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The Caique Site

Welcome to the Caique Site.

Latest addition to Picture Archive. "Balloon chick." This is a picture of two chicks a little over one month in age. The one on the right is three days older and normal. The one on the left suffered a wound while in the nest with its parents. You can see the wound just back of its head. As soon as I saw the wound I treated it with a triple antibiotic salve. Two days after I treated the wound, the chick's crop area became inflated with air and reached an immense size. If you look carefully, you will note that even the back of its head is inflated. I rushed it to my veterinarian. Apparently the wound caused a rupture in the cervicocephalic air sac. When this happens this sac fills with air to such an extent you think it may burst. First they tried to deflate the sac, but it re-inflated. Then they just sent it home with me and told me to just keep hand-feeding like I normally do. The chick recovered within two weeks, and now appears quite normal. The whole duration, the chick retained its appetite and I fed it the same amount as I would normally. The only difference was that I could not tell how full it was by looking at its crop. Instead, I had to check its intake by weighing it. My veterinarians noted that they occasionally see this in other birds, usually adult birds.

Latest updates and reminders:

THE BOOK

● My book has finally been published. I no longer have any author copies available, so to secure a copy you need to go to either the Avian Publications or Amazon websites.

With the publication of my book, I took down the online Caique Manual. My book contains all the the information that was in the online manual plus much more. You can take peak inside at the Amazon website.

WHAT'S NEW

● Floss, who bought a caique from me many years ago, pointed me to a website that sells a jigsaw puzzle of birds that includes a Black-Headed Caique. To find it on the web, go to the Ravensburger website, click on the U.S. flag and then type "jungle" into the search window of the new page.

● I have added a website called Mentaline to the list in Emergency Links. It was brought to my attention by a student in Mrs. Lynn Burns class at Monument Charter School. She gave the student who found it the "Student of the Week Award."

● I have added a new link in my Non-profit Organizations to the Veterinary Schools. This website was developed by Sara Coolidge. It is intended to aid those seeking to enter the veterinary profession.

● William T. Cooper, who painted all the parrots for Forshaw's Parrots of the World, has a very good website showing much of his recent work. I highly recommend a visit.

OTHER

● This is a link to something completely unrelated to caiques. This link takes you to a set of technical science papers I wrote that never got published in the peer reviewed literature. I did have many papers published, but I was never afforded the opportunity to battle to get these few published.

CONFERENCES

● The next annual Convention of the American Federation of Aviculture will be held August 15-18, 2012 in the Omni Colonade Hotel, San Antonio, TX

● The nest Canadian Parrot Conference will be held on November 12-13, 2011 at the Holiday Inn, Guelph, Ontario.

REPORTS

● There was a major drought in Amazonia that may be associated with the world wide climate change (The 2010 Amazon Drought, S.L. Lewis et al., 2011, Science vol. 331, p.554.). Millions of trees have died and if the drought persists, it threatens to affect the rest whole world's climate by eliminating a major CO2 sink. See this report from the National Geographic.

● The Ring-necked Parakeet has naturalized a bit too well in England according to report in the New York Times

● On the American Society for Microbiology website is a study of bacterial feather degradation. The bacterium Bacillus licheniformis can degrade a feather in only 24 hours!

● The New York Times had a recent article entitled "New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rainforests" suggesting that some jungles are recovering. I find it hopeful, but is contrary to what I observed in Brazil.

● I have discovered another antique print of the black-headed caique. It was painted by John Frederick Miller in 1775. The only one I know of that is older is by George Edwards and dates from 1751. This bird was a present to a Miss Ray, beloved of the Lord Sandwich. I do not have an image that I can post, but you can see it and buy a print of it at the Science and Society Website.

● The Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, England had an exhibit entitled "The Parrot in Art." It ended on April 29, 2007 but the website is still up.

● The New York Times has published an interview with Joseph Forshaw, author of many books on parrots including Parrots of the World, on September 5, 2006. This is a man who truly loves parrots.

