At my museum, we have a shadow-box which has a stuffed bird inside it on display. So many visitors ask me what kind of bird it is, and I’ve been having trouble searching on the net for something for which I have no name. Considering it’s a Victorian piece, I don’t even know if the species is still extant. (It’s one of those pieces for which we have no records, so that’s no help.)
The bird is small, about four inches long, with a slightly hooked beak. The feathers are greeen (slightly yellow near the head), with brilliant blue patches on the wings. It has no plumes or combs on its head, and its tail feathers are short and straight. (But that may not mean anything if they were cut down to fit in the box.)
Too big, I think, and too long-tailed. Note it is 22 cm long, or 8 inches, and the OP says short-tailed and 4 inches.
Some kind of Forpus parakeet, like this one, sounds like a possibility. However, there are lots of small parakeets with blue in the wings, so that a photo would help a lot.
It’s very similar in coloring, except that ours has no blue spot on its head, and no black tail-feathers. The tail is relatively short, and is the same green as the feathers. The yellow tinge is subtler than that of the bird in the photo.
Also, the beak on our bird is more protruding than the one in the picture.
** Colibri, ** the blue is brighter on our bird, almost neon. Ours has a blue stripe (not sharply defined) on the wings, and a quarter-sized blue splotch on the back.
“It’s very similar in coloring, except that ours has no blue spot on its head, and no black tail-feathers”
Then it’s a probably female ( http://www.birdwatch-australia.com.au/orange_parrot.htm ). The crown of the female is olive green. The tail feathers of both sexes are green/olive. The black feathers in that photo are wing feathers.
No, still not the right one. The bird in the picture has a longer torso than ours. Ours is more sparrow-like in body shape-- a bit rounder, and shorter in the mid-section.
There also isn’t any yellow around the eyes.
The beak shape is the same as that in the picture, and that’s the kind of neon blue I was talking about.
Let’s not get too hung up on body shape or colouration round the eyes. Remember “it’s a Victorian piece”. Although museum quality peices were state of the art, general taxidermy in those days could be pretty rough, simply because of a lack of syntheic polymerd and other cheap, easy to use materials. Many of these peices were made of sawdust and papier mache on either a wire frame or just rolled up rags. Getting exact proportions would be difficult if not impossible. Although skulls were commonly left, the cheaper specimens were often completely deboned for transport and only the beak left atached. A fine ring of colouration around the eyes could easily be destroyed by the fastening of the skin to the frame.
There was a roaring trade in taxidermy peices in Victorian times. Exotic novelty peices were often made from skins shipped to Europe or America and then mounted onto casts of similar species. Far cheaper than making the whole piece in Australia or Kenya and then shipping it. As a result the skin may have been applied to another species of parrot or even another bird altogether. I have seen a skin and horns of some sort of antelope mounted onto a horse skull, with interesting results.
If the colouration is right then it’s a fairly safe bet that Tamerlane
got it right. I honestly can’t think of any other bird anywhere in the world with blue wing flashes and a completely green body.
No, with all due respect to the Lame One, I’m virtually certain it’s not a Neophema. As I said originally, that’s much too big for the bird in question - it’s nearly twice the length. And Lissa has stated the tail is short, not long as in Neophema.
Lissa has also said that the body is not completely green: there is a “quarter-size blue splotch on the back.” I don’t know if she means on the rump or not, but several Forpus have blue on the rump as well as the wings. And the body proportions match the description too - Forpus are sparrow-like in shape.
Unfortunately, I haven’t had much luck in finding good images on the web. However, this one shows the electric-blue wing patch and rump found in some Forpus:
Assuming the bird is in fact a parrot, which the bill shape implies, then it is definitely some kind of Forpus. They are the only small parakeet-type birds with blue in both the wings and the back.
There are seven or eight species in the genus. From the description, Lissa’s bird is most likely a Blue-winged ParrotletForpus xanthopterygius of the subspecies xanthopterygius, which has a more yellowish face than the other subspecies. The Dusky-billed, or Sclater’s Parrotlet F. sclateri is also a possibility, but a green face as well as has a darker bill.
Spectacled (F. conspicillatus) and Pacific (F. coelestis) are also possible, but both have some blue on the head. This bird, that I linked to earlier, is a Pacific Parrotlet.
This is very close. The beak is almost identical, as is the general body shape. The differences are the blue spots on the head, and the lack of a blue splotch on the back, which, by the way, is right above the tail and irregularly shaped. Mine has no white patches as the bird in the picture appears to have, and the yellow is more subtle, like it’s showing through from under-feathers. My bird’s coloring is brighter, but that could be a flaw of the photo.
