Monday, March 6, 2023

Yellow-Billed Parrot

The yellow-billed parrot, also known as the Jamaican amazon, or yellow-billed amazon, is endemic to Jamaica. I'd read that a group of them lived in the Hope Botanical Garden in Kingston and desired to get some good photos of them there. Despite hearing lots of them, squawking in large tree full of leaves, they were hard to see and I only got a few photos. I was also hoping to see the black-billed parrot which is much less plentiful, but also found there. I got some photos that I thought were the black-billed, but it turned out that they were either yellow-billeds or olive-throated parakeets. So I was happy to get some photos, but much fewer than what I thought I had. 
It is mostly green with pink over the throat, upper breast and sides of the neck. It has blue in the larger wing feathers and feathers over the ears that are dark blue-green.  It has bare white eye-rings surrounded by a narrow rim of white plumage which continues as a narrow band of white over the forehead. It also has plumage over the lores and fore-crown which is blue. The beak is yellow, the legs are pink and the irises in the eyes are brown. Males and females have the same outer appearance. 
I originally thought this was a black-billed parrot, but identifiers on iNaturalist indicate it is a yellow-billed parrot. 

These parrots are most abundant in the John Crow Mountains; on Mount Diablo, which is on the main road from Kingston to the north shore and south of Ocho Rios; and in the Cockpit Country (southeast of Montego Bay and south of Falmouth). 

1 comment:

  1. For just a few photos, I'd say these are pretty good! The first one looks a lot different than the other two to me.

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