Spix’s Macaw: The Race to Save the World’s Rarest Bird. Tony Juniper
big blue macaws (the Hyancinth, Lears and Glaucous) can eat other food but their ecological niche is very much dependent on palms. Since they eat so many of the nuts, they need lots of palm trees to keep them going, so they live around types of palms that grow in communal clumps. They need palms that produce the right-sized nuts, and nuts that permit the extraction of the nutritious flesh. These exacting requirements are paramount in determining the distribution of these spectacular birds.
The largest of the 3 big blue macaws, Hyacinth Macaw, is the largest parrot in the world. The intelligence, huge size, striking coloration, dramatic appearance and pure charisma of these parrots make them exceptionally collectable. Their top-heavy appearance – a third of their muscle weight is concentrated in their large head to operate the massive beak – gives them a unique identity.
They have a comical expression, particularly when they’re flying – their features appear overemphasised. In some respects they resemble clowns and to the first-time observer it is as if nature has made some amusing mistake. They are very inquisitive, engaging and usually have quite a laid-back disposition. It is no wonder that ever since they were first seen they have been in demand. Rosemary Low sums up the Hyacinth’s appeal. ‘It is just such a charismatic creature, even if you don’t have the faintest interest in parrots you look at one and it just knocks you out. They are incredible birds, not just their colour but their behaviour, their character – it is extraordinary.’
Although there is undoubtedly more to it, colour plays a big part in the attraction. Blue land animals are rare. There aren’t any blue mammals and very few blue birds. Since earliest times people have placed a great value on blue and gone to great lengths to manufacture the colour. Plants from the genus Isatis (woad) yielded a blue dye called indigo that once held great ceremonial importance. Later on, this plant attained considerable commercial value. Until the advent of synthetic dyes, woad was cultivated in great plantations that were for a time a mainstay in some colonial economies. Indigo was, for example, the main export of El Salvador until coffee took over in the 1870s.
Among the parrots there are only a handful of species that are naturally mainly blue and very few that have completely blue or bluish plumage; the four blue macaws are the most spectacular. The least known of the trio of larger blue macaws is the Glaucous Macaw (Anodorhynchus glaucus).
THE GLAUCOUS MACAW
Europeans visiting South America made their first references to this bird during the late eighteenth century. Travellers to the southern part of the continent made their long journeys to the interior, as elsewhere in the vast New World, principally by river. It was in the middle reaches of the great rivers Paraguay, Paraná and Uruguay in southern South America that early chroniclers saw a large long-tailed blue parrot. Its general plumage was pale powdery blue but brighter, almost turquoise, above. It had a heavy greyish tinge on the underparts and head and in certain lights could appear nearly green. Sánchez Labrador, a Spanish priest dispatched by the Jesuits to work as a missionary with the Guaraní Indians in the region of what is today northern Argentina and southern Paraguay, was one of the first to write about a bird that was probably of this species.
Labrador worked there from 1734 until his return to Europe in 1767 following the expulsion of the Jesuits from the continent by the Spanish and Portuguese colonial authorities. He was a passionate naturalist who spent long hours documenting the wildlife in the many places he visited. Much of his writing remains unpublished and apparently languishes unedited in the archives of the Vatican. One manuscript on the fish and birds of Paraguay written in 1767 has, however, been printed. In it are some of the very few details from that era about the Glaucous Macaw.
The priest used the local Guaraní Indian name for the bird, Guaa obi. Guaa is the onomatopoeic name for macaw and obi (or hovy) describes a colour between blue and green. He wrote about one of these macaws that he met in the village of La Concepción de Nuestra Señora:
When a missionary arrived from another mission, the macaw would go to his lodging. If it found that the door was shut, it would climb up … with the help of its bill and feet until it reached the latch. It then made a sound as if knocking and often opened the door before it could be opened from the inside. It would climb on the chair in which the missionary was sitting and utter ‘guaa’ three or four times, making alluring movements with its head until it was spoken to as if thanking him for the visit and attention. Then it would climb down and go into the courtyard very contented.
If it did anything untoward to other tame birds, the missionary would call it. It would approach submissively and listen attentively to his accusation, the punishment for which was supposed to be a beating. When it heard this it lay on its back and positioned its feet as if making the sign of the cross and the missionary pretended to beat it with a belt. It lay there quietly … then it turned over, stood up and climb up the robe to the hand of the missionary, who had pronounced the punishment, to be stroked and spoken to kindly before leaving very satisfied … There are very many of these birds in the woods of the eastern bank of the Uruguay River, but they occur rarely in the forests along the Paraguay River.
Other travellers to the region also came across the Glaucous Macaw but similarly recorded very few details about its natural history. Félix de Azara lived in South America from 1781 to 1801. His 1805 account of his travels mentions a blue-green macaw that he saw on the Paraná and Uruguay rivers in Argentina and northwards to just inside the south of modern Paraguay. He said that the Guaa-hovy was a common bird along the banks of these rivers. Apart from a few details on its distribution, no more was noted.
The French explorer, Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny, travelled in southern South America between 1827 and 1835. He found the species on the Uruguay River, probably on both the Uruguayan and Brazilian sections, also in Argentina on the Paraná River. As well as making passing references to this species in his travel journals he ate one, but found it very tough and the taste disagreeable. He noted that it was not a very common bird. More significant than details about the culinary potential of the Glaucous Macaw, however, was his observation of the vast swaths of yatay palms that grew on the rich soils that flanked the broad watercourses. These palms made a big impression on d’Orbigny. In his journal for 23 April 1827, he wrote:
There I saw for the first time, the palm tree known by the local people under the name ‘yatay’, which had given the locality the name of Yatayty … This palm does not grow to a great height, the trunk of it is thick and covered with old marks where the leaves had been attached, in which grew several figs which finish by smothering the tree. The leaves of this palm are elegantly curved and the green-blue of their fronds directed towards the sky, contrast pleasantly with the surrounding vegetation.
But d’Orbigny correctly saw the implications of colonial development for the fate of these beautiful palm forests:
In the past the yatay palm covered all the sands in these places, but the need to develop the land for cultivation, or the appeal of the pleasant foodstuff that the heart of the tree offers, had necessitated such exploitation that, since the time of the wars, it can no longer be found on foot in other than very small numbers, sad and last of what is left of the handsome forest, of which they formed part, and which before long must disappear entirely.
Later that year and in early 1828, d’Orbigny recorded more details about the fate of the splendid forests. On 4 January he noted:
I was leaving Tacuaral, so as to go to Yatayty, without doubt the most productive land in the entire province of Corrientes … All the inhabitants of other parts of the province come to settle in the middle of these woods, cutting down the palm trees and planting the lands … It is also to be feared that they will destroy the palm trees, which will no longer grow back in the inhabited regions, and will finally disappear completely.19
D’Orbigny also recorded some of the very few details collected at the time about the habits of the Glaucous Macaw. Of the River Paraná he wrote, ‘All along the cliff, one saw scattered pairs of macaws of a dull blue-green, from which the woods echoed repeatedly the incessant shrill cries. Each pair appeared either at the edge of huge holes