An Endangered Mexican Parrot Is Thriving In Urban Areas Of South Texas

High-tech tracking reveals red-crowned parrots have four main roosts in Texas: Brownsville, Harlingen, Weslaco and McAllen

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After conducting a high-tech survey of red-crowned parrots, Amazona viridigenalis, a team of scientists were surprised to discover that these parrots are actually thriving alongside human communities in southern Texas. Considering that this species is endangered in its native range in northeastern Mexico, their remarkable ability to live alongside humans makes them unique.

The red-crowned amazon parrot is also known as the green-cheeked amazon parrot or the Mexican red-head. It is mostly olive-green with bright red feathers on its forehead and crown, a dark blue streak behind its eyes, bright green cheeks, and a horn colored beak and ceres. Males and females look alike.

In the wild, this parrot is found in the lowland forests, wooded areas and the neighboring foothills of northeastern Mexico. In 1994, its wild population was estimated to number somewhere between 2,000 and 4,300 adults, leading the IUCN red list to classify this species as globally endangered.

Despite being listed as Endangered, its population is still declining. A 2023 survey conducted by Texas Parks and Wildlife reported there are probably fewer than 2,000 red-crowned parrots alive in the wild today (ref). Additionally, an earlier study revealed that free-living red-crowned parrots may be more numerous in the southern portions of the United States — especially Florida, California and Texas — than in Mexico (more here).

Why are endangered parrots living in the wild in Texas? According to the lead author of the study, Simon Kiacz, a graduate student of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University, the answer is fairly straightforward: the animal trade.

“Parrots are popular pets in places like South Texas and Latin America,” Mr Kiacz remarked. “Unfortunately, most people, even law enforcement officers, don’t realize that these parrots are protected.”

“Some of them certainly flew across the border, but many were brought over during the 1980s when it was still legal to buy and sell them,” the study’s senior co-author, zoologist Donald Brightsmith, an Associate Professor of Ecosystem Health in the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology and the Schubot Avian Health Center at Texas A&M University, said in a press release. Professor Brightsmith’s specialties are tropical ecology, ornithology, and wildlife conservation, especially as these disciplines are related to wild and captive parrots.

In view of these parrots’ movements — voluntary or not — across the US-Mexico border and their current prosperity in urban environments, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department recently recognized the red-crowned parrot to be a native species.

This change in status has a practical, and legal, aspect.

“Without native species status, it would be much more difficult to provide protection for the species,” Professor Brightsmith explained.

Another benefit of their new status as a native species is that Texas Parks & Wildlife suddenly became very interested in understanding how the parrots are doing in South Texas. In fact, that newfound interest was the main motivation for this project.

“During data collection, I was looking for population information, trend information, the threats to the populations here in Texas, and habitat usage,” Mr Kiacz recounted. “We wanted to understand how these birds are doing and what we might be able to do to help them.”

For this work, Mr Kiacz, Professor Brightsmith and collaborators counted the parrots and mapped their habitat ranges, combining high-tech methods with good, old-fashioned field work.

“We used trackers, mapping software and local knowledge to see where these birds were roosting, and then we just had to count them,” Mr Kiacz said.

As a result of these surveys, Mr Kiacz, Professor Brightsmith and collaborators discovered that red-crowned parrots are doing very well in South Texas, with a population of around 900 birds. They also found that the parrots are especially common in human communities in the Rio Grande Valley, including towns like Brownsville — which even named the red-crowned parrot its official mascot.

“There are four main roosts in South Texas,” Mr Kiacz reported. “Brownsville, Harlingen, Weslaco and McAllen all have a group of parrots living in those communities.”

Daily and weekly fluctuations in the parrots’ roost numbers were almost immediately informative.

“We can get a really good idea of the population’s breeding activity this way,” Mr Kiacz elaborated. “If there is a decrease in the number of birds at the roost in the breeding season, that’s a good thing, because the females are probably nesting somewhere else with their offspring. Then in the fall, we’ll see all the juveniles join the adults at the roost.”

The parrots’ success is unique (so far) because endangered plants and animals rarely thrive in urban environments. Generally, species that have adapted to urban environments are viewed as either neutral or invasive, but Mr Kiacz, Professor Brightsmith and collaborators discovered that the parrots and the people of Texas seem to have come to a mutually beneficial relationship based on their shared love of exotic plants.

“Humans have basically created the perfect environment for these parrots,” Mr Kiacz observed. “They want what we want — ornamental plants with fruit and seeds that are well-watered and look attractive all year-round.”

Many of these ornamental plants and trees are exotic species. Because the parrots prefer to chew on and eat exotic plants and their fruits, they are not competing with native species for limited food resources. Further, there is little competition between native species and the parrots for housing because the parrots nest in hollows excavated, then later abandoned, by the local woodpeckers.

“All of the palm trees that we plant in South Texas are non-native,” Mr Kiacz explained. “They eventually die, and then woodpeckers come and make holes that are perfect nesting cavities for these parrots.”

“But they’re also happy to use holes in the sides of buildings,” Mr Kiacz added.

The only real problem that Mr Kiacz, Professor Brightsmith and collaborators discovered is the intermittent noise.

“You’ll often see these birds roosting together,” Professor Brightsmith said. “They sleep in groups of a hundred or more, and they may end up choosing someone’s front yard, even right over the mailbox. Then, when it gets light outside, they’ll start making noise and flying around. Some people find that to be a nuisance.”

As the human population continues to expand and to occupy ever more space, it’s possible that more species — even endangered species — may adapt to life in urban spaces. On one hand, adaptation to urbanization may save an endangered species, like red-crowned parrots (as I argue here), if we can learn how to live harmoniously with these birds.

“What we actually need is for people to understand how these birds live in urban environments,” Mr Kiacz said. “Instead of trying to fund large nature preserves, which you might need to do for other species, the best help we can give these parrots is to teach people how to live with parrots as neighbors.”

Of course, pushing closely related species together into a small area may increase hybridization and erase species boundaries, as may currently be the case with red-crowned parrots and lilac-crowned parrots — and this could poison conservation efforts that may desperately need genetic rescue with a second, species-pure, gene pool.

But for now, the team hopes their research will raise awareness about red-crowned parrots and lead to improved conservation efforts.

Source:

Simon Kiacz, Hsiao-Hsuan Wang and Donald J. Brightsmith (2023). Presence of Endangered Red-Crowned Parrots (Amazona viridigenalis) Depends on Urban Landscapes, Diversity 15(7):878 | doi:10.3390/d15070878

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