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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:

● My book has finally been published. To secure a copy either contact me at my email address or go to either the Avian Publications or Amazon websites. I have a limited number of author copies for sale, and I will send you an autographed copy if you buy it from me. Please email about price and shipping.

● With the publication of my book, I will be taking down the Caique Manual. I will leave it up until the end of September, but then it will be gone! My book contains all the the information in the online manual plus much more.

● I will provide a free copy of the book to the people who contributed to it. So if you sent me a picture I included in the book, please contact me so I can arrange shipping. (I have most or your email addresses, but some no longer seem to be correct.)

● I had an article entitled "Co-Parenting and Other Things I Have Learned About Breeding Caiques" published in the Nov./Dec. 2009 ASA Avicultural Bulletin. You can read this article in the the Publications and Presentations section.

● I have updated the page describing my Trip to Brazil. It now includes pictures. I was forced to leave them out when I first posted it because my original provider did not give enough memory on their server.

● A picture of a possible "blue caique" is circulating on the internet. The one I found can be found at the Caique Crazy website. It appears to be a mutation of the pallid form. A blue mutation is what you expect if there is no yellow pigment deposited in the feathers and there are no other mutations. The blue is due to light scattering by vacuole structures in the feather on a melanin background. If this mutation is real, we can eventually expect an all white caique if a mutation in a melanin expression gene occurs in one of the progeny of this bird.

● The VII International Parrot Congress will be held September 22-25, 2010 at Tenerife. More information can be found at the Loro Parque Fundación.

● The 6th Annual Avicultural Society of America Avicultural Conference will be held in Santa Rosa, CA from March 31 to April 2, 2011.

● 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 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 included yellow-thighed and black-headed caiques.

● 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.

© 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:

The Main Caique Manual. This is the core of the site. It contains 31 sections of information related to the keeping of caiques gleaned from published reports and the author's own experience. This Manual will be taken down the end of September.

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 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.