Jardines Parrot

P. gulielmi gulielmi

Description: This is a solidly built bird with a large beak. It is most attractively marked, being mainly dark green with touches of orange in its plumage. The feathers of the upper parts are black, broadly edged with rich dark green. The lores are black and the feathers of the head are black with green edges. The crown, shoulders, thighs and inner edge of the wing are rich orange. The wings are black, each feather being broadly edged with green and the feathers of the underparts are rich green with a blackish centre. The flight and tail feathers are black. Length: 28 cm (11 in). Weight: about 250 g (8 oz).

There are three subspecies which vary slightly in the shade of orange on the crown and the width of the green margins of the feathers of the upper parts. A race formerly recognised was P. g. aubryanus, known as Aubry's Parrot. In an attempt to differentiate the two, I examined a number of skins in the British Museum (Natural History), to find one bird which car­ried a P. g. gulielmi tag on one leg and an aubryanus label on the other! A fair comment, I thought, on just how dis­tinct they are.

Jardine's Parrot has a conspicuous area of white skin surrounding the eye. The iris is brown or reddish brown. When more is known about this species, it may be found that males invariably have reddish brown eyes and females brown eyes. (This is true of the two proved pairs of John Stood­ley, see below, and of another proved pair.) The upper mandible is horn­coloured with a black tip or mainly blackish. The lower mandible is black.

Immature birds have the forehead dusky brown; the crown is buff-brown, the feathers being narrowly tipped with greenish. The thighs, wings and head are without the orange markings.

Range/Habitat: This species is found in Central Africa, in Cameroon and the Central African Republic to northern Angola, Kenya and northern Tanzania. It is more common in the east of its range, inhabiting forests up to about 3,500 in (11,500 ft).

Aviculture: It is available from time to time but has never been common. In the past, the few birds imported were usually kept as pets. They can be shy and difficult to tame but the confiding birds are very appealing. For many years, there were two in separate cages in the Parrot House at London Zoo. They loved to have their heads scratched but if you looked away for even a second one would slyly remove part of your finger. A pair I kept, which were not at all tame, would stretch themselves, shake their heads, ruffle their head feathers and utter their soft appealing 'hoo' call note.

In Britain, Jardine's Parrot was first bred, in 1978, by Mr and Mrs J. Stoodley of Hampshire. The birds nested in a log in a fully enclosed aviary. John Stoodley took a unique photograph inside the nest. It showed not only the light grey down of the chick but the differences in the plumage colouration of male and female. The male is darker green, the female more yellowish green. The young bird was duller than the adults with only a small amount of orange­red in the plumage. Incubation period was believed to be 26 days. Average clutch size of this and another pair in the Stoodley's collection was four eggs.

In Czechoslovakia, this species was bred by Mr Nezblecha in 1984 for the fourth time (Hylas, pers. comm.).