Yellow-crowned Amazon

The Story

This is a Yellow-crowned Amazon (Amazona ochrocephala) that I photographed in La Macarena, Meta, Colombia on July 3, 2017. It is a parrot of tropical South America, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago. It lives in humid and dry tropical forest, woodland, mangroves and savanna, and also turns up on farmland. It is mainly a lowland bird. In 1948 the central part of the Serranía de la Macarena became the first national reserve in Colombia. The nearby Serranía de la Macarena is an isolated mountain range about 120 kilometers long, separated from the Eastern Andes.

I photographed it with a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM, at 1/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 320. IUCN lists the Yellow-crowned Amazon as Least Concern with a decreasing population, and the botanical garden just outside La Macarena invites visitors to take part in its restoration work.

The bird

The Yellow-crowned Amazon (Amazona ochrocephala) 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 2018), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List