Like most other members of the genus, the Platycercus icterotis offers no difference in the colouring of the sexes of the same age. They do not acquire the adult plumage until the second year; during the first year they are green, which colour gradually gives place to the fine colouring of maturity.
Its flight is of short duration, and consists of a series of rather rapid undulating sweeps.
Its note is a feeble, piping kind of whistle, which is occasionally so much varied and lengthened as almost to assume the character of a song.
The eggs, which are six or seven in number and of a white colour, are eleven lines long and nine and a half lines broad; they are deposited in the holes of large trees without any nest.
Crown of the head and back of the neck, chest and all the under surface scarlet; cheeks and thighs yellow; feathers of the back black, bordered with green, yellow, and in some instances scarlet; rump and upper tail-coverts yellowish green; shoulders and outer edges of the primaries blue, the inner webs and tips of the latter blackish brown; two middle tail-feathers green; the remaining feathers light blue tipped with white, with the basal portion of a darker blue tinged with green; bill light horn-colour; feet and legs dull ashy brown; irides blackish brown.
The young birds of both sexes are nearly of a uniform green, becoming parti-coloured as they advance in age; the scarlet of the crown and abdomen, and the yellow of the cheeks gradually taking the place of the green colouring of youth.
It is questionable whether the female, like the female of P. eximius, ever attains the fine plumage of the male.
The Plate represents the two sexes of the natural size.
PLATYCERCUS IGNITUS: Leadb.
J. Gould and H.C. Richter del et lith. Hullmandel & Walton Imp.