were clearly very, very excited.”

Credit for the discovery is being shared between Swann, Greatwich, Adrian Boyle and Nigel Jackett.

Adrian Boyle, Nigel Jackett, George Swann and Bruce Greatwich had been searching for the night parrot in Western Australia for around seven years.

Boyle and Swann are expert consultants to Monash University organisation Research Ecology and Jackett is a warden at the Broome Bird Observatory. All four have experience working in the science and ecology fields but undertook the hunt for the parrot as a passion project, working the trip in around annual leave and family commitments.

Greatwich rattles off acknowledgements like an Academy Award winner, thanking their families for indulging the obsession, fellow WA birdwatchers Neil Hamilton, Tegan Douglas and Aneta Creighton, and ornithologist John Young, who discovered the night parrotarea.”

The night parrot group won’t say where they saw the bird, lest they be targeted by poachers, simply giving a broad description of “dry inland areas” that covers about a third of the state.

The last recorded sightings of the parrot in WA was in the Pilbara in 1912, when the only known specimen for more than 100 years was collected.

There was also a possible night parrot nest discovered in the Pilbara in 1971, and in 2005 Fortescue Metals Group was required to consider a night parrot management plan for its Pilbara Iron Ore Hub, a large mine located halfway between Pannawonica and Tom Price.

Clarke said the evidence from Queensland, used by the WA parrot watchers to locate the bird, was that it nested in unburned spinifex, often alongside