Blue-crowned Parakeet

Identification

The blue-crowned parakeet is a medium-sized bird measuring approximately 37 cm (14.5 in) in length and weighing between 140 and 190 g (4.9 and 6.7 oz).<p>Blue-crowns are born with red coloring around the head, but blue-crowns are predominantly green, with dull blue coloring on the forehead, crown, cheeks, and ears in the nominate, but less blue in other subspecies. It has a ring of white featherless skin around each eye, though this is bright orange-yellow in wild T. acuticaudata neumanni. The breast feathers may also be tinged with blue, though they are more commonly green to yellow-green. Closed wing coloring matches that of the body while extended wings show blue-brown, becoming chestnut on the outer flight feathers. The tail feathers are green on top, maroon to red-brown on the underside, iridescing to bright orange and scarlet under full-spectrum light. Legs are pink-brown with grey-brown claws. The upper mandible is horn-colored, tapering to a needle-sharp, grey-black tip. In the southern and western nominate and subspecies neumanni, the lower mandible is horn-colored in juveniles, fading to grey-black by the bird's second year. The remaining eastern, central and northern subspecies retain the horn-colored lower mandible throughout adulthood.

Taxonomy

While T. acuticaudatus is the only species in the monotypic genus Thectocercus, this species has five subspecies:<p>Previously, this species was part of the genus Aratinga, but that genus was split in four distinct genera once various phylogenetic studies showed that the genus, as traditionally defined, was polyphyletic.

Scientific name

Thectocercus acuticaudatus

Authority

(Vieillot, 1818)

Order

Passeriformes

Family

Furnariidae

Genus

Thectocercus

Range and habitat

Migration

Nomadic movement

Conservation

Population trend

declining