Long-tailed Parakeet
Psittacula longicauda
Medium-sized green parakeet with red cheeks and black stripes above the eye and below the cheek. Male is brighter-colored than the female, which has less extensive red on the cheeks and a black instead of red bill. Like other forest parakeets, usually encountered shooting past overhead while screaming raucously. Long filamentous tail feathers not always present.
Identification
It is mainly green with a long blue tail. The male has a black cap and red face. The female lacks the black cap and has less red.
Taxonomy
The long-tailed parakeet was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Psittacus longicauda in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The type locality is Malacca on the southern region of the Malay Peninsula. The long-tailed parakeet is now placed in the genus Psittacula that was introduced by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier in 1800. The name of the genus is a diminutive of the Latin word psittacus for a "parrot". The specific epithet longicauda combines the Latin longus meaning "long" and cauda meaning "tail".<p>Five subspecies are currently recognized:
- Scientific name
- Psittacula longicauda
- Authority
- (Boddaert, 1783)
- Order
- Psittaciformes
- Family
- Psittaculidae
- Genus
- Psittacula
Range and habitat
The long-tailed parakeet is able to live in a wide variety of habitats such as in swamp forests, lowland evergreen forest, oil palm plantations, coconut plantations, gardens, public parks, and is a frequent visitor to agricultural areas (especially those who yield tropical fruits and seeds). It is usually seen in elevations of up to 300 meters.
- Migration
- Nomadic movement
Conservation
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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