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Yellow-naped Amazon | Amazona auropalliata
Geelnekamazone | Loro nuca amarilla
The Yellow-naped Amazon is a large green amazon from Central America, where trapping for the cage-bird trade has left it critically endangered. In the Caribbean it is an alien: on Jamaica escaped or released birds are occasionally seen in the wild. No established breeding population is known.
Voice
Loud, rolling and grating calls; in the native range pairs also duet. It mimics sounds, including human speech, which makes it popular as a cage bird.
Recording: Manuel Grosselet — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
35–38 cm, heavy-bodied and compact, with a short broad tail. Almost entirely green, with a yellow band across the lower nape and hindneck; forehead and crown are green, sometimes with a few yellow feathers. The wing shows a red speculum and dark blue primaries. The bill is dark grey, paler at the base of the upper mandible; the legs are grey. The sexes are alike. Juveniles largely lack the yellow nape band.
Confusion species
The Jamaican amazons are much smaller. Yellow-billed Amazon Amazona collaria has a yellow bill, white forehead and pink throat; Black-billed Amazon A. agilis is plain green with red primary coverts and no yellow on the head. Yellow-crowned Amazon A. ochrocephala has the yellow on the crown rather than the nape, and red at the bend of the wing. Young Yellow-naped Amazons without the nape band are told from the Jamaican species by size and dark bill.
Habitat
Naturally dry forest, open woodland and mangrove along the Pacific coast. On Jamaica single birds are seen in gardens, villages and forest edges; one that paired with a Yellow-billed Amazon in northern Cockpit Country in 2007 was removed from the wild to prevent hybridisation.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
On Jamaica reported occasionally in the wild since the 2000s; according to the Jamaican environment agency NEPA these are separate escapes or releases rather than a breeding population. Elsewhere in the region only isolated reports are known. Native to the Pacific side of Central America from southern Mexico to north-western Costa Rica, and to the Bay Islands of Honduras.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
A large amazon with a yellow nape band on Jamaica is almost certainly an escape. Records matter for the conservation of the native amazons because of the risk of hybridisation, so reporting them to the island's conservation bodies is worthwhile.
Conservation status
Critically Endangered globally. Central American populations have declined steeply through the taking of nestlings for the trade and the loss of dry forest. In the Caribbean an alien without an established population, posing a risk of hybridisation with the Jamaican amazons.
Scientific name
Amazona auropalliata | (Lesson, 1842)
Lesson described the species in 1842 as Psittacus (amazona) auro-palliatus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Amazona was introduced in 1830 by Lesson. Amazona comes from 'Amazone', the French name Buffon gave to various tropical American parrots because they came from the Amazon region. auropalliata is Latin, from aurum 'gold' and palliatus 'cloaked', after the yellow patch on the nape. The specimen the first description was based on came from Realejo, Nicaragua.