The yellow-crowned amazon or yellow-crowned parrot (Amazona ochrocephala) is a species of parrot native to tropical South America, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. The taxonomy is highly complex and the yellow-headed (A. oratrix) and yellow-naped amazon (A. auropalliata) are sometimes considered subspecies of the yellow-crowned amazon. Except in the taxonomic section, the following deals only with the nominate group (including subspecies xantholaema, nattereri and panamensis).They are found in the Amazon basin. Taxonomy The yellow-crowned amazon was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other parrots in the genus Psittacus and coined the binomial name Psittacus ochrocephalus. Gmelin specified the type locality as "America", but this was restricted to Venezuela in 1902. The yellow-crowned amazon is now one of around thirty species of parrot placed in the genus Amazona that was introduced by the French naturalist René Lesson in 1830. The genus name is a Latinized version of the name Amazone given to these parrot in the 18th century by the Comte de Buffon, who believed they were native to Amazonian jungles. The specific ochrocephala combines the Ancient Greek ōkhros meaning "pale yellow" with -kephalos meaning "-headed". Four subspecies are recognised: A. o. panamensis (Cabanis, 1874) – west Panama and northwest Colombia A. o. ochrocephala (Gmelin, JF, 1788) – east Colombia and Venezuela through the Guianas and north Brazil A. o. xantholaema Berlepsch, 1913 – island of Marajó (off north Brazil in the Amazon delta) A. o. nattereri (Finsch, 1865) – south Colombia to east Peru, north Bolivia and west Brazil The Amazona ochrocephala complex, which has been described as "a taxonomic headache", is considered a single species by some authorities and split into three species, A. ochrocephala (yellow-crowned amazon), A. auropalliata (yellow-naped amazon) and A. oratrix (yellow-headed amazon), by others. The split is mainly based on the amount of yellow in the plumage, the color of the legs and bill, the close proximity of the oratrix group and auropalliata group in Oaxaca, Mexico, without apparent interbreeding and the presence of members of both the nominate group and the auropalliata group in northern Honduras. This evaluation has, however, been confused by misunderstandings regarding the plumage variations in the populations in northern Honduras, where birds vary greatly in amount of yellow on the head, crown and nape, but