blue-crowned conure

About the blue-crowned conure

The blue-crowned parakeet, blue-crowned conure, or sharp-tailed conure (Thectocercus acuticaudatus) is a small green Neotropical parrot with a blue head and pale beak native to large parts of South America, from eastern Colombia to Curacao in the southern Caribbean, and to the northern region of Argentina. They inhabit savanna-like habitats, woodland and forest margins, but avoid dense humid forest such as the Amazon.

This species is officially called a parakeet by the AOU and by birders, though usually called conures in aviculture. While T. acuticaudatus is the only species in the monotypic genus Thectocercus, this species has five subspecies: Thectocercus acuticaudatus (Vieillot 1818)

Thectocercus acuticaudatus acuticaudatus (Vieillot 1818) Thectocercus acuticaudatus haemorrhous (Spix 1824) Thectocercus acuticaudatus koenigi (Arndt 1995) Thectocercus acuticaudatus neoxenus (Cory 1909) Thectocercus acuticaudatus neumanni (Blake and Traylor 1947)

Previously, this species was part of the genus Aratinga, but that genus was split in four distinct genera once various phylogenetic studies showed that the genus, as traditionally defined, was polyphyletic. Wikipedia →