Hayleigh Graham prods the ground with a stick before gingerly stepping forward.
The vegetation has sprung back since her last visit to Figure of Eight Island, a two hour boat ride west of Esperance off Western Australia's south coast, and she would hate to surprise a hidden death adder or tiger snake.
But she is also taking care not to disturb the fragile, fist-sized bird burrows that underpin her expedition.
She spots one and disappears into the undergrowth, crouching to inspect it.
While barely visible from the outside, the burrows can extend metres into the sandy surface; a protected nook to lay eggs and raise chicks.
But today, there's no squawking, no smell, no pitter patter of little feet.
Disappointed, she turns to leave when she spots a hopeful clue.
A feather — white, brown and smaller than a fingernail.
She plucks it from the ground and puts it in her pocket.
Mystery of the missing birds
Figure of Eight Island was once home to Australia's western-most breeding population of short-tailed shearwaters.
But the colony disappeared after a lightning strike sparked a fire that quietly ravaged the island in 2019.
Ms Graham, a ranger at the Esperance Tjaltjraak Native Title Aboriginal Corporation, was part of the team who visited in 2020 to find the birds gone and habitat destroyed.
"It pretty much wiped out that colony of shearwaters," she said.
Seabird expert Dr Jennifer Lavers said many chicks would have died in the blaze, as they were immobile while young and the temperature in their burrows would have been extremely high.
But she had no idea what became of the adults, given the migratory birds tended to return to the one burrow their entire life.
"Where those birds have gone in the intervening months and years is a little bit of an unknown," she said.
Slow recovery
Ms Graham and Esperance Tjaltjraak Native Title Aboriginal Corporation coordinator Genevieve Carey travelled to the island last month during what should have been the birds' nesting season.
Three years after the blaze, they found little evidence of birds returning.
But they were buoyed to see vegetation bouncing back, saying the island looked much healthier than during their previous visit.
"That was somewhat reassuring," Ms Carey said.
"[But] it was a little disheartening not to see much activity, that should typically be there this time of year when they're nesting."
But they did find burrows, guano and a feather.
"What is suggests to us is the number of birds that are coming back now is probably still quite small," Dr Lavers said.
She said the case was a stark example of why cultural management practises were needed, even in some of the world's most remote places.
Call for cultural burning
Dr Lavers said the world's seabirds were declining faster than any other bird group – but the Figure of Eight story revealed a way to try and reverse that trend.
In June this year, a paper Dr Lavers helped author in collaboration with Tjaltjraak rangers was published in Human Ecology, looking at how bushfires impacted seabird colonies on islands.
"Seabird colonies are actually pretty slow to recover," Dr Lavers said.
"It takes them on average between five and 10 years to go back to their former glory."
She said that was worrying because climate change would result in lightning strikes becoming more frequent, which would lead to more fires on the fragile, inaccessible islands.
But cultural burns could reduce their impacts.
"There's an opportunity there … to do go in and burn around important assets like seabird colonies during the off season when seabirds aren't there and when it's cooler and wetter," she said.
"And then when the birds do come back they've got a bit of a protection or a buffer."
But a spokesperson from the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions said previous survey work indicated the islands recovered naturally after bushfire.
The spokesperson also said there had been a low number of bushfires caused by lightning on islands off the south coast, with two recorded in the Recherche Archipelago during the past 10 years.
But the Tjaltjraak rangers still believed it was important to lead cultural burning efforts.
"I think it's important to have our cultural burns," Ms Graham said.
"Not only to protect the islands but also the shearwaters as well."
