‘The birds are a global citizen’: Indigenous groups in Australia and Alaska team up to track a feathered adventurer’s epic journey

First Nations rangers in Esperance, Western Australia, at work on a bird migration project to gauge the health of the short-tailed shearwater. Photograph: Andy McGregor

Short-tailed shearwaters used to blacken the skies on the south-west coast of Australia, so abundant were they in their coastal homes each Djilba season – the time in the calendar of the Noongar peoples between August and September, when days shift from blustery cold and wet winds to warmer weather.

In Wudjari Noongar, the language of the traditional owners of this place, they call Kepa Kurl, but which, since colonisation, has been called Esperance, the birds are called yowli. To other cultures, they are muttonbirds.