Parrot

Parrot, the type of a large and important group of birds, divided into numerous families and genera. The parrots form an extremely compact group, showing but little structural variation, and offering no 'intermediate forms' to indicate their relationship to other birds. It has been suggested that they come nearest to the birds of prey, but this is at present no more than a suggestion. They are pre-eminently tropical birds, and arboreal in habit; some species, however, range into colder countries—e.g. Patagonia and New Zealand—and some, such as the burrowing Ground Parrot of New Zealand (Strigops), now nearly exterminated by the cats run wild which infest the scrub, are not arboreal. They are fruit and seed eating birds, with the exception of the Kea (q.v.), which has, since the colonisation of New Zealand, taken to a carnivorous diet. As a rule the parrots are brightly coloured birds, being often, like other forest-frequenting creatures, green; there are some species, however, which are not brilliantly coloured. There is occasionally a difference of colour in the two sexes, which is best marked in species belonging to the genus Eclectus; in these the prevailing colour of the female is red, and of the male green; the differences are so marked that they were actually referred to quite different genera until Dr A. B. Meyer showed conclusively that the red and green forms were merely the two sexes of the same species. The intelligence of parrots has been often commented upon, as also their power of imitating human speech; any one, however, who can endure for a sufficient time that pandemonium of noise, the parrot-house at the Zoological Gardens, will find that the clearness of utterance of the Myna or Indian Starling exceeds that of any parrot. The great age to which parrots will live has often been exaggerated, but it is at any rate certain that some species will survive for fifty years in confinement, for an individual of the Greater Vasa Parrakeet (Coracopsis vasa) lived for more than fifty years at the Zoological Gardens. Parrots make their nests in holes, and lay white eggs, as is commonly the case where the eggs are concealed. Garrod has divided the parrots, on anatomical grounds, into two families: (1) Palæornithidæ (including the Cockatoo, q.v., and Lory, q.v., the flightless New Zealand Strigops, and the large genus Palæornis) and (2) Psittacidæ (including the Macaws, the African parrots of the genus Psittacus, the American Chrysotis, the Australian Platycercus, and some other forms). The Gray Parrot (Psittacus erythacus), which has been a familiar cage-bird in Europe for hundreds of years, is a native of Africa, especially of West Africa. The Great Macaw belongs to the sub-family of Conurinae, found mainly in America, one genus only (Palæornis) occurring in India and Africa. See Dr W. T. Greene's Parrots in Captivity (3 vols. 1884).