The Night Parrot Collection Highlights | Updated 8 months ago A night parrot in the WA Museum storage facility WA Museum Hide and seek champion? The attractive, but elusive Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) was thought to be extinct for over eight decades before its miraculous discovery in the late 1990s. After its last authenticated sighting in 1912, all attempts to observe or record the species were fruitless until a supposed flock sighting in 1979. Even into the 1990s, sightings of the camera-shy Night Parrot, were often relegated to myth and fancy, akin to the mysterious thylacine of Tasmania. With the discovery of a roadkill specimen in Queensland in 2006, scientific interest and investment in the cause began to be reignited, until in 2013, Queensland bird enthusiast John Young sent five feathers from a roost site he found to the Western Australian Museum’s Molecular Systematics Unit for testing, convinced the birds he had been watching were indeed the Night Parrot. Found to be 100 per cent identical to Pezoporus occidentalis, the Western Australian Museum verified the bird that Mr Young had been pursuing for over 15 years. It was a mere two years later, on 4 April 2015, that ornithologist Steve Murphy and partner Rachel Barr captured and tagged the live Night Parrot, in southwestern Queensland. As of October 2023, the Night Parrot is registered on the IUCN Red List as a Critically Endangered species, where it was last assessed in December 2021. According to the IUCN, targeted acoustic surveys across Australian since 2013 have detected no more than 30 individual Night Parrots. Expert consultation regarding densities known at available habitat indicates a population estimate of 40-500 individuals remaining in the wild, with a best estimate of 200 (Leseberg et al. 2021b in IUCN, 20222). There are no Night Parrots in captivity. Just 24 specimens exist in museum collections. A native legend Despite its sizeable notoriety in the birdwatching and conservation communities, the Night Parrot is a relatively small bird, measuring up to 25cm in length. It is predominantly bright green in colour with black and yellow bars, spots and streaks over the body, bright yellow on the belly and vent, and black on the upper surfaces of the wing and tail tips. When on the ground it hops, much like a kangaroo. The Night Parrot was first described by ornithologist John Gould in 1861, from a holotype specimen retrieved 13 km southeast of Mt Farmer, west of Lake Austin in Western Australia. In Gould’s publication, he described it as a part of its own genus, the Geopsittacus, however later consensus placed the parrot within the Pezoporus genus, which it shares with the ground parrot (Pezoporus wallicus) of Australia. A drawings of Pezoporus occidentalis by Elizabeth Gould for the publication Birds of Australia (1890). Ornithology (Birds) Collection