Mitred Parakeet
| Psittacara mitratus | Order: Psittaciformes | Family: Psittacidae (New World and African Parrots) |
This species held, for a few months in 2023, the #700 position on my “ABA Continental” life list. I saw it at the Biltmore Hotel near Miami on an April birding tour of South Florida. Native to South America, this conure is a popular pet, which explains why so many have escaped captivity and become established in California, Florida, and Hawaii. I was thrilled to reach that milestone, but disappointed that the bird in the 700 position wasn’t a native North American species.
Later that same year, the AOS lumped two of the species already on my list, the Pacific-slope Flycatcher and the Cordilleran Flycatcher, into a single species, the Western Flycatcher. Usually I’m disappointed to lose a lifer, but not this time! When the Mitred Parakeet dropped to #699, the next lifer I saw on that same trip, the Smooth-billed Ani, took over the #700 position, and that’s a splendid native species.
It would be difficult at best to work out what “number” each bird on my life list is, taking into account all the lumps and splits over the past 50 years. The Florida Scrub-Jay was #600 when I first saw it on March 29, 1999, and the Bearded Bellbird was #1,000 when I saw it in 2001 in Trinidad, but both species have probably bounced up and down around those numbers in the decades since.
So the Mitred Parakeet is NOT the #700 species on my lifelist, but it was for a while.