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Lilac-tailed Parrotlet | Touit batavicus
Zevenkleurenpapegaai | Cotorrita sietecolores
The Lilac-tailed Parrotlet is a small, chunky parrot with a short tail, found in the region only on Trinidad. It lives in flocks in the forest canopy and is usually noticed as a fast, chattering group flying over. Perched, its green-and-black pattern blends into the foliage.
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Voice
The usual call is a slightly nasal ryee or nee-ryee; perched birds give a very nasal naaee. Flocks in flight keep up a continuous, monotonous chatter.
Recording: Rosa Elena Albornoz @rosaelena_naturaleza — CC0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
14–15 cm, with a short square tail. The head is largely yellow with green ear-coverts, the sides of the neck green. Back and wings are black, which sets it apart from every other small parrot in the region. The breast is pale blue and the belly green. The tail is rosy violet with a black terminal band. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Green-rumped Parrotlet Forpus passerinus is smaller and plain green, with no black on back or wings and no yellow head, and lives in open, drier country. Brown-throated Parakeet Eupsittula pertinax and the other parakeets have a long pointed tail. The related Touit huetii, recorded on Trinidad only as a vagrant, is green with red under the wing.
Habitat
Moist forest, lowland rainforest and montane forest, both undisturbed and secondary, and forest edges with fruiting trees. It eats flowers, nectar, buds, berries, seeds and fruit, mainly in the morning. It does not migrate but wanders with the food supply, so flocks turn up irregularly at any one site. It nests in tree holes or in termite nests.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Resident on Trinidad, mainly in the Northern Range, with records also from the forested hills of the east and south of the island. There is only a single record from Tobago, and it is absent from the other islands. Outside the region in northern South America: Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best looked for in the Arima Valley and elsewhere in the Northern Range, where small flocks fly high over the forest in the morning and feed in fruiting trees. The call is usually the first sign; a perched flock is often noticed only when it takes off.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species also uses secondary and disturbed forest. Owing to its wandering habits, numbers are poorly known.
Scientific name
Touit batavicus | (Boddaert, 1783)
Boddaert described the species in 1783 as Psittaca Batavica; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Touit was introduced in 1855 by Gray. Touit comes from Tupi: tuí eté 'true little parrot', recorded by Marcgrave in 1648 as 'Tuiete'. batavicus refers to Batavia (now Jakarta), the mistaken origin given in the description; the species lives in northern South America and on Trinidad. The specimen the first description was based on came from Venezuela (originally given in error as Batavia).