200 miles off the west coast of Mexico, in the Pacific Ocean, you'll find Socorro Island, Isla Socorro.

This small isolated landmass is the peak of an old volcano, reaching almost 4,000 feet above the surrounding sea.

The island's scrubby upland forests are home to the Socorro Parakeet.

This lovely bird has a bright green body, a yellow beak, reddish skin around its eyes, and a long pointed tail. It eats fruit from several tree species in the forest. The saccoral parakeet is found only on its eponymous island.

In other words, it's an endemic species here. Notice I said species. I can call this bird a

species with some confidence. That's because

ornithologists have recently bestowed this status, the status of species, on the saccoral parakeet.

It's been assigned the scientific name of Sitakara Brevapes. By the way, the root word there,

Sita, P-S-I-T-T-A, comes from the Latin word for parrot.

So there's a silent P, just FYI.

Until very recently, this bird was considered a subspecies of the similar-looking green parakeet, Sitakara holoclores.

The green parakeet lives on mainland Mexico, far, far away.

The classification of the saccharol parakeet has bounced around ever since it was first discovered

in the late 1800s.

First, it was treated as a subspecies of the green parakeet.

Then it was elevated to species status in the early 1900s. Then it was dem as a subspecies of the green parakeet. Then it was elevated to species

status in the early 1900s. Then it was demoted back down to being a subspecies. This flip-flopping

happened over many decades. But now, thankfully, we can all relax because the identity crisis

of the Socorro parakeet is settled, right? Everyone can agree that this bird is a

bona fide species and it will be treated as such forever and ever. Not so fast there, Smokey. It turns out

that not all authorities in the world of ornithology agree that the saccoral parakeet is actually a species.

There are several official checklists for the world's bird species, and some still treat our parakeet as only a subspecies.

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