White-Crowned Parrot

Our birding guide in Tikal NP, Guatemala, Rony, was excellent at spotting birds. He pointed out something that I've not heard any other birding guide say, to the effect of, "Sometimes you just have to wait and let the birds come to you. Too often there is a feeling that you have to keep moving." Rony went to places he'd seen birds before, and waited around for them to arrive. I thought back to guided tours I've seen in Big Morongo where a guide just parks on a section of trail and seems to keep finding additional birds, while at the same time I'm itching to keep on moving and do so.

One of the few birds I saw on my own, and identified on my own, was a white-crowned parrot. I'd seen an illustration of it in the Peterson "Field guide to birds of Northern Central America" by Jesse Fagan and Oliver Komar. Interestingly, I saw it in a spot we'd stopped to watch other birds. 

The adult male has a white forehead, crown and throat. The rest of the head, neck and breast are dull dark blue. The belly is light green and the upper parts are dark green with a yellow-olive shoulder patch. It has a brown iris, a brownish-pink eye-ring and a bill that is yellowish with slight green. The female is similar, but the blue plumage fades into scaling on the lower breast and the shoulder patch is duller. 

Illustration from Birds of the World.

Range from Birds of the World.