Spectacled Parrotlet

The Story

I photographed this Spectacled Parrotlet (Forpus conspicillatus) at PANACA in Quimbaya, Quindío, Colombia on June 15, 2017. It eats seeds, nuts, leaves, berries and other fruits and has been seen eating clay. It lives at forest edges, in thorn scrub, llanos and gallery woodland, below about 1,600 meters. Its green and blue coloring helps it blend into trees. Quimbaya takes its name from the Quimbaya civilization, the pre-Columbian people who lived in the area. PANACA, the National Agricultural and Livestock Park, lies about 7 kilometers west of the town of Quimbaya.

I took this with a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM, at 1/1600 sec, f/5.6, ISO 640. IUCN lists the Spectacled Parrotlet as Least Concern with a decreasing population, and Quimbaya became part of the Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in 2011.

The bird

The Spectacled Parrotlet (Forpus conspicillatus) 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 decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List