Do Yellow Headed Amazon Parrots Make Good Pets?

The very popular, but increasingly rare, Yellow Headed Amazon parrots originate from the coastal regions of Mexico. They are also found in places such as Belize, Honduras and Guatemala, where their preferred habitats exist (i.e. tropical and sub-tropical forests and mangroves). Their preferred type of habitat is one of the main reasons why they are becoming very rare in the wild, because of the wide scale deforestation that is taking place.

These parrots grow to about fifteen inches from the top of the head to the tip of tail. They have a stout, hooked beak that they use to crack seed and nut shells, and to grasp, explore and climb things. They also use their feet to climb and to grasp and hold things, such as food.
Although Yellow Headed parrots are rare in the wild, they are widely available as pets, because they are easy to breed in captivity. They are a very popular parrot, because of their attractive colours and markings (i.e. a predominantly green body, with a yellow head, and a red patch on each wing), and because of their talking ability – only the African Grey parrot is deemed to be a better talker. They are relatively easy to train and tame, but they can be destructive, because they constantly want to chew things – buy lots of chew toys to avoid this problem.

Yellow Headed parrots are very intelligent, and very loud and playful. Their natural screeching sound can become annoying, so it is worth taking the time to do some basic training to replace their natural voice with a ‘human’ voice. They are also very active, which means they thrive in an environment that allows them to fly and move around. For this reason, an aviary is ideal, but they can adjust to living in a standard indoor cage, as long as they are given sufficient daily exercise outside of the cage.

Yellow Headed Amazons eat a very varied diet in the wild, which includes nuts, berries, fruits, leaf buds, and crops like maize. Therefore, as an owner, you need to make sure that they have an equally varied diet whilst in your care, because nutrition is very important to their health and wellbeing.

If, after reading the above, you would still love to own a Yellow Headed Amazon Parrot, you need to carefully consider what a long-term commitment it will be, because these parrots often live for 60 to 80 years. If you are willing to undertake such a long-term commitment, you won’t be sorry that you bought a Yellow Head – they are a really fantastic, and amusing parrot!