By Tallulah Bieundurry, ABC
Ngururrpa Ranger Lucinda Gibson gently holding the unfertilised night parrot egg. Photo: Facebook / Ngururrpa Rangers
The discovery of an unfertilised night parrot egg in Western Australia's far north has caused a stir in international wildlife circles.
The parrot was thought extinct for over a century but was rediscovered in 2013 by a wildlife photographer who captured video footage of a live bird in Queensland.
Not long after, populations were found in WA's Great Sandy Desert on land managed by the Ngururrpa people, including 50 parrots occupying an area in WA's remote Kimberley.
But much remains unknown about the rare bird and its behaviours, and the discovery of an unfertilised egg has given hope to conservationists and scientists keen to see an increase in numbers.
On an on-country expedition in September last year, local rangers found the egg in a series of abandoned night parrot tunnels.
Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) manager Christy Davies said it was an emotional discovery.
"There aren't many of them in museum collections anywhere," she said.
"Night parrots are so rare, and even when they were probably more common they were in areas where people weren't out collecting much."
Davies said the group had to be sure the egg was unfertilised before interfering with the nest.
The rangers set up an overnight camera to monitor activity in the tunnels, and with guidance from night parrot expert Nick Leseberg the group concluded it had been abandoned.
Davies said they then used a technique called "candling" to determine the egg was not fertile.
"You can hold it up to the light and look through it, and if it's fertile there's a little baby bird growing on the inside. You can see dark shapes," she said
"We could see it was pretty uniform so that confirmed it was not fertile."
Davies said the egg could help scientists understand more about the bird.
"The Ngururrpa IPA is actually home to the largest known population of night parrots," she said.
"But there's still a lot of really big questions about night parrot ecology in general.
"We don't know much about its behaviour. We don't know when they breed."
Davies speculated it came from a young mother's first clutch of eggs, which are often infertile.
Extinct for a century
Night parrot researcher Nick Leseberg has been studying the bird for many years and said he was certain colonisation was the main cause for its decline.
A night parrot was discovered on an overnight monitoring camera set up by Ngururrpa Rangers. Photo: Facebook / Ngururrpa Rangers
"The decline was noted around the end of the 1800s, and by the early 1900s, it had sort of disappeared," Leseberg said.
"For about a century, there's been a trickle of claimed sightings.
"It wasn't really rediscovered properly until about 1990 when they found a dead one by the side of a road in western Queensland."
The Ngururpa IPA has followed local populations for around five years.
Leseberg said Indigenous rangers played a critical role in preservation.
"Ninety per cent of the population of night parrots is in this area, which is almost entirely managed as part of these Indigenous Protected Areas," he said.
"We can ... start to build those predictive models that will tell us if we protect the habitat in this way, if we manage the threats in this way, then maybe we can see these [numbers] increase."
He said understanding breeding patterns could protect the critically endangered bird.
"You've really got to understand their breeding biology, like what triggers breeding? When does it happen? What are they vulnerable to?" Leseberg said.
"It's a critical part of their recovery."
- ABC
