Yellow-shouldered Amazon

Identificazione

The yellow-shouldered amazon is mainly green and about 33 cm long (~13 inches). It has a whitish forehead and lores, and a yellow crown, ocular region and - often - ear coverts and chin. The bare eye-ring is white. The thighs and the bend of the wing ("shoulder") are yellow, but both can be difficult to see. The throat, cheeks and belly often have a bluish tinge. As most members of the genus Amazona, it has broad dark blue tips to the remiges and a red wing-speculum.<p>The yellow-shouldered amazon can be distinguished from the very similar orange-winged amazon by the latter's lack of yellow on its shoulders and blue colouration around the eyes. Another way of distinguishing it from other Amazona species is its somewhat higher pitched vocalizations.

Tassonomia

The yellow-shouldered amazon was described and illustrated in 1738 by the English naturalist Eleazar Albin in his A Natural History of Birds based on live specimen. Albin believed that the parrot had come from Barbados and used the English name, the "Barbadoes parrot". Using Albin's account, both Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 and John Latham in 1781 included a description of the parrot in their books on birds. When in 1788 the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, he included the yellow-shouldered amazon, coined the binomial name Psittacus barbadensis and cited Latham's work. Gmelin specified the type locality as Barbados but this parrot species is not found on the island and Venezuela is the type locality. The yellow-shouldered amazon is now placed with around thirty other species in the genus Amazona that was introduced by the French naturalist René Lesson in 1830. The genus name is a Latinized version of the name Amazone given to these parrot in the 18th century by the Comte de Buffon, who believed they were native to Amazonian jungles. The specific barbadensis denotes Barbados. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.

Nome scientifico

Amazona barbadensis

Autorità

(Gmelin, JF, 1788)

Ordine

Psittaciformi

Famiglia

Psittacidae

Genere

Amazona

Areale e habitat

A. barbadensis is endemic to northern Venezuela, Bonaire (which may have less than 400 birds), and other islands in the area. On the Venezuelan island of Margarita, it is extirpated from the east side, which is heavily commercialized and a popular tourist destination, existing only on the Macanao Peninsula. Also native to Aruba, it went locally extinct by 1947. In January of 2024, a population of over two dozen of these birds was reintroduced to the island and is doing well. An introduced population exists on Curaçao. Unlike other Amazona members, it is typically found in arid habitats, such as desert scrub and dry forests.

Migrazione

Specie stanziale

Comportamento

Comportamento migratorio: Specie stanziale.

Conservazione

Tendenza della popolazione: in diminuzione.

Tendenza della popolazione

in diminuzione