Is there a possibility that my bird could have been dyed to look brighter? I know little about early taxidermy, and don’t know if this was ever a technique utilized, but it would explain color differences.
Thanks so much to everyone for all of your help. I greatly appreciate it, and I know that future museum guests who ask will appreciate it, too. I know what a difficult task it must have been translating my clumsy descriptions into the data needed for identification.
Probably the case. I know a friend who claims that in decades he has yet to see a photo that does justice to Africa’s Lilac-Breated Roller.
I rather doubt it. I don’t believe feather colors fade that dramatically, though beaks and skin will and sometimes are painted.
On the identification front, I absolutely yield to Colibri, who does seem to have gotten a lot closer :). To be honest I was only barely cognisant of the existence of the genus Forpus, so it’s not surprising.
The Pacific Parakeet I linked to does, in fact, have a bright blue rump in the photograph - you may be interpreting it as the left wing. Also, I think the white patches are either highlights or possibly feather bases appearing in the ruffled plumage - they would not appear on a stuffed bird.
The genus Forpus is a bit difficult, since several species are rather similar, and the subspecies within each species are somewhat variable. The photographs I’ve been able to find on the web are in general not adequate for accurate identification.
The only real way to identify the bird is to compare it to specimens in a museum with a good collection. Barring that, the best option for identifying the bird would be if you were able to consult Vol. 4. of the Handbook of Birds of the World, which has good illustrations of all species and many subspecies. You could also try A Guide to the Parrots of the World by Tony Juniper and Mike Parr, though I think the illustrations of Forpus in this book leave a bit to be desired.
As I said, based on your description of the bird, my best guess without seeing it is Blue-winged Parrotlet, Forpus xanthopterygius. Actually, the subspecies that may be closest is flavissimus of northeast Brazil, which has a brighter yellow face, rather than xanthopterygius as I first said.
Unlikely. Birds were sometimes dyed, but I doubt that they would have died only the face. Specimens also fade, but that probably wouldn’t produce a brighter yellow in an area that was
originally green.
The problem is that I haven’t been able to show you the full range of possibilities from illustrations available on the net. If you are able to send me photos by e-mail (check my profile), I’d be happy to take a stab at it. However, make sure the photos are from several different angles.
Understandable, since there are few if any in the Khanate of the Golden Horde. I’ve seen several species in South America, so the mention of a blue wing patch immediately rang a bell.
Does your display mention what continent this thing is from? There are Pacific parrotlets and then there are parrotlets in Central America and the Caribbean, too. I’m thinking the green-rumped parrotlet, which has blue on the wings (the male, anyway), is bright green and very small and some yellow near the beak. Do a search on “parrotlet,” there are a number of websites that picture all of them (my internet is really slow right now, or I’d send you a site).
Lissa has mentioned that the rump is blue, as well as the wings. That combination is present only in Forpus among small parrots. I’ve checked all species in the Handbook of Birds of the World and Guide to the Parrots of the World, both of which are on my bookshelf at home.
This page says that the females have no blue markings on the face.
Thus, I think I have a female forpus xanthopterygius.
Now, if I could only pronounce it!
Unfortunately, no. In the past, the museum was run by volunteers who, while well-intentioned, didn’t really know what they were doing. Records of donations for many years are spotty at best. (What records we have are frustratingly vague. It’s not uncommon for a record for a donation to read “One box of toys and two boxes of various decorative objects.”)
For this particular item, no records exist at all. It’s not numbered, and none of the register books record anything matching the description.
It’s an item that’s always intrigued me because the bird is so beautiful. So many visitors have asked about it, and offered guesses. One fellow thought it might be a specimen of the extinct Carolina Parakeet, but it looks nothing like pictures I found on the internet. One recent visitor has initiated a correspondence with the museum, sending us various clippings from magazines in an attempt to identify it, but so far without any luck.
Again, I thank everyone for all of their help with this. It’s great to finally know.
http://www.forpus.com/Green-rumped.htm
That shows the forpus passerinus, which is the one that lives in South America and the Caribbean. I’ve got a pair of these, and they are really beautiful. Bright, bright green.
To clarify, in general female Forpus don’t have any blue in the wings or on the rump, either. And male F. xanthopterygius lack any blue on the head. (F. conspicillatus and F. coelestis are the ones that have blue on the head.) So I believe what you have is a male xanthopterigius.
