natamambo wrote:I've googled this for hours, as my family comes from Vanuatu and so it caught my interest as a topic given Henry's comments. I have no memory of seeing parrot finches when travelling there but we were more intent on getting around the villages catching up with folk (and it was over 20 years ago, I did not know much about finches then, more of a parrot person). However...cyanofrons have been recorded on Santo which is only 20 miles or so from where my family lived so it is possible.
Anyway, all I could find was that they differed from the Aussie form in that they had more blue "on the vertex". They appeared on a stamp in 1981. My stamp collection is in a box somewhere but pictures on the web of the stamp show it as having more blue under the beak / on the chin (which would be consistent with the "cyanofrons" which translated literally from the Latin means "blue front". Henry, (said very nicely) check your book again and make sure it is cyanfrons you are describing.
I reckon that the bird/s may well be carrying genes as a result of hybrisation somewhere back in the past.
This image
from this site http://www.arkive.org/red-eared-parrotf ... 73513.html certainly shows a bird with much less red than normal for this species which may suggest some variation occurs naturally.
I reckon that the bird/s may well be carrying genes as a result of hybrisation somewhere back in the past. This image
comes from this website http://www.finchforum.com/viewtopic.php ... &view=next
and the owner states it is a red / blue hybrid.
And is not the first bird, a Coloria???
Gustavo