Cuban Parrot

About the Cuban Parrot

The Cuban amazon (Amazona leucocephala), also known as the Cuban parrot and the rose-throated parrot, is a medium-sized mainly green parrot found in woodlands and dry forests of Cuba, the Bahamas and Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. Although they have been observed in the wild in Puerto Rico, they are probably the result of escaped pets, and no reproduction has been recorded.

The Cuban amazon was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other parrots in the genus Psittacus and coined the binomial name Psittacus leucocephalus. Linnaeus cited the description and illustration of the "white-headed parrot" in George Edwards' A Natural History of Uncommon Birds which was published in 1751. Linnaeus gave the type locality as "America" but this was restricted to eastern Cuba by Thomas Barbour in 1923. The Cuban amazon is now one of around thirty species placed in the genus Amazona that was introduced by the French naturalist René Lesson in 1830. The genus name is a Latinized version of the name Amazone used in the 18th century by the Comte de Buffon. The specific epithet leucocephala... Wikipedia →