Description
The coloring on a Nanday is quite beautiful. Their bodies
are a vivid green, the lower breast, abdomen, under wing-coverts,
under tail-coverts and lower back are a yellowish bluish green.
The head is black, the throat and upper breast are tinged with deep
blue.
The lower thighs are a bright red. They have blue flight-feathers
and the under side of the tail dark, almost black, while the upper
side of tail is more of a olive-green with blue tips.
The ring around their eyes is a mixture of white and grey and they
have brown irises.
Their beak is black and their feet have a brownish-flesh color.
Normally Nandays mature by three years of age and normal life expectancy
is 35-45 years.
They measure about 12 inches in length with a wingspan of about 23-24
inches.
Their normal body weight is between 115 to 140 grams
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Natural
Range
Southern Mato Grosso, Brazil; southeast Bolivia; Paraguay;
northern Argentina in provinces of Formosa, Chaco and Santa Fe.
Nandays like to stay in dry to humid savannah with trees and palms and
are often found near settlements. They are still very common in most
areas.
Nandays are usually found in groups of six to 40 birds, but have been
observed in flocks of up to 300 birds and are often found roosting in
the same trees as Monk Parakeets.
Their natural diets are seeds, berries, fruits, little nuts, insects
and their larvae. They do occasionally forage in grain/maize fields
and can be destructive to agriculture.
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| Status
Due to very heavy importation in the
1980's and 1990's, Nandays were very low priced, therefore very few
breeders started to raise them because it was much cheaper to just get
them imported.
Nandays are still a very reasonable priced bird, but are fairly well
established in aviculture nowadays. |
Personality
Nandays have a reputation of being very loud birds.
This stems from the time of importation, when wild birds were brought
into the country. A flock of Nandays will be very loud! It is true
that they seem to have shriller tone than most other conures, and
it can get a little nerve piercing when they let out a jungle call.
However they are not constant screamers and make very good pets.
They are intelligent, very affectionate and are good talkers with
most of them mastering quite a few words and phrases.
They also easily acclimate themselves to changes. They are very playful
and love showers from a spray bottle or take baths in a water dish.
Nandays do love their toys and can entertain themselves for a long
time. They need lots of wood toys as they tend to be chewers. They
seem to get along with other pet birds very easily and love the company.
Overall a wonderful pet if you don’t mind an occasional screech
that is a little on the loud side!
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Breeding
Their breeding habits are like most other conures thof
the same size. Nandays average two clutches a year, but on occasions
do have a third clutch. The clutch size seem to average at three eggs,
being laid every other day.
Incubation is around 25 days. The male helps feed young ones once
they have hatched. The young hatchlings wean between eight and 10
weeks. They are easy to handfeed and are being removed from the nest
for handfeeding by breeders between two and three weeks of age.
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