Timneh parrot

Appearance

Its plumage is mainly a mottled grey, with a white face mask and pale yellow eyes. Compared with the only other recognised Psittacus species, the grey parrot (P. Erithacus), the Timneh is smaller and darker, with a dull, dark maroon (rather than crimson) tail and a horn-coloured patch on the upper mandible. Like the grey parrot, the Timneh parrot is one of the most intelligent bird species.

Growing to 28–33 centimetres (11–13 in) in length and weighing 275–375 grams (9.7–13.2 oz), the Timneh is a medium-sized parrot.

Range and habitat

The Timneh parrot is endemic to the western parts of the moist Upper Guinean forests and bordering savannas of West Africa from Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and southern Mali eastwards to at least 70 km east of the Bandama River in Ivory Coast. There is no natural range overlap with the grey parrot although, as both taxa are common in aviculture, escapes can occur and hybridization between greys and Timnehs has been observed in captivity. The birds typically inhabit dense forest, but are also seen at forest edges and in clearings, in gallery forest along waterways, savanna woodland and mangroves.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

In crisis

Of a total estimated population of 120,000–259,000 individual birds, the largest populations are in Ivory Coast (54,000–130,000) and Liberia (50,000–100,000). The Timneh parrot has been undergoing population decline both through the loss of its forest habitat and trapping for the international wild bird trade. The species ability to track food (such as plants and plant parts among them fruits, seeds, flowers, leaf buds, and sap) and switch diets determines the species ability to cope with environmental changes. It is a contributory factor to the population decline of the Timneh parrot.

In 2012, BirdLife International gave the Timneh parrot full species status on the basis of genetic, morphological, plumage and vocal differences and classified it as Endangered in 2016.

Timneh parrot is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Timneh parrot, Wikidata item Q5466341. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.