![The night parrot is under threat from rising temperatures due to climate change. Photo: Steve Murphy The night parrot is under threat from rising temperatures due to climate change. Photo: Steve Murphy](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/aa42a050-e146-4e20-8d39-9d4c0f069d28.jpg/r0_0_729_409_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
![These preserved specimens of night parrot are more than 100 years old and are still used to study the bird's physiology. Photo: Michael Kearney These preserved specimens of night parrot are more than 100 years old and are still used to study the bird's physiology. Photo: Michael Kearney](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/36026c07-1bad-4968-be19-b561e3317280.jpg/r0_0_729_410_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
![Pullen Pullen reserve in western Queensland is home to one of the two known populations of night parrot. Photo: Annette Ruzicka Pullen Pullen reserve in western Queensland is home to one of the two known populations of night parrot. Photo: Annette Ruzicka](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/b0968bc3-d426-43e1-8414-eb9ca8a81c2f.jpg/r0_0_729_410_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
![The night parrot in its usual habitat, a spinifex nest Photo: Justin McManus The night parrot in its usual habitat, a spinifex nest Photo: Justin McManus](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/0825d408-db8e-4e7c-b54b-61cce4ef0bbe.jpg/r0_0_729_410_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
![Pullen Pullen reserve in western Queensland. Photo: Annette Ruzicka Pullen Pullen reserve in western Queensland. Photo: Annette Ruzicka](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/d8df1c9a-4b37-42a2-8378-440b3be4706c.jpg/r0_0_729_410_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The elusive night parrot has been surrounded by a shroud of mystery since its rediscovery in 2013 after being unsighted for 75 years.
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What exactly led to the bird's decline remains the focus of many studies as researchers struggle to rebuild the populations.
Uncontrolled fires, introduced predators and climate change have long been considered the main culprits, but with so few birds to study, concrete conclusions have been hard to reach.
New research has shown that a lack of access to water sources and lack of safety in cooler nesting areas has played part in the decline of the night parrot populations.
University of Melbourne Associate Professor and National Environmental Research Program, Threatened Species Recovery Hub project leader Michael Kearney has been studying the impact of climate change on the night parrot.
Starting with something as simple as studying how the birds drink was key to identifying the effects of climate on the bird, Dr Kearney said.
"The aim was to answer the question of how often they need to drink, they are desert birds and desert birds are well adapted to living with very little water," he said.
The budgerigar, a similar Australian desert bird, was used as a template for studying the night parrot's drinking habits.
"A budgerigar, if you keep it in your house at room temperature, wouldn't need to drink much water if at all, because they're getting all the water they need from the little bit of water in dry seed," he said.
"Birds can get away with drinking very little water, but when it gets hot, they have to evaporate water to cool, just like humans do."
The problem was, as it always is when studying the night parrot, the populations hidden in the Queensland outback were too small to conduct invasive research on the birds.
"We got to do some measurements on the bird, but what I mostly did was assume they had a physiology like the budgerigar," Dr Kearney said.
"I made them into a fat budgie in a sense, the budgerigar is very well studied and so we basically took aspects of them that were known and scaled them up.
"I also went to the museum in Victoria and very carefully measured characteristics of the feathers of the three very old specimens from the late 1800s."
It is thought predators are the big concern for the night parrot but, controlling the numbers may not matter if the place they live is uninhabitable through degradation of climate.
"Based on history of temperatures at the site, there will be hot days that they really will need to get a drink, even if they are able to find succulent foods," he said.
"One other thing we measured with the night parrot in their habitat was the temperature in the bushes they hide in, spinifex. While they are quite shady, the temperatures the bushes get up to in the big bushes get to well over 45 degrees.
"Once the air temperature gets above 38 to 40 degrees the water loss goes really fast. It doesn't take much of a shift above 40 or so degrees to really ramp up the water loss."
This means only a few degrees change in the air temperature, as is expected over the next 50 years with climate change, will have a big impact on the bird's drinking habits.
With the need to find water sources comes a vulnerability to predators that stake out the waterholes.
"It was actually quite shocking to recompute what we've calculated for the last 20 years and project that to 2070. It really made it dangerously hot for the birds at the site," Dr Kearney said.
"It was a bit depressing to make that calculation, but one thing that we don't know is to what extent they will go down into even more buffered places like down little burrows, which may exist under the spinifex."
Dr Kearney's research suggests the parrot may move lower into the ground, in burrows and caves that are common in the landscape, unfortunately for the bird, that is also where predators such as cats and foxes hide.
Population control of the introduced predators such as cats and foxes is already in place and may need to be more targeted in the future.
This may give the night parrot a fighting chance in the future as they need to expose themselves more and more in the search for water.
"There is suggestive evidence that predators have played a role in the decline of the populations, but the more work that gets done we're going to learn a lot very quickly about these parrots and the threats that face them."