Parrots | Psittaciformes

Papegaaiachtigen | Loros y cotorras

Parrots have a short, heavy hooked bill whose upper mandible is hinged to the skull rather than fused to it; it can therefore be raised and brought down with great force, enough to crack a hard seed. The foot is zygodactyl, two toes forward and two back, and is used like a hand to carry food to the bill — almost no other group of birds does this. The tongue is thick and mobile. Relative to the body the brain is large, with a well-developed capacity to learn and, in a number of species, to imitate sound. They nest in cavities, live long and usually stay with the same mate.

Families in this order

New Zealand parrots | Strigopidae3 speciesThese three New Zealand species stand at the foot of the parrot tree: they split off before every other parrot in the world and have travelled eighty million years with the islands. The Kea lives above the treeline, eating roots, berries, insects and carrion, and investigates anything new with bill and foot — the habit that has made it unwelcome at ski huts and car parks. The Kaka stays in the forest, stripping bark to reach grubs and cutting pits into trunks to lick the sap that wells up. The Kakapo is the heaviest parrot in the world, cannot fly and is active at night; the male digs a bowl in the ground, sits in it and booms for hours at a pitch that carries for kilometres, and breeds only in the years when the rimu fruits heavily. The females raise the young alone; there is no pair.
Cockatoos | Cacatuidae14 speciesCockatoos lack the feather structure that makes other parrots green and blue; what remains is white, black, grey, pink and yellow, with a crest raised at will — in excitement, in threat and in greeting a mate. Certain down feathers shed a fine powder continuously, which is worked through the plumage and keeps it clean. The bill is heavy enough to crack hard seeds, nuts and woody fruit and to break open dead timber for grubs. They nest in hollows in old trees, which ties them to forest left alone long enough for hollows to form. Outside the breeding season they move about in noisy flocks, part of the group feeding on the ground while a few birds keep watch from above. They live long: decades in the wild, with a pair bond that lasts as long.
Old World parrots | Psittaculidae46 species