Parrots | Psittaciformes

Papegaaiachtigen | Loros y cotorras

Worldwide this order also includes the cockatoos and a second parrot family from Africa, Asia and Australia. What the whole order shares is a short, strongly hooked bill whose upper mandible is hinged to the skull and works both as a clamp and as a climbing hook, with a bare cere at its base. The feet are zygodactyl, with two toes forward and two back, and are also used to carry food to the bill. Further shared traits are the large head on a short neck, the thick, muscular tongue and the largely green plumage. Flight is fast and direct, on shallow beats. These are long-lived birds that live in lasting pairs within a noisy flock.

Families in this order

African and New World parrots | Psittacidae9 speciesFood is handled while perched: one foot holds a seed or fruit and carries it to the bill, the upper mandible pins it down, and the tongue turns it while the lower mandible files the husk away, so that a layer of shells and part-eaten fruit builds up under a favoured perch. Besides seeds and fruit they take flower buds, young leaves and the seeds inside still-closed cones. Almost all species breed in an existing hole in a tree, a cliff or a building, without nest material; one species instead builds a large stick nest with separate chambers for several pairs, occupied and enlarged for years on end. The white eggs are incubated chiefly by the female, and the naked chicks are raised for weeks on regurgitated food. The voice is a set of shrill, grating screeches, usually given in flight and by the whole flock at once; there is no song. Within it each bird has its own contact call, and many species take sounds from their surroundings into their repertoire.
Old World parrots | Psittaculidae2 speciesThe family does not occur here naturally: every bird living wild in the region goes back to escaped or released cage birds, and they hold on in cities, parks and farmland in the warmer parts and on the Pacific islands. Characteristic is the long, tapering tail, in many species longer than the body. Unlike the parrots of the Americas, a large part of this family shows a visible difference in colour between male and female: a neck ring, a different head colour, or even an entirely different plumage. Some members have a tongue with a brush-like tip for licking nectar and pollen out of flowers; the rest live on seeds, buds, blossom and fruit. A fruit is often given a single bite before the remainder is dropped, so that more lies on the ground under a visited tree than has been eaten. Nesting is in tree hollows and old woodpecker holes, and in towns also in niches and crevices of buildings. Towards evening the birds gather with loud calling in a few fixed, tall roost trees, coming in to them pair by pair.