Blue-crowned Parakeet

Overview

Blue-crowned Parakeet: Medium-sized green parakeet with a blue head and red-orange highlights in long tail. White, feathless eye ring. The bill is bicolored with upper mandible pinkish and lower mandible is black (subspecies in northeastern Brazil has an all-pink bill). The legs and feet are pink.

Range and Habitat

Blue-crowned Parakeet: In its native range occurs in several disjunct populations in South America, one in the north of Columbia and Venezuela, another in eastern Brazil, and another from Bolivia through Argentina. Small numbers of escaped captive birds are now established in Los Angeles, California and Florida. Uses dry open forests and grasslands, and semi-desert habitats.

INTERESTING FACTS

The Blue-crowned Parakeet is also known as the Blue-crowned Conure and Sharp-tailed Conure.
The most famous fictional blue-crowned parakeet is the title character in the movie Paulie. The movie used 14 birds to play the role of the talking parrot and caused a surge in their popularity as pets.
This species has been heavily traded: since 1981, 193,299 wild-caught individuals have been recorded in international trade.
A group of parakeets is collectively known as a "chatter" and a "flock" of parakeets.

The Blue-crowned Parakeet has a large range of up to 2,300,000 square kilometers. It can primarily be found in the South American countries of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela. This bird prefers terrestrial ecosystems with habitation ranging from forests to savannas and shrublands. The current global population is not known but it is not thought to be near the population decline criteria for the IUCN Red List. The current evaluation level of the Blue-crowned Parakeet is Least Concern.