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White-winged Parakeet | Brotogeris versicolurus
Witvleugelparkiet | Catita Versicolor
The White-winged Parakeet is a small, bright green parrot with a yellow-and-white wing panel that only shows in flight. Native to the Amazon basin, it has held on in this region since the 1960s in and around Miami and Los Angeles, descended from escaped and released cage birds.
Voice
A rapid series of shrill, metallic clicking notes, usually given as a small group flies from tree to tree. Perched and out of sight of the rest of the group, the bird is quiet; only when contact with the flock is at risk does a louder, sustained call follow. Two birds side by side on a branch exchange soft, quick clicks.
Recording: GABRIEL LEITE — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Tabatinga, Amazonas, Brazil · xeno-canto
Identification
Mostly pale green, with a yellow edge on the folded wing and dark blue outer primaries. In flight a large white panel stands out on the wing, formed by the white base of the primaries — the feature that gives the species its name. The bill is horn-coloured, the legs grey, and male and female cannot be told apart in the field. Young birds resemble adults, with a slightly duller green.
Confusion species
Yellow-chevroned Parakeet (Brotogeris chiriri), treated as the same species until 1997 and present in the same cities, lacks the white wing panel and shows a yellow stripe across the wing instead. Larger green parakeets from the same region, such as Monk Parakeet, are clearly bigger and lack any white or yellow on the wing. By voice the two Brotogeris species are barely separable; the wing pattern in flight is the only reliable mark.
Habitat
Disturbed forest, forest edge and clearings near human settlement; closed rainforest is scarcely used. In this region mainly city parks, avenues and gardens with flowering and fruiting trees in south Florida and southern California. For the nest it chooses tree cavities or, where palms provide them, tunnels already hollowed out by termites.
Where the bird is most often found, arranged by the USNVC — the vegetation classification of the United States and Canada — and CMECS for sea and coast.
Range and movements
Its original range lies in the Amazon basin, from southeastern Colombia to the river mouth in Brazil; that falls outside this map. In North America it established from cage-bird escapes: it became common around Miami in the 1960s and 1970s, with a smaller population in Los Angeles; a third group in San Francisco disappeared by the mid-2000s. Numbers in Florida have declined since. Naturalised populations also live on Puerto Rico and near Lima, Peru. It does not migrate: the birds stay in the same neighbourhood all year.
- Resident
- Winter
- Passage
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
Watch the wing in flight rather than the colour: a white panel against the green is enough to separate this species from its counterpart, Yellow-chevroned Parakeet. It is most often detected as a small group flying tree to tree while clicking loudly; perched and silent, the bird blends into the leaves.
Conservation
The species is listed as Least Concern (LC) worldwide, with a substantial population across its native Amazonian range. The naturalised groups in this region are small and, in Florida, have declined since the 1980s; the cause of the decline has not been established. There is no indication that the species damages agriculture here.
Scientific name
Brotogeris versicolurus | (Müller, 1776)
Statius Müller described the bird in 1776 as Psittacus versicolurus; because it was later moved to another genus, author and year stand in parentheses. The genus Brotogeris was introduced by Vigors in 1825 and comes from Greek brotogērus, 'with a human voice'. versicolurus is Latin for 'many-coloured', after the combination of green, yellow and white in the plumage. Statius Müller gave the type locality as Cayenne in French Guiana, on Buffon's authority.