Orange-fronted Parakeet

How to find it

Follow the sound before the sight, since small green parakeets in fast groups are easier to hear than to see. Dawn and dusk are good, when flocks fly overhead between roosting and feeding sites. Around Las Catalinas, look in tall trees, palms and forest edges, or watch the sky at the start and end of the day. Check town gardens and fence lines too, because it has adapted well to human edges. If the birds are close, the orange forehead may show.

How to recognise it

This is a mostly green parakeet about 23 to 25 cm long. Look for these marks:

An orange-peach forehead.

A dull blue mid-crown.

A pale olive-brown throat and breast.

Blue flight feathers.

A bare yellow ring around the eye.

Males and females look alike. Young birds look like adults but show much less orange on the forehead, so a green parakeet with only a hint of colour up front may simply be a youngster. A birding source calls it the common long-tailed parakeet of dry forest, and that long tail is a useful clue in itself. The orange front may show if the birds are close.

What it sounds like

Recording: David Umanzor, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

Outside the breeding season it travels in nomadic flocks that can number several hundred birds. It eats fruit, flowers and seeds, such as Ficus fruit, Gliricidia flowers and Ceiba seeds.

Pairs usually dig their nest chamber into an arboreal termite nest. They sometimes use a natural crack or an old woodpecker hole instead. Breeding in Costa Rica runs from December to March, in the dry season.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it is described as a bird of tropical dry forest. It also uses savannas, mangroves and disturbed areas where it finds food and nest cavities. Across its range it favours open and semi-open country: forest edge, dry woodland, savanna, thorn scrub, pastures with scattered trees, and fruit or palm plantations. It is mainly a lowland and foothill bird, reaching up to about 1,500 m. Here it lives mainly in the dry Pacific north, especially Guanacaste and Puntarenas, and is also found in part of the Central Valley. One range description reaches the Gulf of Nicoya and the San José region.

When to see it

Palo Verde is described as best for birders in the dry season, from December to May, when trees lose their leaves. This is also when the parakeet breeds in Costa Rica.

Similar birds

Around Carara it overlaps with the Crimson-fronted Parakeet. Tell them apart by the orange front and duller green plumage of the Orange-fronted. The Orange-chinned Parakeet is much more widespread in the lowlands and Central Valley. It is a small parakeet with a short pointed tail, so a long-tailed parakeet in dry forest points to Orange-fronted.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans call it Perico Frentinaranja. Other Spanish names include Catano, Periquito and Zapoyol, and elsewhere it is also called perico atolero.

Status and conservation

It is a resident species on the AOCR list (R), and the IUCN has listed it as Vulnerable since 2020.

Photography tips

One birder found an Orange-fronted Parakeet so tame that it nearly fell asleep while being photographed. Tambor Beach mangrove trails are described as a spot with beautiful, fairly common birds. Dawn and dusk flights overhead give the best chance to follow flocks to where they land.