Jandaya Parakeet

About the Jandaya Parakeet

The jandaya parakeet (Aratinga jandaya), or jenday conure, is a small Neotropical parrot with green wings and tail, reddish-orange body, yellow head and neck, orange cheeks, and black bill, native to wooded habitats in northeastern Brazil. It is a member of the Aratinga solstitialis complex of parakeets very closely related to, and possibly subspecies of the sun conure.

The bird has a wide range, but is locally rare in the wild; they are common in aviculture, where they are known as "jenday conures". The first description of a bird called "jendaya" was by the German naturalist, Georg Marcgrave, who saw the bird during his 1638 expedition through Dutch Brazil. Based on Marcgrave's description, the jandaya parakeet was included in the works of Francis Willughby in 1678, John Ray in 1713, Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760, the Comte de Buffon in 1779, and John Latham in 1781. None of these ornithologists had seen a specimen of the bird. When in 1788 the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, he included the jandaya parakeet with a short description, coined the binomial name Psittacus jandaya and cited earlier publications... Wikipedia →