It has been an unusually rainy 24 of February. Normally this month is one of the driest ones of the year. But the arrival of a cold front ushered non stop rain and drizzle that has lasted the whole day. In some parts of the island the rain has set records that had stood since the 1940's. It has been a rainy and cloudy afternoon. Every afternoon, I do a round to check the captive breeding pairs. I do this every day during the breeding season, at a specific time. The captive parrots become habituated to my presence and are not alarmed when I go by. Some wild birds have territories inside the aviary and they also become habituated to my presence. This pair is perching in a tree near to where their nest is located. You can hear their calls and also the calls of other parrots who are near. Their calls serve to mark their territory and to warn other birds away. There was another pair who had a territory close to that of this pair. The male of that pair died. In an unusual turn of events, this pair tolerates the female in their territory rather than chasing her away as they do with other birds. You can see the widowed female arrive after second 18 of the video. The male is a captive bird that was released a few years back, you can see the antena of his radio transmitter. The is lacking a few feathers from the top of his head, probably he lost them in a territorial fight.
Showing posts with label cotorra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cotorra. Show all posts
Monday, February 24, 2020
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
A puertorican parrot displaying to others of its flock.
Sometimes the puertorican parrots will open partially open their wings when they are displaying to other birds. My guess is that they do so to make themselves look bigger. This wing opening is often accompanied with bowing, and a side to side motion. This particular bird was displaying in front of two other birds who were licking the sap that oozed from a broken banana leave.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
When resting among the foliage, the green color of the puerto rican parrot, Amazona vittata, serves as a great camouflage
The puerto rican parrot is one of the Amazons with the the least color aside from green. When resting or hiding among the vegetation it is very hard to see. These two parrots were photographed just after sun down. As you can see by the retracted foot inside the plumage of the left parrots, it is quite at home and relaxed in the tree stump. The left parrot vocalizing loudly, something they do at sundown and at sunrise. The bird to the left has a radio transmitter.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Rosella de cabeza pálida, Platycercus adscitus, en cautiverio y en estado salvaje
Fue un privilegio ver esta ave tan hermosa en estado salvaje. Las vi en New South Wales en un parque en un área urbana. Era como de ensueño ver un ave de colores tan llamativos y peculiares caminado por el césped de un parque como un pinzón cualquiera, cuando uno se tiende a imaginar aves exóticas en remotas e impenetrables junglas.
Perico princesa, Polytelis alexandrae una especie endemica de Australia
| Una forma mutante |
| La especie con su coloración natural |
Friday, September 27, 2013
Puertorican parrots eating west indian tree fern stems
The Puerto Rican parrot (Amazona vittata) is known to eat the
leaves, fruits or seeds of more than forty species of plants. In the Rio Abajo forest the parrots sometimes consume
the stems of the fronds of the tree ferns of the genus Cyathea. The effect of the
parrots’ activity is to completely defoliate the ferns. The parrots consume all stems, from very
young ones that are starting to unfurl to the oldest ones. The ferns eventually produce new leaves and
recuperate fully from the parrots foraging activities. The birds don’t eat the whole frond, just
parts of the stems. I find the fact that the parrots were using the
tree fern stems as food remarkable given that the birds that have been released into the wild since the reintroduction program began were
given a wide variety of wild leaves, fruits and seeds before the release, but
not tree fern fronds.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Puertorrican parrot goes bananas about its bathtime
This is a male of the species Amazona vittata vittata, the Puerto Rican parrot. These birds greatly enjoy getting baths. In the wild when it rains after a spell of dry weather the parrots become very excited and vocalize powerfully as they get wet under the rain. In captivity the cages are designed so that the birds can take baths whenever it rains, however a few will also eagerly seek getting wet under the water we use to clean cages. From time to time we indulge them and allow them to frolick under the water stream. As you can see in the video the bird is unabashedly enjoying the water. These parrots are highly intelligent and we try, as much as it is possible in captivity, to enrich their enviroment with things they like.
I want to make clear that this animal trusts me a great deal, birds that don't have a trusting relationship with their owners or keepers will not behave this way, some may even feel threatened when their cage is cleaned. If you want to give your birds a bath like these make sure that the bird doesn't feels threatened, is in a familiar enviroment and that it can get away from the water stream at any time if it chooses to do so.
This particular male has been particularly fecund and a number of his offspring have been released into the wild as part of a program to reintroduce the species to parts of it former habitat where it has beene extinct since the early twenty century.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Puerto Rican parrot twilight behavior, sleeping clumped in a bunch.
| This is the only photo of this behavior ever taken, you can see a parrot ready to fly away at the bottom |
The reason for missing these behaviors is very simple, after the daily work shift ends the personnel goes to their houses, to do errands, to take a nap, to eat, and hanging around the parrot cages is the last thing in (including me) anyone’s mind. But one day I noted that the period of twilight was marked by an inordinate amount of calls coming from a relatively small area in the cage, the calls denoted intense socialization at a time that I had always assumed the birds were setting down to sleep. This piqued my curiosity and I decided to see what was happening.
What I found is that sometimes, instead of sitting on the many perches on the cage, the parrots will cluster together to sleep in the wire forming a mass that resembles a grape bunch. I have never read this reported, and it doesn’t seem like they sleep in this way in the wild. The birds arrange themselves in a very tight bunch, literally side by side in a degree of intimate contact that I would have thought inconceivable between adult parrots that are not pair bonded. The forming of the bunch is accompanied by much squawking and I suspect this is caused by birds jostling each other for position on the bunch. I have never set out to watch the formation of the bunch since this would probably disrupt its formation but I have on rare occasions witnessed its dissolution. Also most of our flight cages have, by design but this is a matter for another post, odd asymmetrical shapes that limit line-of –sight viewing. What I found most interesting about this clumping behavior is that the PR parrots, which can be quite picky with who they associate during the day, seem to lose their selectivity as night falls and join together in relative amicability and closeness that they don't show during the day.
I suspect the birds clump as a form of protection from predators. I make this inference because of what happens when the clump is disturbed. When the birds are startled the clump explodes like a grenade with birds flying in all directions. I have just a single photo of this clumping, it was taken when I had to feed the flock very early before dawn because we were doing some special work with the wild birds and I wanted the captive birds to be all fed by first light in the morning. In the photo you can see only part of the clump as a number of the birds had flown away the moment they detected movement near the cage. Nevertheless the photo shows the way the birds arrange themselves on the wire. Previously I always thought that only mated pairs slept this way.
It is unclear what triggers this behavior as some birds are quite content to sleep in perches. For the moment being this behavior remains a curiosity observed from time to time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)