White-necked Parakeet

The white-breasted parakeet is 24 to 25.5 cm (9.4 to 10 in) long and weighs 83 to 110 g (2.9 to 3.9 oz). The sexes are the same. Adults have a thin reddish brown band just above the bill and are brownish from forehead to hindcrown; the crown feathers have gray edges. Their cheeks are green with yellow giving a scaly appearance and their ear coverts are orange. A wide white collar surrounds their neck and the rest of their upperparts are green. Their breast is yellow and the rest of their underparts are green with a rusty tone on the belly. Their wing is mostly green with red primary coverts and dark bluish primaries. The upper side of their tail is dull reddish with a green base and the underside dusky with reddish tips to the feathers. Their bill is blackish and their iris is dark with bare white or whitish skin surrounding it. Immature birds are similar to adults but without the reddish frontal band; they also have paler ear coverts and a white breast.

The white-breasted parakeet is found on the eastern slope of the Andes in the southeastern Ecuadoran provinces of Morona-Santiago and Zamora-Chinchipe, and possibly in northernmost Cajamarca in Peru. The South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society considers it to be endemic to Ecuador; undocumented sight records in Peru lead the committee to treat it as hypothetical in that country. It inhabits the canopy, clearings, and edges of primary subtropical and tropical forest at elevations between 900 and 2,000 m (3,000 and 6,600 ft) though it usually is found below 1,700 m (5,600 ft).

The white-breasted parakeet feeds on fruit, seeds, and flowers of a variety of plants and trees.