The Story
I photographed this Blue-headed Parrot (Pionus menstruus) near Santander de Quilichao in Cauca, Colombia. Mostly green with a blue head, neck and upper breast and red undertail coverts, it eats fruit, flowers and seeds, nests in tree cavities and gathers in large communal roosts at dawn and dusk. It also lives in forest and semi-open country, including farmland. Its range runs from Costa Rica and Trinidad south to Bolivia and Brazil. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I photographed it with a Canon R5 and the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender, at 1/60 sec, f/16, ISO 3200. Santander de Quilichao’s mayor’s office promotes the town as “la ciudad de las aves,” the city of birds, and has held a yearly bird festival since 2020.
©2022 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Blue-headed Parrot (Pionus menstruus) belongs to the family Psittacidae (New World and African Parrots) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2021), with the population trend listed as stable. Source: IUCN Red List