176 



GREY-HEADED PARROT. 



Psittacus Senegalensis* AUCT. 



Above green ; head entirely grey ; throat green ; body orange ; 

 tail even, the tips truncate and macronate. 



Psittacus Senegalus, Lin. And. Le Perroquet a tete grise, 



Le Vaill. Parr. ii. pi. 116 male, 117 female Petite Per- 



ruche du Senegal, Buff. PI. Erd. 288. 



IT is a remarkable circumstance in the geography of 

 the Parrot family, that while flocks of near forty 

 species abound in all the tropical regions of South 

 America, the opposite coast of Western Africa, 

 laying under the same latitudes, and possessing a 

 vegetation almost equally luxuriant, should yet be 

 so thinly inhabited by these birds, that the two 

 we here describe are the only species yet known 

 to inhabit Senegal. A third has been found by 

 Riippell in Northern Africa ; these, with the com- 

 mon Grey Parrot of the Coast of Guinea and the 

 Aurora Parrot of South Africa, are almost, in short, 

 the only examples, of the family yet discovered in 

 the whole range of the African continent. 



The structure of this species, which is one of the 

 more common birds of Senegal, has some pecu- 

 liarities worth noticing. The wings are nearly as 



