Splendid Grass Parakeets
Splendid grass parakeets, also called Scarlet chested parakeets (Neophema splendida), are native to the inland southern parts of Australia. The cock bird with its scarlet chest, yellow underbelly and intense blue face is undoubtedly the most colourful of all the grass parakeets. Hens are much duller and don't have the red chest and less blue on the face. Young birds, both cocks and hens, look like the adult hen but have less contrast in the colours and a light coloured beak. They are relatively small parakeets, slightly bigger than a budgie at 18 to 21cm.

Normal Cock	Normal Hen.	Juvenile normal cock

The Splendid is one of the six neophema, the others being the Turquisine, Elegant, Blue wing, Rock and Orange bellied. There is also the Bourkes parakeet although this has recently been reclassed as neopsephotus.

Splendids make excellent aviary birds, they are very friendly with each other and other bird species. Like most grass parakeets they are also very quiet birds, which for me is an essential requirement as I have a number of neighbours within close proximity of my aviaries. The Splendid has now become firmly established in aviculture, which has resulted in a number of readily available colour mutations of which I consider the white breasted blue & lutino varities to be the best.
In my opinion, most of the combined colour mutations do not match the brilliant colours of the normals and breeders should always endevour to breed back some good quality normals, not only to retain the natural splendid, but also to ensure that any later mutations are good quality, strong, fertile birds.