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Blue-headed Parrot | Pionus menstruus
Zwartoormargrietje | Loro cabeciazul
The Blue-headed Parrot is a medium-sized, stocky parrot with a short tail and a blue head. In the region it occurs only on Trinidad, where it is common in and around forest. Its flight is distinctive, with deep wingbeats that carry the wings well below the body.
Voice
High squeaky calls such as sweenk, mainly in flight and often in repeated series. Compared with the amazons a fairly quiet species.
Recording: Paul Molina Abril — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
27–28 cm. The body is green; head, neck and upper breast are blue, with a black patch over the ear-coverts. The undertail-coverts are red and the wing-coverts show some yellowish green. The bill is black with red at the base of the upper mandible. The sexes are alike. Juveniles have much less blue on the head, which is largely green, and red feathers around the cere; adult plumage is reached after eight months to two years.
Confusion species
Orange-winged Amazon Amazona amazonica is larger, with yellow on cheek and crown, blue above the eye and orange in the wing; Yellow-crowned Amazon A. ochrocephala has a yellow forehead. Both amazons fly with shallow wingbeats. Young Blue-headed Parrots are greener but are told by the red undertail, the short tail and the flight. Brown-throated Parakeet Eupsittula pertinax has a long pointed tail.
Habitat
Moist forest, lowland rainforest and montane forest, forest edges and semi-open country with large trees, cacao and coffee plantations and gardens with fruit trees. It eats fruit, seeds and grain. It roosts communally in palms and other trees. It nests in tree holes; the female incubates 3–5 eggs for about 26 days, and the young fledge after some 70 days.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Resident on Trinidad, most numerous in the Northern Range but also in the forests of the east and south of the island. It is absent from Tobago and the other islands; a single record from Jamaica probably refers to an escape. Outside the region from Costa Rica through northern South America to Bolivia and Brazil, with a separate population along the Atlantic coast of Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the Arima Valley and elsewhere in the Northern Range, where pairs and small flocks fly over the forest between roost and feeding sites in the morning and evening. A bird in flight can be recognised at long range by the deep wingbeats and squeaky call.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species is widespread and tolerates the conversion of forest to plantations and semi-open land to some extent.
Scientific name
Pionus menstruus | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Psittacus menstruus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Pionus was introduced in 1832 by Wagler. Pionus is Greek, from piōn, pionos 'fat', after the stocky build. menstruus is Latin for 'monthly, of menstruation', meaning 'blood-red' here, after the red undertail coverts. The specimen the first description was based on came from Suriname.