[2] In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description and an illustration of the grey-headed lovebird in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Madagascar.

[3] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

[4] The lovebird was subsequently described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1779 and the English ornithologist John Latham in 1781, but neither author included a binomial name.

[5][6][7] When in 1788 the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, he included the grey-headed lovebird.

They can develop good speed quite quickly and effortlessly, and turn smoothly, though they are not as nimble in the air as the peach-faced lovebirds.