My name is Carlos and I’m a Brazilian biologist living in Oregon but working on parrots in my home country. As it is said in my bio, in the past years I’ve been involved in some projects with a number of parrot species. I was bonded to parrots since my first “real” research project while an undergrad back in Brasilia, when I worked on Canary-winged parakeets. Later, I did my Master’s studying the Blue-and-yellow macaws in the famous Emas National Park and now I’m working on the endemic Pfrimer’s parakeet for my Ph.D. at Oregon State University. Thus, needless to say that parrots are my favorite group of birds, intriguing creatures whenever you watch them in captivity or in the wild!

I am also very passionate to work in the field and observe parrots in their natural habitat. For those of you that had experienced a flock of parrots flying in the wild know exactly what I’m talking about! The sad part is that, unfortunately as for many other species, parrots are under severe threats in many places and research to subside conservation actions has becoming urgently necessary.

When Mark (Stafford) invited me to write for the Parrots International Magazine, I though it could be a very good opportunity to talk not only about my past and ongoing research but also to discuss some problems and ideas happening in the parrot world. In addition, I am thinking to write a little about the day-by-day routine that we live while doing research in the field and give the readers a taste of it. I bet every researcher has a handful of curious, funny, excited and even sad stories to tell about their own work, so I’ll be happy to share some bit of this part with all of you during the next postings.