Amazona vittata, The Puertorican parrot, roosting behavior in the wild

Branch used by several parrots to roost, note the way the leaves and smaller branches have been stripped away

There are seventeen parrots in this photo, it was taken just after dawn, at the moment the first sun rays were stricking the tops of the trees

A branch used by a single pair, see how they have stripped the branch of leaves for a considerable lenght.  They sleep together at the very tip of the branch.

Part of one of the largest flocks of this species since the 1950's, there are twenty two birds in the photo, the flock was composed of thirty two birds.

The birds continue circling and calling and sometimes fly around almost until it is too dark to see

In this unique photo you can see a pair at night

The birds have excellent hearing, and probably have a small degree of night vision.

The Rio Abajo wild flock spends the day foraging in the forest, usually in small flocks of a few birds, but during the months of July to December in the evening they tend to form a large flock that sleeps in a single roosting area.  This is related to their breeding cycle, during the breeding season, which lasts from January to July in the RA forest, the birds become more aggressive, territorial and less likely to form large groups.  Once the chicks fledge the parents aggression toward other birds lessens to a considerable degree and they become much more social.

The roosting flock assembles in the evening and the way they choose which tree they will roost is very noisy and interesting.  First the birds start arriving at an area where several trees are used to sleep.  As the birds arrive they start calling and interacting with the other birds.  Then they start flying back and forth between the different trees singly and in small groups.

The impression I get is that they are going through a process of ascertaining where is the larger concentration of parrots, sort of a popularity vote between the different roosting spots.    As nightfall starts the groups in flight become bigger and bigger until at times the whole flock is in the air at the same time.  Just as it is getting too dark to see the flock finally settles in a single spot with all, or nearly all the birds in a fairly small part of the tree.

The parrots keep calling and squabbling for some time after it is dark but eventually they fall silent.  The parrots are not passive users of the roosting trees, they modify favorite sleeping branches by removing leaves for at times a considerable length of the branch.  Then they sleep near or at the very tip of the denuded branch.  MY guess is that this is an anti-predator measure but this is just speculation as any place where the parrots spend a considerable amount of time eventually becomes denuded of leaves and quite wretched looking due to their proclivity to chew with their powerful bills anything that is at hand nearby when they are perched in a spot.

The flock wakes up early but generally doesn’t leave their roost until the rays of the sun start striking the top of the tallest trees.  Then they might take flight in a single large and very noisy group that lands again after circling over the roost a few times.  After this the birds start slowly going their own way in small groups away from the roosting area.

If you happen to run into one of these roosting areas during a hike in the forest I would ask that you please don’t disturb the birds.  If the parrots are disturbed they will flee the area and abandon the roosting tree.  In the nineties the whole PR parrot population that used to live around the area of the old aviary high near El Yunque peak relocated to the west part of the forest near el Verde.   The suspicion of the project scientists is that the birds fled the area they formerly used because they were alarmed and disturbed when military exercises were staged on the forest.  I can’t blame them, I would have moved too.

Puerto Rican parrot twilight behavior, sleeping clumped in a bunch.

This is the only photo of this behavior ever taken, you can see a parrot ready to fly away at the bottom

As the leader of the captive propagation program of the Puerto Rican parrot I spend time, probably than anyone on its right mind should, observing parrot behavior. I also read the notes of previous aviculturists about the parrot’s behavior in captivity to look for context for my observations. But there is a gap in the information about this parrot’s behavior, there’s an absolute absence of writings on what the parrots do after dark. In fact most people seem to assume that as soon as night falls the parrots go to sleep and that’s that. To say the truth this inference is largely true, however in the period of twilight before complete darkness the parrots do things that have been missed, as far as I can tell, by other observers.


The reason for missing these behaviors is very simple, after the daily work shift ends the personnel goes to their houses, to do errands, to take a nap, to eat, and hanging around the parrot cages is the last thing in (including me) anyone’s mind. But one day I noted that the period of twilight was marked by an inordinate amount of calls coming from a relatively small area in the cage, the calls denoted intense socialization at a time that I had always assumed the birds were setting down to sleep. This piqued my curiosity and I decided to see what was happening.

What I found is that sometimes, instead of sitting on the many perches on the cage, the parrots will cluster together to sleep in the wire forming a mass that resembles a grape bunch. I have never read this reported, and it doesn’t seem like they sleep in this way in the wild. The birds arrange themselves in a very tight bunch, literally side by side in a degree of intimate contact that I would have thought inconceivable between adult parrots that are not pair bonded. The forming of the bunch is accompanied by much squawking and I suspect this is caused by birds jostling each other for position on the bunch. I have never set out to watch the formation of the bunch since this would probably disrupt its formation but I have on rare occasions witnessed its dissolution. Also most of our flight cages have, by design but this is a matter for another post, odd asymmetrical shapes that limit line-of –sight viewing.  What I found most interesting about this clumping behavior is that the PR parrots, which can be quite picky with who they associate during the day, seem to lose their selectivity as night falls and join together in relative amicability and closeness that they don't show during the day.

I suspect the birds clump as a form of protection from predators. I make this inference because of what happens when the clump is disturbed. When the birds are startled the clump explodes like a grenade with birds flying in all directions. I have just a single photo of this clumping, it was taken when I had to feed the flock very early before dawn because we were doing some special work with the wild birds and I wanted the captive birds to be all fed by first light in the morning. In the photo you can see only part of the clump as a number of the birds had flown away the moment they detected movement near the cage. Nevertheless the photo shows the way the birds arrange themselves on the wire. Previously I always thought that only mated pairs slept this way.

It is unclear what triggers this behavior as some birds are quite content to sleep in perches.  For the moment being this behavior remains a curiosity observed from time to time.