page_title: Parrot
section_title: Diet
hierarchical_section_title: Parrot / Behaviour / Diet
caption_attribution_description: Ara severa, Amazona ochrocephala, Aratinga weddellii Deutsch: Rotbugaras, Gelbscheitelamazonen, Braunkopfsittiche in Ecuador. English: Chestnut-fronted Macaws (Ara severa) Yellow-crowned Amazons (Amazona ochrocephala) and Dusky-headed Conures (Aratinga weddellii) at a clay lick in Ecuador.
context_page_description: Parrots, also known as psittacines, are birds of the roughly 393 species in 92 genera comprising the order Psittaciformes, found mostly in tropical and subtropical regions. The order is subdivided into three superfamilies: the Psittacoidea, the Cacatuoidea, and the Strigopoidea. One-third of all parrot species are threatened by extinction, with higher aggregate extinction risk than any other comparable bird group. Parrots have a generally pantropical distribution with several species inhabiting temperate regions in the Southern Hemisphere, as well. The greatest diversity of parrots is in South America and Australasia.
  Characteristic features of parrots include a strong, curved bill, an upright stance, strong legs, and clawed zygodactyl feet. Many parrots are vividly coloured, and some are multi-coloured. Most parrots exhibit little or no sexual dimorphism in the visual spectrum. They form the most variably sized bird order in terms of length.
  The most important components of most parrots' diets are seeds, nuts, fruit, buds, and other plant material.
context_section_description: The diet of parrots consists of seeds, fruit, nectar, pollen, buds, and sometimes arthropods and other animal prey. The most important of these for most true parrots and cockatoos are seeds; the large and powerful bill has evolved to open and consume tough seeds. All true parrots, except the Pesquet's parrot, employ the same method to obtain the seed from the husk; the seed is held between the mandibles and the lower mandible crushes the husk, whereupon the seed is rotated in the bill and the remaining husk is removed. They may use their foot sometimes to hold large seeds in place. Parrots are granivores rather than seed dispersers, and in many cases where they are seen consuming fruit, they are only eating the fruit to get at the seed. As seeds often have poisons that protect them, parrots carefully remove seed coats and other chemically defended fruit parts prior to ingestion. Many species in the Americas, Africa, and Papua New Guinea consume clay, which releases minerals and absorbs toxic compounds from the gut.
   Geographical range and body size predominantly explains diet composition of Neotropical parrots rather than phylogeny.
  Lories, lorikeets, hanging parrots, and swift parrots are primarily nectar and pollen consumers, and have tongues with brush tips to collect it, as well as some specialised gut adaptations. Many other species also consume nectar when it becomes available.
  Some parrot species prey on animals, especially invertebrate larvae. Golden-winged parakeets prey on water snails, the New Zealand kea can, though uncommonly, hunts adult sheep, and the Antipodes parakeet, another New Zealand parrot, enters the burrows of nesting grey-backed storm petrels and kills the incubating adults. Some cockatoos and the New Zealand kaka excavate branches and wood to feed on grubs; the bulk of the yellow-tailed black cockatoo's diet is made up of insects.
  Some extinct parrots had carnivorous diets. Pseudasturids were probably cuckoo- or puffbird-like insectivores, while messelasturids were raptor-like carnivores.
caption: Chestnut-fronted macaws, yellow-crowned amazons, and dusky-headed parakeets at a clay lick in Ecuador
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