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 antbed parrot, nests in burrows inside termite mounds. Flitting to and from its nest, the bright plumage of the golden-shouldered parrot
