30 BIRDS OF LA PLATA 
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GREEN PARRAKEET 
Bolborhynchus monachus 
Green; front grey; wings blackish with slight bluish edgings ; 
beneath grey; bill whitish; length 11 inches, Female similar. 
THE Common Green Parrakeet, called Cotorra or 
Catita in the vernacular, is a well-known resident 
species in the Argentine Republic. It is a lively, 
restless bird, shrill-voiced, and exceedingly voci- 
ferous, living and breeding in large communities, 
and though it cannot learn to speak so distinctly 
as some of the larger Parrots, it is impossible to 
observe its habits without being convinced that it 
shares in the intelligence of the highly-favoured order 
to which it belongs. 
In Buenos Ayres it was formerly very much more 
numerous than it is now; but it is exceedingly 
tenacious of its breeding-places, and there are some 
few favoured localities where it still exists in large 
colonies, in spite of the cruel persecution all birds 
easily killed are subjected to in a country where 
laws relating to such matters are little regarded, 
and where the agricultural population is chiefly 
Italian. At Mr. Gibson’s residence near Cape San 
Antonio, on the Atlantic coast, there is still a large 
colony of these birds inhabiting the Tala woods 
(Celtis tala), and I take the following facts from one 
of his papers, contributed many years ago to the Ibis, 
on the ornithology of the district. 
He describes the woods as being full of their nests, 
