The bird has a wide range, but is locally rare in the wild; they are common in aviculture, where they are known as "jenday conures".

When in 1788 the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, he included the jandaya parakeet with a short description, coined the binomial name Psittacus jandaya and cited earlier publications.

[8] The jandaya parakeet is now placed in the genus Aratinga that was introduced in 1824 by the German naturalist Johann Baptist von Spix.

[14] The jandaya parakeet is a small, long-tailed parakeet with the reddish-orange body, green wings, vent and tail, yellow head, neck, and shoulders, orange cheeks, black bill, whitish periophthalmic ring, and dark eyes.

It has an extremely large range in northeastern Brazil in the states of Piauí, Maranhão, Tocantins, and Ceará, and portions of Goiás and Pará.

In the wild, it has a predilection for various fruits including mango and cashew apples, as well as palm nuts, and an unfortunate attraction to plants cultivated by humans (rice, maize, members of the family Annonaceae, etc.).

Things that are toxic to jandaya parakeets include chocolate, caffeine, and a chemical often found in avocados.

[15] Jandaya parakeets nest in tree hollows, typically choosing a location at least 15 m (50 feet) from the ground.