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Blue-headed Parrot
The Blue-headed Parrot also known as the Blue-headed Pionus, Pionus menstruus, is a medium large parrot. It is a resident breeding bird in tropical South America and southern Central America, from Costa Rica, Venezuela and Trinidad south to Bolivia and Brazil. It is named for its medium-blue head and neck.
Its habitat is forest and semi-open country, including cultivated areas. The Blue-headed Parrot lays three to four white eggs in a tree cavity.
The Blue-headed Parrot is about 27 cm long and weighs 245 g. It is mainly green with a blue head, neck and upper breast, red undertail, and some yellow on the wing coverts. Sexes are alike, but juvenile birds have less blue on the head, as well as red or pinkish feathers around the ceres. They moult into their adult plumage at about 8 months of age, but it can take up to two years for the full blue hood to emerge.
Blue-headed Parrots are noisy birds and make light, high-pitched squeaking sweenk calls. They eat fruit and seeds, and sometimes grain. They roost communally in palm and other trees, and large numbers can be seen at the roost sites at dawn and dusk.
Blue Headed Pionus Parrots are increasingly popular as pets. Compared to other parrot species (Amazons for example) they are very quiet. They are affectionate, but not known for their talking ability.
Range
America-Amazon basin
The Blue-headed Parrot in South America, is mainly an Amazon Basin species, including in the southeast the neighboring Araguaia-Tocantins River system as its eastern limit; a disjunct population lives southeastwards on Brazil's South Atlantic coast, a coastal strip from Pernambuco in the north to Espirito Santo state in the south, about 1500 km long.
Costa Rica-Panama
In northwest South America the range continues into Central American Panama to Costa Rica. It avoids the northern Andes cordillera spine, and a smaller contiguous area of central Venezuela and northern Colombia. A Pacific Ocean coastal strip continues the range, from southern Ecuador, north to Caribbean areas of northwestern Colombia and western Venezuela.
Trivia
Some suggest that the Blue-headed Parrot was the inspiration for Monty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch."
References
Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
External links
Blue-headed Parrot videos on the Internet Bird Collection
Stamps (for Suriname) with RangeMap
Blue-headed Parrot photo gallery VIREO--(includes Clay-cliffs photos) Photo-High Res
Photo-High Res; Article www1.nhl.nl—"Suriname Birds"-- Photo-2
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Blue-headed Parrot
