or four times a second, usually emitted during flight with shallow, rapid wing beats. When disturbed or frightened, it may give a short, sharp "ark" call. It emits more melodious chirrups and whistles while perched. A deep, quiet "werr-werr" and a "prr-rr-rr" purr has also been heard on two occasions from a female landing in a tree. A courtship call can be heard between September and December. They also "growl" when angry, in a similar way to other parrots. The voice of the echo parakeet is very different from that of the rose-ringed parakeet, which has higher, faster, and more "excited" sounding vocalisations, and their calls cannot be confused. Habitat and distribution The echo parakeet is now restricted to forested areas of Mauritius with native vegetation, which covers less than 2% of Mauritius as of 2017, namely the Black River Gorges National Park in the southwest. They occupy only about , and use about half of this area regularly. Within the park, there are four northern populations (in the Black River Gorges) and two southern (in Bel Ombre forest). In the upland forest, they prefer large, mature trees such as Canarium paniculatum, Syzygium contractum, Mimusops maxima, Labourdonnaisia sp. Other important feeding areas include lowland, intermediate and scrub forests. There are annual fluctuations in how often echo parakeets are seen in their habitats, which reflect population density. While the distribution of the species is tied to native forests, its numbers and distribution decreasing as these are destroyed, several early accounts indicate its distribution was always thin. The echo parakeet also formerly occurred in heavily degraded areas, which were therefore only lightly wooded. Though now sedentary, the parakeet may have moved between areas seasonally in search for food; if cyclones had stripped trees of fruits, for example. A 2012 genetic study by the British zoologist Claire Raisin and colleagues showed that before the programme of captive breeding, echo parakeets from the more isolated Bel Ombre regions in the southern part of Black River Gorges National Park were genetically different from the rest of the population, but that the genetic diversity was dispersed across the bird's range after the period of intense managing, when birds were moved between areas. The genetic differentiation between the populations may originally have been due to forest clearing, which isolated them from each other. Behaviour and ecology The echo parakeet is arboreal (tree dwelling) and keeps to the