area, believed to hold one of the species' largest surviving populations, actually seeing one alive is rare — most evidence comes from camera traps, feathers, or calls heard in the dark.

How the rangers found it

Ranger Kathryn Njamme had heard the bird's distinctive call before. She had studied camera-trap footage, examined an egg, and collected loose green-and-yellow feathers. She had never seen a living night parrot.

That changed after a July trip into the desert, when heavy overnight rain fell across the protected area. The next morning, rangers combed the old-growth mounds of bull spinifex — known as "lanu lanu" in Kukatja language — that the birds rely on for shelter and nesting.

Ranger Lucinda Gibson spotted a wet feather caught in the grass, then noticed a burrow tucked inside a spinifex mound. Peering in, she found a young night parrot, its grey, downy feathers blending almost perfectly into the clump.

"We was really happy and excited to find a night parrot. We all was crying there and holding each other." — Kathryn Njamme, Ngururrpa Ranger

The chick sat motionless, close to fledgling age. Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area coordinator Christy Davies said that stillness is deliberate: young night parrots left alone by feeding parents rely entirely on camouflage, not flight, to stay safe.

Turbocharging the search for more

The find wasn't chance alone. Ngururrpa Rangers, working with the National Environmental Science Program and the Indigenous Desert Alliance, have spent years building a habitat model that blends known night parrot preferences with cultural knowledge — where the lanu lanu grows, where water lingers, and when it dries up.

Two new tools are being layered onto that model. Researchers are training an AI system to scan thousands of hours of desert audio for the parrot's call, and fine-tuning an environmental DNA (eDNA) technique that can detect whether a night parrot recently visited a water source, no sighting required.

The threats are real: feral cats and unmanaged fire remain the species' biggest dangers, which is why rangers are also testing predator-control devices that target cats directly. Knowing more about where the birds live — and how many remain — is central to keeping the population from sliding back toward the brink.

For Njamme, the discovery was also about recognition for a landscape and a people rarely in the spotlight. "We don't see much night parrot, [but] we're trying to look after them," she said.

Read the full account from ABC News Australia, and more on the ranger-led research program from the Indigenous Desert Alliance.