Translations:Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Parrots and Cockatoos/40/en

Golden-shouldered Parrot lives in open forest. An important habitat requirement is the provision of terrestrial termite mounds, which the bird uses for nesting. This has led to the parrot also being known as the Antbed Parrot. They will preferentially seek out taller mounds (up to 2 m high), and will dig a burrow into them when the mound has been softened by the rains. A long tunnel is dug down into the mound, and capped off by a nesting chamber. The mound regulates the temperature in the chamber, keeping it high enough that the eggs can be left unattended while the parents feed. A borrow and nesting chamber are dug from a termite mound, normally by the female, between March and June. Mounds are usually only sufficiently large enough for nesting when they are 30 to 50+ years old, and are rarely occupied more than once, possibly due to the persistence of nest parasites, such as lice, or because mounds repaired by termites are difficult to excavate. Thus there are problems in some areas where most mounds of a suitable size have already been used The clutch size is between 3-6 eggs which are white and almost spherical and incubated for 20 days.