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Posted by Bill Pranty on 19:10:51 03/26/08
In Reply to: Parakeet 101 posted by David Simpson
Hi David,
Good questions, and I believe the answer in some cases is, "We don't know." I'm not aware of any specimens from Florida of the four _Aratinga_ species that you mentioned, and to my knowledge, the Crimson-fronted Parakeet has never even been verified to occur here via photographic evidence.
Identification criteria for many _Aratinga_ and _Amazona_ species found in Florida have never been determined with certainty, especially regarding juveniles. And since many of these species have non-overlapping ranges in their native lands, if we haven't learned something about the ID of the birds in Florida, then it probably hasn't been learned anywhere -- except possibly southern California, where many of the same species also occur as naturalized populations, and where field observers are way ahead of us (see link below; I hope it shows up).
Throw in the potential for captive-bred or wild-bred hybrids, and I think it's safe to say that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of our knowledge of most of the psittacids that are free-roaming in southern Florida -- even to basic identification characters, much less natural history and population dynamics.
Best regards,
Bill Pranty
Bayonet Point, Florida
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