Quaker
Parrots (Myiopsitta Monachus)
This parrot is, on average, 29 cm long with a 48 cm wingspan, and weighs 100 g. Females tend to be 10-20% smaller. It has bright green upperparts. The forehead and breast are pale grey and the rest of the underparts are very-light green to yellow. The flight feathers are dark blue, and the tail is long and tapering. The bill is orange. The call is a loud and throaty graaa or skveet. Domestic breeds have produced colors other than the natural plumage; these include white and blue in place of green.
The Quaker Parakeet is the only parrot that builds a stick nest, in a tree or on a man-made structure, rather than using a hole. This gregarious species often breeds colonially, building a single large nest with separate entrances for each pair. In the wild, the colonies can become quite large, with pairs occupying separate "apartments" in nests that can reach the size of a small automobile. Their 5-12 eggs hatch in about 24 days.
Unusually for a parrot, Quaker Parakeet pairs occasionally have helper individuals, often a grown offspring, which assists with feeding the young (see kin selection).
Quaker Parakeets are highly intelligent, social birds. Those kept as pets routinely develop large vocabularies, and are thought to be second only to the African Grey Parrot in verbal skills.
The Quaker Parakeet was brought to the United States in the late 1960s as a pet. Many escaped or were intentionally released, and populations were allowed to proliferate. By the early 1970s, it was established in seven states, and by 1995 it had spread to eight more. There are now thought to be approximately 100,000 in Florida alone.
As one of the few temperate-zone parrots, the Quaker Parakeet is more able than most to survive cold climates, and colonies exist as far north as New York City and Chicago. This hardiness makes this species second only to the Rose-ringed Parakeet amongst parrots as a successful introduced species.
