Description
These birds range from 25 to 28 cm (10–11 in), and are primarily green, with a maroon patch on the belly, a "scaly" yellow-green-barred breast and sides of neck, a whitish ear-patch often tinged brown, and a maroon undertail. The specific name frontalis is a reference to its dark maroon frontlet - a feature which separates it from most similar species. The primaries are blue on the outer webs, green on the inner webs, and dark on the tips. The beak is black.
There are two subspecies, with extensive intergradation where their ranges contact:
- Maroon-bellied Parakeet proper, Pyrrhura frontalis frontalis – Brazil from south Bahia to Rio Grande do Sul, and west to Mato Grosso do Sul.
- Uppertail greenish-yellow grading into a broad reddish tip.
- Azara's Conure, Pyrrhura frontalis chiripepe – Eastern Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, and far southern Brazil.
- Uppertail entirely greenish-yellow.
Another subspecies, kriegi, was described from Bahia in 1932, but today it is universally considered a junior synonym of the nominate subspecies. Distinguished by a narrow brownish-red tip to the tail, it consititutes just a morph or an intermediate genotype making up just 20% of the specimens even in the supposed range. The name Krieg's Conure is occasionally used in aviculture for such birds, and some breed them exclusively; they are of course perfectly interfertile with individuals of the normal morph however.
Read more about this topic: Maroon-bellied Parakeet
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