Ochre-marked parakeet | |
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Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Aves |
Order: | Psittaciformes |
Superfamily: | Psittacoidea |
Family: | Psittacidae |
Subfamily: | Arinae |
Tribe: | Arini |
Genus: | Pyrrhura |
Species: | P. cruentata |
Binomial name | |
Pyrrhura cruentata (Wied, 1820) |
The ochre-marked parakeet (Pyrrhura cruentata) is a species of parrot native to Brazil. It is also known as blue-throated parakeet, and red-eared conure in English and cotorra tiriba and perico grande in Spanish.
It is listed as Vulnerable (VU) on the IUCN Red List.
This colourful parakeet is a predominantly green bird with conspicuous red patches on its belly, rump, and shoulder and before, below and behind the eye. The crown is dark brown to blackish, becoming mottled on the nape of the neck, and there is a broad, bright blue bib on the chest, extending thinly around the back of the neck to form a faint collar. The outer primaries are blue, and the tail is olive-green above, and brownish red below.
It inhabits the canopy of lowland humid forest and edge, occasionally up to 960 meters. It has also been recorded in small clearings and selectively logged forest, and persists (or at least persisted) in agricultural areas where many forest trees are retained (such as shade cocoa plantations). It feeds on seeds and fruit of secondary growth trees such as Trema micrantha and Cecropia. Feeding on agricultural crops has not been observed in the wild. Breeding apparently occurs in the austral spring, when 2-4 eggs are laid in a tree-cavity.
Pyrrhura cruentata was formerly common throughout much of south-east Bahia, Espírito Santo, east Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Its current distribution is highly fragmented and now mostly restricted to isolated reserves. The stronghold is the Sooretama Biological Reserve and adjacent Linhares Forest Reserve, Espírito Santo. It remains common in Estação Vera Cruz (formerly the Porto Seguro Reserve), Bahia. Elsewhere it can be relatively common, but numbers in the large Chapada da Diamantina and Monte Pascoal National Parks, Bahia, appear low.
The population is estimated at 4.8 to 41 individuals per square kilometer times 1030 square kilometers for a total between 4944 and 42,230 individuals. It is best placed within the band 2500-9999 individuals.(Marsden et al. [2000]).