‘Like finding gold’: plains-wanderers spotted in Melbourne’s west for first time in 30 years with help of AI | Birds

Critically endangered plains-wanderers have been found living in Melbourne’s west for the first time in more than 30 years.

Notoriously elusive and difficult to spot, the rare birds were detected on two pockets of remnant grassland by Zoos Victoria, with the help of AI.

The zoo installed 35 audio recorders, called song meters, across nine properties with suitable habitat. After collecting tens of thousands of hours of recordings, they used AI to sift through the data. They identified the birds’ distinctively soft and low “ooming” call at two sites, with human experts confirming the discovery.

Zoos Victoria’s threatened species program coordinator, Chris Hartnett, said the result was “like finding gold”. The organisation would work with landowners and managers to protect the birds, she said.

Once abundant across south-eastern Australia, plains-wanderer populations have radically declined due to the loss of their grassland habitat, and now number between 250 and 1,000 wild birds.

Hartnett admired the birds’ resilience, given that less than 1% of their grassland habitat remained in Victoria. “They’ve held on, even though the landscape has changed pretty drastically.”

Standing about 15cm tall, or roughly the size of a pencil, with wide, yellow eyes, some describe the plains-wanderer as looking like a “cartoon version of a bird”.

“They’re very endearing and quite eccentric,” Hartnett said. For example, she said, when courting, the females formed “a shape with her wings like a jet plane and chased the males around”.

Unusually for birds, plains-wanderer females were more colourful, larger and dominant than males, she said. They were the ones that defended their territory, while the plainer males looked after the eggs.

And it was the females that made the bird’s distinctive “oom” or “boom” calls, captured by the audio recorders, developed by the Museums Victoria Research Institute and Queensland University of Technology.

The birds’ preferred habitat is grass tussocks interspersed with bare earth and no trees, Hartnett said. “We’ve often referred to the plains-wanderer as a ‘goldilocks species’,” she said, describing how the birds liked their grassland “not too dense, not too sparse, but just right”. Once content, the birds tended to stay and establish a territory.

The species was unique from a genetic and evolutionary standpoint, with no living relatives, said Tim Dolby, an expert birdwatching guide. “They’re in a family of their own,” which explained why birdwatchers were keen to spot them.

“A lot of international birdwatchers want to see every single family of bird in the world. So at some point they have to come along and look for plains-wanderers.”

Dolby, who runs birdwatching tours and offers tips on finding rare birds via his guide books, said plains-wanderers could easily be mistaken for a buttonquail. Their feathers were covered in “lovely little twirls, called vermiculations”, while the females sported a red chest and white-spotted black collar.

He said the birds relied on camouflage and “crouching down” for survival – a tactic that made it harder for birdwatchers to spot them, but unfortunately easy pickings for foxes. So he often listened out for their calls first, or used thermal cameras to spot them in the grass.

Dr Karen Rowe, the curator of birds at Museums Victoria Research Institute, said the song meter technology allowed researchers to survey multiple sites simultaneously.

The call recogniser sifted through data for sound patterns that matched the plains-wanderer call – looking through “millions of minutes of recordings”. It could occasionally throw up false positives, like a cow’s moo, she said.

Having detected the birds at two new locations – one on private land, one public – Hartnett said they planned to keep searching for more birds in the volcanic landscape to the west of Melbourne.

“We welcome anyone who thinks they may have seen one of these birds on their property to get in touch, and we can put these audio recorders out there.”