A highway, a sewage plant and an endangered parrot

Despite its name, the orange-bellied parrot is actually predominantly green (Steve Davidson)The orange-bellied parrot is unique: a migratory parrot that can survive on only the high-salt plants found in Victorian and Tasmanian marshes. Unfortunately, it’s also highly endangered—with just 75 individuals left in the wild. Ann Jones meets the people fighting for this little bird’s survival.

In the still photo, a small black beady eye stares back at you from under a blue monobrow. The forehead slopes regally, the beak glistens.

Over a fine chest, yellow-green feathers spread out in a smooth, proud posture, and there’s an orange patch right between the legs like a bejewelled codpiece.

This is one of the last remaining orange-bellied parrots flying free in Australia, and the photo is most likely the only way you’ll see a wild one.

The bird, slightly larger than a budgerigar, is one of only two migratory parrot species in the world, and at the moment there are only an estimated 70 individuals left in the wild. It is so rare that even some bird watchers of decades experience have failed to spy it.

There are so many strange and unique things about this bird that it’s hard to know where to start.

‘The orange-bellied parrot breeds in Tasmania, down in the far south-west,’ says Steve Davidson, the Westernport organiser for Birdlife Australia.

‘Usually around the end of March, early April, they’ll migrate from their breeding grounds across Bass Strait and winter along the southern coast of the mainland.’

This group of birds in various attitudes show the blue monobrow, the orange belly and the blue flush on the wing. (Steve Davidson)The migration across one of the most treacherous stretches of water in Australia is not their only idiosyncrasy.

‘The food plants that they rely on—plants with funny names like beaded glass wart and austral sea blight and things like that—provide seed on an annual basis,’ says Davidson. ‘They have a higher salt concentration and the birds therefore have a high salt tolerance. For some reason they just adapted to feeding on these coastal plants in these coastal environments.’

Their odd adaptations have contributed, in a way, to their current predicament, because their large geographical range and specific habitat needs make them harder to legislate for, difficult to protect and therefore more vulnerable to disruption.

‘Coastal salt marsh generally has been looked upon as a wasteland, prime for development for things like petro-chemical plants, even housing, marinas, that sort of thing. The sort of habitat that they live in is so close to the coast that it is highly desirable for things like development, and a lot of the remaining habitat has been degraded to a point that it is not suitable for the parrots,’ says Davidson.

However, after years of gloomy forecasts about the future of the species, the orange-bellied parrot continues to surprise birdwatchers in many ways, including by turning up at a sewerage plant.

William Steele is a senior wildlife and wetlands scientist with Melbourne Water, in charge of environmental management at the immense Western Treatment Plant.

The plant is actually Ramsar listed wetland area and includes endangered species like the growling grass frog and the threatened fat-tailed dunnart.

It also is an occasional haunt for wintering orange-bellied parrots.

‘The last ones I saw were at this very pond,’ says Steele.

‘It’s quite a small patch of very low lying salt marsh there, and this is where they tend to come to feed and they’ll just disappear into that and stay there for some time, feeding away ... and loafing.’

‘Two of them flew up from just over there and headed off towards the track just behind us.’

‘They have a rasping alarm call as they flush, and that’s the first thing that you quite often pick up when you do flush them accidentally as I did then on  that occasion.’

‘I was thinking of that TV series Last Chance to See and it’s quite possible that that’s the last time that I will see that little critter, so it was really nice have five, 10 minutes just being able to sit there on that bank over there, just watching them do their thing. A bit sad in a way as well, seeing the two little birds and just thinking, “I wonder when I’ll next see an orange-bellied parrot in the wild.”’

An Orange-bellied ParrotIt seems that these little birds have a habit of surprising their fans, turning up when least expected.

A less mobile flock has appeared at the Geelong Ring Road recently. It is the work of Victorian Surf Coast artist Mike McLean.

‘The orange-bellied parrots were something that I stumbled across as subject matter for a mural that I’d been commissioned to do for a veterinary surgeon. Because I’m based on the surf coast, it was quite personal to me that it was something that was happening near me and near my community that I had no idea about previously.’

‘It’s flying through the Bellarine, we’re not talking about an animal on the other side of the world, or something you see on TV or National Geographic; this is local and it should mean something to people. That’s really the body of my thought behind what I am doing at this stage with the OBP project.’

The latest part of McLean’s orange-bellied parrot series is a group of 200 of the birds painted onto plywood cut outs and planted on star pickets on the edge of the highway.

The painted birds are large—about two feet long—and are partially stencilled and partially hand-painted.

‘It will be like a ginourmous flock of orange-bellied parrots flying across the hillside,’ says the artist.

There are now more orange-bellied parrots in mural form in the world than there are real specimens.

‘I hadn’t actually thought about that you know, funnily enough,’ says McLean. ‘I’ve been so happily involved in the creative process for the last eight months this project has been going. That’s a very sad, sad thing to acknowledge.’

‘Hopefully the efforts that are being made in captivity with breeding programs and the releasing of breeding pairs [will] hopefully repopulate the birds.’

The captive breeding program includes Healesville Sanctuary, Halls Gap Zoo, Adelaide Zoo and the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and the Environment, and 24 birds were released in their most recent effort.

Would those previously captive birds know how to migrate? 

At least two made the crossing—they were counted in the Victorian salt marshes. One was a bird only recently released, and another was a young bird which was the offspring of two formerly captive parents.

‘Whether it was with guidance from wild birds or not we’ll never really know, but it still means that they were able to make it across. It’s almost as if the bird has been hard wired with that migration information,’ says Steve Davidson.

According to chair of the recovery team, Peter Menkhorst, a further 36 captive-bred birds have been selected for release into the wild in Tasmania this October.

That will boost the population at least momentarily.

At the start of July this year the current federal minister for environment, Greg Hunt, announced the appointment of Gregory Andrews as Australia’s first threatened species commissioner. 

Andrews has previously been involved in counting wintering orange-bellied parrots.

However, at this stage, funding for the orange-bellied parrot recovery program remains uncertain.

‘It’s difficult at times to be positive and try and keep a positive frame of mind about the future of the species, because they are in a lot of trouble, there is no doubt about that,’ says Davidson.

‘We are doing everything that we can to try and ensure that they continue to exist in the wild, but it can be a little bit depressing at times and yes, the significance of these birds and the state that they’re in is not lost on me anyway.’

‘There are two birds that I have been watching over the last two years. There’s one called Blue T Blue and the other one is called Orange C Right, and that refers to the colour and the leg combinations on their leg bands. These guys like to hang out together, they’re two little buddies. They have come back to the same site for the last two years and probably before that.

‘I feel like I sort of know them, I’m sure they don’t feel the same way about me. They probably see my car and think, “Here we go again.”’

‘I just think it’s amazing that they’re able to come back to that same place. I find it quite satisfying that they’re still there, they’re still existing, they’re still grafting a living out of what is pretty much a bleak environment, a bleak habitat, and the fact that they make that crossing over bass straight every year and back.

‘The fact that they can do that and make it back to the same site is thrilling for one thing, and I have a lot of admiration for that little bird, you know?’

A Draft National Recovery Plan for the Orange-bellied Parrot, Neophema chrysogaster  is currently out for public comment and closes November 7, 2014.