The endangered grey parrot has distinctive grey feathers and is a fairly small parrot that weighs only 400 grams and has a length of 30cms, and a wingspan of 46-52cm. Their diet could be described as frugivorous as the vast majority of their diet includes fruits, nuts and seeds, but it occasionally eats insects, tree bark and snails too. It is a native of equatorial Africa, living in dense wet forests running from Cote d’Ivoire in the west and through the Congo to Kenya and Uganda in the east. However, these populations are rapidly decreasing as their habitat is suffering from human-caused deforestation. Another major problem driving their populations to tumble is the demand for them on the international black market to be kept as domesticated birds. The morality rate is very high amongst the birds being kept as pets in captivity as they succumb very frequently to diseases such tumours and bacterial infections. Around 21% of the entire wild population is thought to be harvested ever year, which is massive problem.
Courtesy of Dennis Jarvis/flickr