Blue-rumped Short-tailed Parrot

The male has a blue-gray head, black upper back, dark blue-purple feathers from the lower back to the tail, yellow-green underparts, green wings, yellow edges of wing coverts, and small red spots on the shoulders. When flying, the underwing is black, and the underwing coverts and armpits are red. The iris is dark brown, the upper beak is red and the lower beak is dark brown, and the feet are gray.

There is only one record of stray birds in Yunnan in China. Abroad, it is found in Indonesia, southern Myanmar, the Malay Peninsula, and southern Thailand.

It often moves in open evergreen broad-leaved forests in lowlands, and is also found in orchards and tropical farms. It feeds on fruits, seeds or flowers.

 The Blue-rumped Short-tailed Parrot is a small parrot, also known as the Mexican Parrot, with mainly green feathers and blue wings. It is a typical climbing bird with a strong and powerful beak, a hooked beak, a movable joint in the upper jaw, and a wax membrane at the base of the beak. The muscular tongue is thick. The feet are short, powerful, and zygomatic, with two toes facing forward and two toes facing backward, which is suitable for grasping and climbing. It is a late-hatched chick.

It mainly inhabits dry and semi-open areas full of shrubs and trees, open forest areas, thorny plains, secondary vegetation areas, and the edges of rainforests. During the breeding season, they form small groups of 5 to 12, and occasionally more than 50, feeding on half-ripe and dry grass seeds, berries, fruits, vegetation, plant buds, flowers, etc.

At about 9:30 am on May 4, 2005, a male blue-rumped short-tailed parrot (Psittinus cyanurus) was found on the top of a tall tree about 3km away from "Tree House" in the Caiyang River Nature Reserve in Simao, which is a new record of bird species in my country.