Great-billed parrot

The great-billed parrot (Tanygnathus megalorynchos) also known as Moluccan parrot or island parrot, is a medium-sized, approximately 38 cm long, green parrot with a massive red bill, cream iris, blackish shoulders, olive green back, pale blue rump and yellowish green underparts. The female is typically smaller than the male, but otherwise the sexes are similar.

Great-billed parrot

Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Psittaciformes
Family: Psittaculidae
Genus: Tanygnathus
Species:
T. megalorynchos
Binomial name
Tanygnathus megalorynchos
(Boddaert, 1783)

The great-billed parrot is found in forest, woodland and mangrove in the south-east Asian islands of Maluku, Raja Ampat, Talaud, Sangir, Sarangani, the Lesser Sundas, and nearby small islands. The diet consists mainly of fruits.

It remains widespread and locally fairly common, and consequently has been rated as least concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Taxonomy

The great-billed parrot was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in New Guinea.[2] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.[3] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Psittacus megalorynchos in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.[4] The great-billed parrot is now placed in the genus Tanygnathus that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Wagler in 1832.[5][6] The generic name combines the Ancient Greek words tanuō "to stretch out" and gnathos "jaw". The specific epithet megalorynchos combines the Ancient Greek megalos "great" and rhunkhos "bill".[7]

Five subspecies are recognized:[6]

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References
  1. BirdLife International (2012). "Tanygnathus megalorynchos". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2013.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  2. Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de (1780). "Le perroquet à bec couleur de sang". Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux (in French). Volume 11. Paris: De L'Imprimerie Royale. pp. 169–170.
  3. Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de; Martinet, François-Nicolas; Daubenton, Edme-Louis; Daubenton, Louis-Jean-Marie (1765–1783). "Perroquet, de la Nouvelle Guinée". Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle. Volume 8. Paris: De L'Imprimerie Royale. Plate 713.
  4. Boddaert, Pieter (1783). Table des planches enluminéez d'histoire naturelle de M. D'Aubenton : avec les denominations de M.M. de Buffon, Brisson, Edwards, Linnaeus et Latham, precedé d'une notice des principaux ouvrages zoologiques enluminés (in French). Utrecht. p. 45, Number 713.
  5. Wagler, Johann Georg (1832). "Monographia Psittacorum". Abhandlungen der mathematisch-physikalischen Classe, Königlich-Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften (in Latin). Volume 1: 463-750 [501].
  6. Gill, Frank; Donsker, David, eds. (2019). "Parrots, cockatoos". World Bird List Version 9.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
  7. Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. pp. 245, 379. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
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