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Orange-chinned Parakeet | Brotogeris jugularis
Toviparkiet | Perico barbinaranja
The Orange-chinned Parakeet is a small, green parakeet with a pointed tail, a small orange spot on the chin and brownish shoulders. It is the most widespread small parakeet in the southern part of the guide area, from the Pacific side of Chiapas to Panama, and lives in noisy flocks in semi-open country, forest edges, gardens and villages.
Voice
A high, shrill, scratchy chatter, cheet-cheet or chrrit, continuous and often loud in flocks; also in flight.
Recording: Manuel Grosselet — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
18 cm, with a medium-length, pointed tail. Green, slightly paler and bluer on the head and underparts, with a small orange chin spot visible only at close range. The lesser wing coverts are olive-brown and form a brownish shoulder; the underwing coverts are yellow, clearly visible in flight. The bill is pale horn, with a narrow bare white ring around the eye. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Orange-fronted Parakeet Eupsittula canicularis has an orange forehead and a longer tail. Olive-throated Parakeet Eupsittula nana and Brown-throated Parakeet Eupsittula pertinax are larger, with a brownish throat and breast and a longer tail. Spectacled Parrotlet Forpus conspicillatus in eastern Panama is smaller, with a short tail and blue in the male's wing. The Touit parrotlets have a short, square tail.
Habitat
Semi-open country with trees, forest edges, secondary forest, dry forest, gallery forest, pastures, plantations, gardens, parks and villages; mainly in the lowlands, up to about 1200 m. It eats seeds, fruit, flowers and nectar, for example of Erythrina and Ceiba. It often nests in a hollow in a termite nest in a tree, also in tree cavities.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
From extreme southeastern Oaxaca and the Pacific side of Chiapas through the Pacific lowlands and interior valleys of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua to Costa Rica and Panama, where it occurs on both slopes; in Costa Rica more local on the Caribbean side. Almost absent from Belize. Outside the guide area in northern Colombia and northwestern Venezuela.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In villages, gardens and pastures of the Pacific lowlands of Costa Rica and Panama flocks can be heard almost everywhere, especially at flowering trees and in the evening at the roost.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Does well in semi-open farmland; it is trapped for the cage-bird trade.
Scientific name
Brotogeris jugularis | (Müller, 1776)
Müller described the species in 1776 as Psittacus jugularis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Brotogeris was introduced in 1825 by Vigors. Brotogeris is Greek, from brotos 'human' and gērus 'voice': 'human-voiced', after the ability to mimic speech. jugularis is Modern Latin for 'of the throat' (jugulum 'throat'), after the orange chin spot. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bonda, Santa Marta, Colombia.