For hookbills and parrots select from the "Sibley & Monroe" list. Choose: "Psittacidae: Parrots".

The information cantained in the Sibley & Monroe list is an unaltered reproduction of the Sibley & Monroe list as of 1990, published by Yale University Press including changes from the 1993 Supplement.
Click here for the large ASCII text based version.

Aves (birds) are vertebrates with feathers. Birds are a monophyletic lineage. It is believed they evolved at once from a common dinosaur ancestor and that all birds are related through this common origin. They have evolved remarkable specializations for flight, have active metabolism and possess a unique one-way breathing system.

There are a few kinds of birds that don't fly, but their ancestors did and these birds have secondarily lost the ability to fly. There are a few kinds of birds that are very large in size, but most are small in size. Modern birds are warm-blooded and have traits related to hot metabolism and to flight:

• Small size in general.
• Feathers - all birds have feathers.
• A horny bill and no teeth.
• A highly developed central nervous system and vision.
• A strong skeleton consisting of light, hollow bones in which many are fused or lost.
• Pneumatic bones in which many are directly connected to the air sacs and respiratory system.
• A large muscular stomach.
• Forelimbs specialized for flight and powerful flight muscles.
• Bipedalism and digitigrade feet - they walk only on their toes.
• A tail specialized for flight, lack of a bony or fleshy tail.
• Large yolked, hard-shelled eggs. The parent bird provides extensive care of the young until it is grown, or gets some other bird to look after the young.

Altogether there are about 30 orders of birds, about 180 families and about two thousand genera with an estimated nine to ten thousand species.

The Animal Diversity Web
The Complete Lexicon of Parrots
The Sibley & Monroe World List of Bird Names