When Louise Freckelton and David Bray were surveying their property in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains, after the devastating Black Summer bushfires, they were elated to find a unique and vulnerable bird species that had survived.
The small population of turquoise parrots had held on during the Dunns Road fire by populating small, unburnt sections of bushland.
"It was very dry, and very little vegetation around, and I spotted it and thought, 'Thank goodness, they're still here,'" Mr Bray said.
However, the parrot relies on small hollows, low to the ground, to nest, and many of those were destroyed in the blaze.
The fires were one of the worst events for wildlife in history, with a study from the World Wildlife Fund estimating almost 3 billion native animals were killed or displaced.
Now, Ms Freckelton and Mr Bray are part of a project to help the parrot recover its population in the New South Wales high country and are hoping to inspire others to work towards bettering the environment.
Coming back from the brink, again
This is not the first time the turquoise parrot has faced a significant challenge.
The bird was considered to be abundant in the 19th century, seen in large numbers from central Victoria, throughout Sydney and NSW, and all the way up to southern Queensland.
It was so abundant that one 20th-century ornithologist met a man who had shot a number of the small birds to be cooked into pies.
But with the introduction of early agriculture, land clearing and pests like rabbits, foxes and cats, by the 1920s, the turquoise parrot was widely considered to be extinct.
"Ornithologists at the time were going out looking for the species throughout much of its former habitat, and they weren't finding any birds," said Jayden Gunn, Central NSW woodland bird coordinator for BirdLife Australia.
Since the 1930s, the bird has made a remarkable recovery, although not to its former numbers.
"The turquoise parrot has slowly recovered and is still slowly recovering, although not in all parts of its former geographical range," Mr Gunn said.
"It's only found in small pockets of suitable habitat."
But during the devastating 2019-20 bushfires, the species hit another hurdle, with the fires burning its nesting hollows and food.
"It's a hollow-nesting species, and often these hollows are less than 3 metres off the ground, which would have been the first things to burn in the bushfires," Mr Gunn said.
An innovative approach to bushfire recovery
After Ms Freckelton and Mr Bray observed turquoise parrots on their property, they got in touch with Murrumbidgee Landcare, which is coordinating bushfire recovery projects in the Snowy Mountains.
They used a grant to buy innovative new nest boxes, offering a temporary place for the parrots to breed while their numbers and habitat can recover.
"We identified, using mapping, that there are pockets of unburnt areas right across the fire scar," Murrumbidgee Landcare coordinator David Waters said.
"The animals would have sought shelter there during the fires, and then those populations will radiate out from those unburnt areas after the fires to repopulate the burnt areas.
"This is important because it's the world we live in, this is our region, and it got absolutely hammered by the fires.
The boxes being placed in unburnt grassy box gum woodland on Ms Freckelton and Mr Bray's property are a new design, and described by their creators as a significant improvement on traditional timber nest boxes.
"Traditional nest boxes have been made out of timber for a long time, and the problem with those is they don't last very long," Habitat Innovation Management director Carl Tippler said.
"They get very hot and very cold, and they're not designed specifically for the targeted species."
The boxes are cased with polypropylene plastic, are modular and adaptable to different animals, and offer protection from extreme temperatures for their occupants.
"Turquoise parrots are a vulnerable species, and they have a very specific nesting requirement, " Mr Tippler said.
"And these boxes are configured on the inside to have a very narrow nesting chamber that is designed specifically for the dimensions that turquoise parrots prefer."
Landholders Ms Freckelton and Mr Bray are hopeful they can build on their work with the turquoise parrot to improve their local environment and inspire others.
"We're in the middle of climate change and an extinction crisis, Ms Freckelton said.
