9-6-2023 MANDAI BIRD PARADISE, SINGAPORE - ECLECTUS PARROT (MALE) (Eclectus roratus)

Moluccan eclectus hens have a strong maternal instinct, which is displayed in captivity, where they constantly seek possible nesting places, climbing into cupboards, drawers, and spaces beneath furniture, and becoming very possessive and defensive of these locations. An unpaired hen may go on to lay infertile eggs with little encouragement in the spring. It is often possible to place abandoned eggs from other parrot species beneath a broody eclectus hen, which she will readily accept and then incubate to the point of hatching, even rearing the hatched chick up to the point it is removed from the nest.

Adult females with poor nest hollows often commit infanticide on the male, if they produce both a male and a female chick. Inadequate nest hollows have a habit of flooding in heavy rain, drowning the chicks or eggs inside. This reported infanticide in wild pairs may be the result of other causes, since this behavior where the hen selectively kills male chicks is not observed in captive birds.

28-11-2016 JURONG, SINGAPORE - ECLECTUS PARROT (MALE) (Eclectus roratus)

28-11-2016 JURONG, SINGAPORE - ECLECTUS PARROT (MALE) (Eclectus roratus)

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/19225-Eclectus-roratus

19-3-2015 JURONG, SINGAPORE - ECLECTUS PARROT (MALE) (Eclectus roratus)

The Moluccan eclectus (Eclectus roratus) is a parrot native to the Maluku Islands (Moluccas). It is unusual in the parrot family for its extreme sexual dimorphism of the colours of the plumage; the male having a mostly bright emerald green plumage and the female a mostly bright red and purple/blue plumage. Joseph Forshaw, in his book Parrots of the World, noted that the first European ornithologists to see eclectus parrots thought they were of two distinct species. Large populations of this parrot remain, and they are sometimes considered pests for eating fruit off trees. Some populations restricted to relatively small islands are comparably rare. Their bright feathers are also used by native tribespeople in New Guinea as decorations.