Large Parrot Clay Lick – Napo Wildlife Center

For the parrot lover, this is the biggest draw to the Ecuadorian Amazon.  Some people call it the big parrot clay lick, on eBird it’s called Parrot Lick #1.  It’s the larger one you see from the river while seated in a boat.  You do get pretty close but to land would be too close and scare the birds away.  This is a must for anyone staying at Napo Wildlife Center and will be a highlight of your trip!

This isn’t where you get huge life lists.  There are 5 parrot species that visit the clay lick here (though you may get flyovers of other species) – Dusky-billed Parakeet, Blue-headed Parrot, Yellow-crowned Parrot, Mealy Parrot & White-eyed Parakeet.  In the pictorial below, it should be pretty easy to pick them out so I am just going to post the photos in consecutive order to show the waves of parrots that flew in and out over around 40 minutes.  It was a great day as they would land, eat clay, fly off and then perch in trees waiting to come back.  Or the second waves could have been different birds.  Still it was awesome!

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Mealy Parrot (Amazona farinosa)

The Mealy Amazon or Mealy Parrot (Amazona farinosa) is among the largest parrot in the Amazona genus, the amazon parrots.

Although I have seen this bird in several places – Cristalino, Panama, Tambopata I don’t seem to have any decent photos so I have to rely on the Wikipedia shots.

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All I could get was distant flight shots.

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Mealy Parrots have a huge range throughout South America and prefer tropical rainforest environments.  Good places to see them are Cristalino, Tambopata, Napo, Panama’s Soberania (different subspecies) and other rainforest lodges.

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LEARN MORE ABOUT MEALY PARROTS

Wikipedia

World Parrot Trust

Birdlife

Neotropical Birds

Audubon

VIDEOS

Noisy flock in Peru

On a clay lick