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Moluccan Eclectus - BirdForum Opus

Female of subspecies roratus, "Moluccan Eclectus"
Photo by James Eaton
Seram, Indonesia, January 2011
Eclectus roratus

Identification

35–42 cm (13¾-16½ in) with male and female very different
Male

  • Body bright green
  • Flanks reddish
  • Wings with blue leading edge, blue primaries, and red underwing coverts
  • Tail upperside increasingly blue towards the sides
  • Tail underside brownish black with yellowish white tips except in the center
  • Lower mandible black, upper yellowish-red
  • Iris yellow-orange

Female

  • Red body and wings, darker on upperside
  • Belly to lower breast purple-blue
  • Undertail coverts yellow
  • Mantle has a purple-blue band across
  • Wings with blue leading edge, blue primaries, and purple-blue underwing coverts
  • Tail orange above and reddish below but with bright yellow tips from both sides
  • Bill black
  • Iris Whitish

Younger birds are less glossy but otherwise similar to adults of the same sex

Distribution

Northern, central and southern Moluccas.

Taxonomy

One of several species formerly included in Eclectus Parrot.

Subspecies

Clements recognizes these subspecies[1]:

  • E. r. vosmaeri: Larger islands in northern and central Moluccas
  • E. r. roratus: Southern Moluccas (Buru, Seram, Ambon, Saparua and Haruku)

Subspecies westermani is not recognized by all checklists.

Habitat

Lowland forest, from the coast, including mangroves, to mid-montane. Quite diverse in habitat tolerance they also occur in degraded environments and close to humans.

Behaviour

They are usually to be seen in the canopy.

Diet

The diet consists of fruits, nuts, blossom, leaf buds, and seeds.

Breeding

They nest in tree holes lined with wood chips. The clutch consists of 2 eggs which are incubated by the female (she is fed by the male) for 28 days. The young fledge about 8 weeks later.

References

  1. Clements, J. F., P. C. Rasmussen, T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, A. Spencer, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2023. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2023. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
  2. Gill, F, D Donsker, and P Rasmussen (Eds). 2023. IOC World Bird List (v 13.2). Doi 10.14344/IOC.ML.13.2. http://www.worldbirdnames.org/
  3. Davidson-Onsgard, A., N. Collar, G. M. Kirwan, and P. F. D. Boesman (2024). Moluccan Eclectus (Eclectus roratus), version 2.0. In Birds of the World (N. D. Sly, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.eclpar1.02

Recommended Citation

External Links

GSearch checked for 2020 platform.1

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