RESCUING THE GODDESS OF THE GRASSLANDS

An unlikely collaboration between Queensland pastoralists and conservationists is helping save one of our prettiest and rarest parrots.

- JAANA DIELENBERG

IN 1922 BIRD collector William McLennan was exploring the country outside Coen, on Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula, when he stumbled upon a vast grassy flat populated with thousands of termite mounds. Nearly every conical mound showed signs that the golden-shouldered parrot used it as a nesting site. Fast forward 100 years and the number of these stunning parrots has dwindled close to extinction, as have numbers of many of the peninsula’s other grassland bird species, which travelled together in great flocks, filling the sky. Although much of the region might look ‘undeveloped’, pastoralism has significantly changed the ecosystem and caused the unravelling of this once vast bird community. Along with the parrot, that community included the buff-breasted button-quail, which was last sighted in the year William penned his field notes about the grassy plains.

The golden-shouldered parrot, also known as the ant-bed parrot, nests in burrows inside termite mounds. Flitting to and from its nest, the bright plumage of the golden-shouldered parrot is a flash of colour against the muted tones of the termite mounds and grassy plains. Its unusual nesting location provides a stable temperature and humidity for developing eggs and chicks – and offers protection from fires. The dwelling also comes with domestic help from the antbed parrot moth, which eats the nestlings’ droppings, keeping the nest clean. This unusual moth is entirely dependent on the parrots’ nests; its fate hangs on the fortunes of the bird.