A few weeks ago I visited a small natural history museum in the North of Holland.
Its interior was left the way it was designed some hundred years ago. Wooden displays with birds and animals from the colonial days. There was no geographical order in the exhibition; a tiger stood next to a kangaroo and a courting bird of paradise was placed next to some European passerines. Obviously this was done on purpose. The proof was the white tags with the Dutch and Latin name written in neat calligraphy, next to each specimen. The exhibition was about decoration and the beauty of each animal, not so much about their origins.
There was one bird without a tag. It was a small parrot with green colours, a black moustache and a black bill. I recognized it as a Psittacula alexandri. At first glance it seemed neither male nor female because it didn't have the red breast.
What we were dealing here with was a juvenile of approximately 11 months old. The curator of the museum had probably not recognized this bird because it didn't have the right colours. A young juvenile Java moustached or Red-breasted parakeet (Psittacula alexandri alexandri) starts off with a pinkish bill which turns black from 10 months on. It gets its red bill and pink breast at adulthood.
Back home I wrote to the museum with my findings. Hopefully there is now a tag with the correct Latin and Dutch name which is "Java rozeborstbaardparkiet - juveniel".
The Java moustached parakeet is easily confused with its more common cousin the Indian moustached parakeet (Psittacula alexandri fasciata). The two species look a lot like each other; there are some differences in colour but the big difference is in the bills. The bill of the female Indian moustached parakeet is completely black while the bill of the female Java moustached parakeet is coral-red. The lower jaw of the male Indian species is black (upper part red); the bill of the male Java bird is completely red.
My painting shows the female, male and a juvenile of eleven months.
It lives in Java, Bali and South Borneo and is endangered.
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