● The late Alba Ballard was famous for dressing up parrots. The New York Times presents a slide show from Arne Svenson's book "Mrs. Ballard's Parrots." Alba dressed up her parrots in stylish clothes and photographed them. Her menagerie

● While mucking about in Google archives I found this. It is a story about Maj. Gen. Arthur Brown. He saw service in the Philippines and later became the President of the "Administrative Committee for the Leticia Trapezium." This is the southern most point in Columbia and was the site of a war between Columbia and Peru that ended in June 1934 when General Luis Sanchez Cereo, President of Peru, died. The League of Nations formed this committee to mediate the end of the dispute. He brought a caique back with him after that service, and it was still living with him in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1943.

[That the General was enamored of caiques is clear from an ad he placed in the magazine Aviculture in 1938 that read "WANTED--two Black-headed male caiques. Major General A. W. Brown (Retired). Judge Advocate General's Office, War Dept., Washington, D.C.]

© 2001 through 2010 by John McMichael. First posted on net May 19, 2001 and periodically updated. All rights reserved. No part of this website may be commercially reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or via any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright holder. Please notify the author of any errors or omissions.

I wish to acknowledge the staffs of the Library of Congress, Carnegie Museum Library, Cornell University Library, Rochester Public Library, and the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. I am also indebted to the many caique owners and breeders who have shared their knowledge. I especially want to thank Ms. Terri Fields for her assistance in obtaining many of the references cited in this website.

This web site is devoted to the medium sized parrots called caiques. These feisty birds are rapidly becoming popular pets. To learn more about them, click on the hyperlinks on this page.

Caiques are divided into two species and five subspecies*. Because the common name can vary from country to country, and even from person to person, the following common English names are used in this site:

Pionites melanocephalus = Black-headed caique

Pionites melanocephalus melanocephalus = Black-headed caique.

Pionites melanocephalus pallidus = Pallid caique.

Pionites leucogaster = White-bellied caique

Pionites leucogaster leucogaster = Green-thighed caique

Pionites leucogaster xanthomerius = Yellow-thighed caique

Pionites leucogaster xanthurus = Yellow-tailed caique

*Note Pionites, the Latin genus name, is considered masculine gender. According to taxonomic rules, the species and subspecies names are adjectives of the genus name and should have same gender. Thus, the correct species name is P. melanocephalus. One often sees P. melanocephala as the scientific name for the black-headed caique. I suspect this due to the earlier use of the genus name Caica. Caica is feminine in Latin, and melanocephala would have been the correct species name if Caica had been retained. David and Gosselin (2002) provide more details on this.

Guide to information in this site:

Caique Food Manual. This is a set of pages about the caique's favorite foods--those that are safe to feed, some that are not so safe, and a bit about what they eat in the wild.

Publications and Presentations. This is a collection of articles and summaries of presentations on caiques that that I wrote for avicultural magazines or presented at meetings.

Common Names for Caiques. This is a list of common names for the different species and sub-species of caiques in several languages.

Early Caique Breeding Records. This is a table of breeding records from before 1980 when the breeding of caiques was considered a rare event.

Parrot Glossary. This is a large glossary of terms related to parrots that I have gathered over the years.

Bibliography. These are references consulted in the preparation of The Caique Site.

Sanitizers and Disinfectants. This is a list and description of sanitizers and disinfectants used for cleaning bird cages and equipment.

Links to other websites:

Emergency Links. These are links to sites that deal with veterinary emergencies and grief from the loss of birds.

Parrot Research Links. These are sites where you may learn more about aviculture, avian medicine and avian conservation.

DNA Sexing links. These links connect you to companies that offer DNA sexing of birds.

Aviaries and Zoo Links. This is a list of public Zoos and Aviaries of interest to caique and parrot owners.

Government Links. These are links to Federal, state, and CITES treaty regulations related to pet bird ownership.

Non-Profit Organization Links. These links connect to national and international organizations interested in parrot conservation and aviculture.

Other Websites and Chat Sites. This is a list of links to other sites containing good caique information. Some are commercial sites.

Arts, Crafts, etc. These are links to sites selling fine arts, crafts and other items related to caiques.

Posada Amazonas and Tambopata Research Center. This page describes a trip five other parrot lovers and I made to Peru in November, 2001.

Brazil: Pantanal, Serra da Araras, Cristalino Lodge, and Humaitá. My search for the yellow-tailed caique.

To send me an email message click here: Caiquesite@gmail.com. If clicking on my email address does not work, try typing or pasting it into the address line of your email program. I have found that gmail is not always compatible with Internet Explorer.