There’s a lot of bad shit going on in the world today, so here’s something a bit lighter for you: birdwatchers in Broome have snapped a pic of Australia‘s most mysterious and elusive bird: the NIGHT PARROT.
The extremely thicc critter known as the night parrot is so rare that it wasn’t even confirmed that it was still alive in Australia until about three years ago. This photo was nabbed an incredible 2,000km away from where the species was last spotted over in Western Queensland. Basically, it’s the holy grail for birdwatchers.
It may look like a “fat budgie” – as the team who spotted it described it – but it’s a prize spot in the community. To the point that the chair of the extremely absurdly named Night Parrot Recovery Team, Allan Burbidge, has literally never even seen one. “It’s a species that is really hard to detect,” he says. You’ll get there, mate.
Adrian Boyle, from Broome, was part of the team who took the photo. He never thought he’d see one.
I grew up knowing that the bird was extinct and didn’t expect to ever see one in my life. I just knew it was a fairly small green and yellow parrot that used to live in deserts in spinifex countries that was sort of the unseeable, that it was the holy grail if you get to see one.
The birds probably don’t cover the entire arid interior of Australia, but researchers now have the evidence to prove that there’s gotta be at least some of them battling out there away from development and other human-caused degradation.
Wanna know more about this chubbo birdo? Fang a listen to the ABC‘s Off Track podcast, which I can only describe as a bushwalk you don’t have to get off your ass to embark on. Oh, that defeats the purpose of a bushwalk, you reckon? Get stuffed.
Source: ABC Radio National.
Photo: Bruce Greatwich.
