Red-lored Amazon

Overview

The red-lored amazon (Amazona autumnalis) is a robust, green canopy parrot with a red forehead and lores — the small patch of bare red skin between the eye and the bill that gives the species its common name. Adults also show a blue crown patch and, in the subspecies found at Tortuguero (A. a. salvini), yellow cheek patches. The plumage is predominantly green, which makes the birds cryptic when perched and explosive in colour when a flock erupts from a fruiting tree.

The species is a loud, social bird. Pairs maintain year-round bonds and call constantly in flight — the dawn chorus of red-loreds over Tortuguero is one of the more arresting sounds of the park, a raucous two-note call that carries well before the bird is visible. Flocks assemble at communal roosts each evening and disperse again at first light.

Why Tortuguero

Red-lored amazons are resident at Tortuguero year-round, which means every visit has a reasonable expectation of contact. The park’s intact humid forest provides both the fruiting trees the species feeds on and the large, old trees with cavities it uses for nesting. In areas where old-growth trees have been cleared, amazon populations drop sharply — Tortuguero’s protected interior has kept this dynamic intact.

The Keulemans plate depicts the Central American subspecies A. a. salvini specifically, which is the form occurring in Costa Rica. That subspecies was described from specimens collected in the Caribbean lowlands and was named for the British ornithologist Osbert Salvin, who worked extensively on Guatemalan and Costa Rican birds in the 1860s–1890s.

How to see them (honestly)

• Dawn and dusk are the primary windows — the flocks move noisily between roost and feeding sites at predictable times.
• Listen before you look: the two-note whaah-whaah call announces the flock 30–60 seconds before it comes into view.
• When perched in fruiting trees, red-loreds sit motionless and are surprisingly difficult to pick out against green foliage. A pair seen in flight often leads the eye to the tree they land in.
• Communal roost trees near the village are known to local guides; asking specifically about roost locations can produce a reliable late-afternoon spectacle of hundreds of parrots coming in to land.
• Year-round, but nest prospecting behaviour (pairs investigating cavities, carrying food) is easiest to observe March–May.

Status note

Least Concern globally, with a wide range and large population. The principal documented threat is trapping for the cage-bird trade, which has made the species locally rare in parts of Mexico and Venezuela. In Costa Rica the species is legally protected and trade is prohibited; the Tortuguero population is not under documented pressure. As with most canopy species, forest fragmentation around the park boundary is the ambient long-term risk.