Sapphire-rumped Parrotlet

About the Sapphire-rumped Parrotlet

The sapphire-rumped parrotlet (Touit purpuratus) is a species of bird in subfamily Arinae of the family Psittacidae, the African and New World parrots. It is found in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.

The sapphire-rumped parrotlet was described in 1781 by the English ornithologist John Latham under the English name "purple-tailed parakeet". Latham's specimen had come from Cayenne in French Guiana. When in 1788 the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, he included the sapphire-rumped parrotlet with a short description, coined the binomial name Psittacus purpuratus, and cited Latham's work. The sapphire-rumped parrotlet is now placed with seven other parrotlets in the genus Touit that was introduced in 1855 by the English zoologist George Robert Gray. The genus name is derived from the extinct Tupi language that was spoken by native people in Brazil: Tuí eté means "really little parrot". The specific epithet purpuratus is Latin meaning "clad in purple".

Two subspecies are recognized, the nominate T. p. purpuratus (Gmelin, 1788) and T. p. viridiceps (Chapman... Wikipedia →