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The Caique Site

Welcome to the Caique Site.

Latest addition to Picture Archive. This is a picture of three chicks and their parents. The parents are at opposite ends of the stand. I reared these chicks by a new method I call "rotational co-parenting." First, I only left two of the chicks with the parents until their eyes began to open. Then I further reduced the number of chicks left with the parents to only one, but rotated the chick I left with the them. I would leave the oldest with the parents for a 24 hr period, then replace it with the next oldest, etc. so that each chick spent only a third of its time with its parents. When they began to wean and trying to fly, I put them all back with the parents. The result are chicks that can be both excellent pets and still be completely comfortable with their parents. To produce pet quality co-parented chick my old way. i.e. by leaving it with the parents, I could only co-parent one chick at a time and I had to devote 20 minutes to handling it every day.

Latest updates and reminders:

● 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.

● 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.

● I have added a section containing the text of articles I have written for magazines and the summaries of my presentations at the 2007 AFA Convention. You can find them in the Publications and Presentations section listed below.

● 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 5th annual ASA Avicultual Conference will be held March 24-27, 2010 in Dllas, TX.

● The 36th annual convention of the American Federation of Aviculture will be August 4-7, 2010 in St. Petersburg, FL.

● 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 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 2009 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.

Caique Food Manual. This is a set of pages about the caique's favorite foods--those that are safe to feed, some that are unsafe to feed, 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.