The Double Yellow Head is one of the great talking parrots and one of the great singing ones - a bird that will work through an entire song, in tune, unprompted. It is also a bird that changes at sexual maturity in a way that takes owners completely by surprise, and that change is the single most important thing to understand before buying one.
The hormonal season
Around four to six years old, a Double Yellow Head starts coming into breeding condition each year, and for some weeks or months it is a different bird: territorial around its cage, inclined to lunge, fixated on one person and aggressive towards everybody else. Owners who were not expecting it describe it as the bird turning on them. It is not personal and it is not permanent - it is seasonal, it passes, and it returns.
What helps is well established among experienced Amazon keepers: twelve hours of dark sleep, no petting down the back or under the wings, handling away from the cage rather than reaching into it, and no cosy enclosed spaces that read as a nest. What does not help is treating it as disobedience.
Talking and singing
Among the very best. Clear, loud, and with a genuine ability to carry a tune. Many start young and most keep adding for years. If a talking bird is what you want and you can live with everything else here, few species deliver more.
The volume
Amazons have a dawn and dusk call that is extremely loud, and the Double Yellow Head is at the loud end of the family. This is not a flat bird.
Weight
Amazons get fat easily and fatty liver disease is common in them. A pelleted base with plenty of fresh vegetables, and nuts and seed as occasional treats rather than daily food. A Double Yellow Head should have a keel you can feel.
Paperwork
This species is protected and captive-bred birds are sold with documentation. The rules differ by jurisdiction and they change, so ask the breeder what paperwork comes with the bird, get it before money changes hands, and keep it. Do not rely on what a page like this one says about the law.
Fifty to sixty years
The usual arithmetic. The bird will likely outlive the buyer, and the arrangement for what happens then should be made in writing now.
What they are like the rest of the year
Outside the season, a well handled Double Yellow Head is bold, funny, confident and enormously entertaining - an Amazon in a good mood is the most charismatic parrot in any room. Keepers who understand the cycle do not describe these birds as difficult. They describe them as the best thing in the house for ten months of the year and a bird to be sensible around for the other two.
Buying one
Ask the breeder directly how they manage hormonal season, because the answer separates people who have kept Amazons for years from people who have not. Ask when the bird weaned, ask about disease testing, and ask for the documentation. The breeders listed on this page raise Double Yellow Head Amazons and can be contacted directly through the site.