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The Blue-headed parrots are probably the most widely known of all the Pionus parrot species. Their attractive and distinctive coloration (a vibrant green body topped by a brilliant blue head) has wide appeal to parrot lovers.
Juniper and Parr describe these parrots as living in an altitudinal range of 0-1500 meters, while Ridgely and Low place them at 0–1400 meters. Sweeney places them from 600–1200 meters and Stoodley puts them at 0–575 meters.
Reported weights for these parrots range from 230 grams (Low) to a high of 276 grams (Stoodley).
Overall length varies from a low of 24 centimeters (Juniper and Parr) to a high of 29 centimeters (Ridgely).
Most recorded lengths fall in the 27–28 cm range
There are three subspecies (races) presently acknowledged by taxonomists. P. m. menstruus was originally described by Linneaus in 1766. This is the nominate of the species. Although comfortable with fragmented environments, this race is found predominately in tropical rainforest environments in a wide area bounded by Costa Rica and Panama to the north, the Andes Mountains to the west, into northern South America and south to central Brazil. This subspecies is the one most commonly kept by aviculturists.
P. m. rubrigularis was first described by Jean Louis Cabanis in 1881. Rubrigularis is found primarily in western South America from Venezuela south to Bolivia in both lowland and cloud forest environments. These parrots differ morphologically from the nominate in that there is a distinctively larger amount of red and coral at the base of their breast feathers and the blue plumage is somewhat duller than that of the nominate. They occupy a range from Costa Rica south to western Ecuador. Rubies, as I prefer to call them, do exist in U.S. aviculture, although they are not common.
Pionus m. reichenowi was initially described by Ferdinand Heine in 1884. This race is found along the eastern coast of Brazil separate from other Blue-headed populations. They, like the rubies, sport a darker blue plumage than does the nominate. There is no red in their breast feathers, and their under tail coverts are tipped with blue instead of the green found on the most of the other two subspecies. Forshaw lists various authors’ information about the timing of breeding season—December through April, but chicks have been found in nests in October in Surinam (Forshaw, p.498).
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