Maroon bellied vs green cheek

[Shikshai]

I've had this bird for a long time (17 years) and I've never thought much of it but it seems like green cheek conures are very popular compared to maroon bellied. Are there any reasons for this like temperament or health ? Cause if I try to search up anything on maroon bellied there's very little information so I'm wondering if I can just search for green cheek instead ?

 

[SilverSage]

As far as I know the main reason green cheeks are more popular is just because of the mutations and availability, but I could be wrong.


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[RavensGryf]

Adorable pic! You got your Maroon Bellied back when they were really popular (before Green Cheeked got popular). Ah, I remember that lol. I don't know why they were originally phased out in favor of the GCC. My Red Bellied Parrot is almost 23, and I remember back then the parrot species that were around, and I'd never heard of a Green Cheek then. It was always the Maroon Bellied we'd see.

It's interesting what has changed popularity wise in the past two decades or so. Things changed when they stopped importing wild caught. I used to see a lot of wild caught Moustache parakeets, and then the Gray Cheek Brotogeris keets were literally everywhere (like GCCs are today) when they were still being imported and now they're super rare because they're hard to breed in captivity (I've heard anyway).

Then as SailBoat mentioned in another thread, nowdays there's more emphasis on species that breeders can make a little more money on, or at least the lower priced ones that are popular and in demand, and phasing out the less popular species that breeders barely break even on. I'm not sure about other areas, but in Southern CA, we're fortunate that we can still see such a wide variety. I see all different types of 'rare' species here on a fairly regular basis.