I’ve been blogging a lot about rainforests and how to get to them using airline miles and find birds, especially parrots in them.  What exactly is a “rainforest”?

Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions setting minimum normal annual rainfall between 1750-2000 mm (68-78 inches).

Rainforests are home to two-thirds of all the living animal and plant species on Earth. It has been estimated that many hundreds of millions of species of plants, insects and microorganisms are still undiscovered. Tropical rainforests have been called the “jewels of the Earth,” and the “world’s largest pharmacy,” because of the large number of natural medicines discovered there.

The undergrowth in a rainforest is restricted in many areas by the lack of sunlight at ground level. This makes it possible to walk through the forest. It also makes photography very difficult due to low light!  If the leaf canopy is destroyed or thinned, the ground beneath is soon colonized by a dense, tangled growth of vines, shrubs and small trees called a jungle.

• Tropical rainforests are rainforests in the tropics, found near the Equator (between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn) and present in southeast Asia (Myanmar to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, northern and eastern Australia), sub-Saharan Africa from Cameroon to the Congo, (Congo Rainforest), South America (the Amazon Rainforest) Central America (Bosawás, southern Yucatán Peninsula-El Peten-Belize-Calakmul), and on many of the Pacific Islands (such as Hawaii). Tropical rainforests have been called the “Earth’s lungs,” although it is now known that rainforests contribute little net oxygen additions to the atmosphere through photosynthesis.
• Temperate rainforests are rainforest in temperate regions. They can be found in North America (in the Pacific Northwest, the British Columbia Coast  and in the inland rainforest of the Rocky Mountain Trench east of Prince George), in Europe (in coastal areas of Ireland, Scotland and southern Norway, parts of the western Balkans along the Adriatic coast, and coastal areas of the eastern Black Sea, including Georgia and coastal Turkey), and in East Asia (in southern China, Taiwan, much of Japan and Korea, and on Sakhalin Island and the adjacent Russian Far East coast), and also Australia and New Zealand.

Victoria Crowned Pigeon, Nimbokrang

Yeah, you better be watching me!

So what kinds of parrots live in rainforests?  Most of the African species prefer the rainforests of Central Africa.  These include Senegal parrots and Timneh and Congo African Greys.

In the Pacific region we have Indonesian and New Guinea species like Solomon Island eclectus and Moluccan cockatoos and some Australian species like lorikeets, king parrots, rosellas and most black cockatoos.

South America’s Amazon rainforest has numerous parrot species such as many macaw species, amazon parrots, most of the conures and pionus.  They have a huge range from Colombia and Venezuela in the north to the Peruvian Amazon and Tambopata areas.  Rainforest parrots eat fruit, nuts, berries, vegetables and insects.  Since some of their diet is toxic, they visit the clay licks to eat the clay which neutralizes the toxic items.

Rainforest parrots are in danger of becoming extinct because of deforestation and human encroachment.  The trees they nest in are disappearing and they often are captured by poachers.

• Originally published on the Feathered and Free website which is in the process of being merged to this blog.