Solving the night parrot mystery

An artist's impression of the mysterious night parrot thought to inhabit arid regions of Australia. (Martin Thompson)Stories about night parrots are a bit like ghost stories - many people have one, but they're nearly impossible to prove.

Little is known about the green and black bird that's got a short tail and is only seen at night.

While it's thought to inhabit much of arid Australia, it's so rare that the night parrot has never been photographed.

But ecologist Julian Reid and filmmaker Rob Nugent from the Australian National University are trying.

They're currently touring Central Australia speaking to anyone who claims to have a night parrot story for an upcoming documentary.

Based on just a handful of recorded sightings over the last century, Rob Nugent says they're not getting their hopes up about actually finding one.

"How do you film something that you can't see?

"There's immediately a cinematic challenge there.

"I like the mystery of the bird, how it lives only an inferred existence.

"It's story also speaks to extinctions, the idea that this animal may or may not exist, and we live in an age when loss is accepted."

Late last year, the night parrot was declared one of the world's five most mysterious birds by the Smithsonia Institute in the United States.

Nugent says he's not surprised considering there's been only a handful of confirmed sightings over the last century.

"The person that found the last specimen was in 2006.

"He was a grader driver on the Diamantina Lakes National Park.

"He was driving along and there was one decapitated on a barbed wire fence.

"The previous specimen was found in 1990, and before that it was thought to be extinct for 75 years, there was absolutely no record of it.

"But I think the last two live specimens were eaten by a cat too.

"They left them in the kitchen or something, and when they turned their back the last two night parrot specimens were eaten, dead and gone.

"All the night parrot stories are like this somehow.

"They're like the one that got away, like fishing stories."

But in their search for tales of the night parrot, however tall those stories may be, Nugent and Reid are starting in all the right places.

"We've just travelled ten days throughout south west Queensland speaking to graziers.

"Across the bar at Winton is always a great place for a night parrot story.

"And then we stopped into a hotel between Boulia and Winton.

"You can't help but drop into the pubs in Queensland."

Nugent and Reid are visiting the Southern Tanami Indigenous Protected Area and the Newhaven Sanctuary in the Northern Territory this week.

But if you have information about the night parrot you can reach them through their Facebook page.