City ParrotsUrban Scarlet Macaw & Parrot Conservation

Danny Kingsley – ABC Science Online

Budgerigars use fluorescent colouring in their feathers to attract mates, a team of researchers based at the University of Queensland has discovered. Read on…

By Cindy Starr, Post staff reporter

Bernadette Plair grew up on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, surrounded by the beauty that nature’s most divine combination - water and warmth - can produce. Her childhood was enriched by scenes of sunrises, sunsets and flocks of blue and gold macaws. Read on…

By Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby

One parrot species in four is in danger of extinction, according to a study by two nature groups.

The two, the World Parrot Trust and the Worldwide Fund for Nature, say research by the World Conservation Union shows that 27% of the world’s 330 parrot species are in severe danger. Read on…

by Robert Sanders

The fossilized jaw of a parrot dating from the last days of the dinosaurs is the earliest known fossil of a modern land bird, says Thomas Stidham, a graduate student in the Department of Integrative Biology. The find provides the strongest evidence to date that modern birds evolved long before most scientists thought.

An analysis of the find, excavated from Cretaceous deposits in eastern Wyoming, appeared in the Nov. 5 issue of the British journal Nature.

“This find suggests that by the end of the Cretaceous period, around 65 to 70 million years ago, modern birds were an important group, at least in North America,” said author Stidham. Read on…