Orange-bellied Parrot

Neophema chrysogaster

John Latham was the first to describe the species, in 1790.

Neophema combines the Greek neos (new or different) and euphema, a generic name no longer in use, derived from the Greek euphemos (auspicious or laudatory); chrysogaster combines the Greek khrusos (gold) with gaster (belly).

John and Elizabeth Gould, Euphema aurantia (Orange-bellied Grass-Parrakeet) 1848
(adult female, top; adult male, bottom)

Author’s note: English naturalist John Latham named the Orange-bellied Parrot in 1790, from a specimen thought to have been collected at Adventure Bay in Tasmania during Captain James Cook’s third and last voyage, when his ships stopped there briefly in January 1777 on the way to New Zealand. Today it is so rare that it would be unlikely to be seen in that area or indeed anywhere.

Compared with the adult male, the female Orange-bellied Parrot has less blue on its wings and forehead and little or no orange on its belly. The female in this illustration has been over-coloured.

William T. Cooper, Orange-bellied Parrot (Neophema chrysogaster) 1970 (adult male)

Author’s note: The Orange-bellied Parrot is one of three Australian parrots that undertake a well-defined annual migration, deserting their breeding grounds in Tasmania for the Australian mainland. After the breeding season, in dribs and drabs, the Orange-bellied Parrot population crosses Bass Strait via King Island to over-winter on saline flats on the edge of the mainland, returning to south-western Tasmania in October.

The parrot is now Critically Endangered, perhaps numbering fewer than 20 individuals in the wild.