SPIX’S MACAW
ARA (
(A document prepared by well-known British
veterinarian George Smith and received by Traffic International on
Ara
Although Ara
appears to be a Carib Indian onomatopoeic Lacepede (1799) might have been wholly innocent of this. He
probably used it because it gave him the opportunity to scholastically pun in
both classical languages.
For the bill is in the shape of a plough-share
and the Latin verb ara means
to plough (as in, for example, arator a ploughman).
Likewise the horrible, grating, harsh macaw voice is brought to attention
because, in Ionian Greek, ara
means a curse or imprecation.
Finally the malignant, biting, retributional potential of the beak is emphasized by Ara being (in Greek) the goddess of
destruction and revenge.
Subgenus Cyanopsittacus
Cyanopsittacus Salvadori (1891) Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum Volume 20,
p.150.(Derivation: Kyanos:
the Greek for blue and the Latin Psittacus is a
parrot).
Bonaparte, in the Revue et
Magazine de Zoologie 1834, p. 149, first introduced Cyanopsitta as a sub-generic name within his Macrocercus (the macaws). Like Peters (1937), who thought
that the genus Cyanopsittacus has nothing (it
is but the blue colouration) to make it worth
retention I too have abandoned this generic. Here it is included in Ara and, like Peters, is placed near to Illiger's
Macaw (Ara maracana).(As
will be seen it does have some considerable resemblance in its skull).
The specific spixii
commemorates the German zoologist Johannes Baptiste
von Spix who first brought the parrot to scientific
notice.
DESCRIPTION
A medium-sized, 250 grammes, very long-tailed, grey, sea-blue, and blue-hued
parrot with a smallish bill.I
The colours are
particularly difficult to describe; for they so very much depend on the angle
and strength of illumination. In her watercolour Jenevora tries to capture this chameleon-like variation in
tone by having observed, and sketching, at different times of day, in blazing
Brazilian sun and shadow, three live birds and a museum skin.
The general colour
is a glaucous-blue. Head, neck and underparts are greyish; the
forehead and ear-coverts even more so. The bluer feathers, on the back, rump,
upper and under tail-coverts and particularly the upper wing-coverts are a
deeper, darker, blue. The breast, wings and tail have
a hint of green. All hidden parts of the feathers, including the underside of
the tail, are black. The iris is a pale, straw-yellow; whilst the uncovered
skin, surroundiag the eyes and the legs and bill, are
blackish. Length about 42 cms.
Sexes alike.
Male:
Bill: 32.5, 34
mm.
Wing: 264, 272
mm
Tail: 295, 352 mm
Immatures: As adults save that, for the first few months,
the iris is dark and the culmen, of the otherwise
black bill, has a streak down the front of pale horn-colour.
DISTRIBUTION
So extremely few sightings have been
recorded, and so few specimens taken, that even its present range is as
conjectural as it was in the pre-Colombian period. As could be inferred from
the introductory chapters this blue macaw can only have evolved in an arid
habitat. It appears to be confined to the sertao of
The map shows how such a small area of
HABITAT
As with the assumed distribution of the
Lear's Macaw: that of Spix's is the hot, dry, north-east interior grazing lands
of
Most rain, if it does happen to fall (for
there are occasional years when it fails to arrive) does so between the months
of December and April. The average, annual, wetness is 500mm (twenty inches;
which, under a hot tropical sun, is miserly. After a deluge grasses spring up,
leaves sprout fron the trees and bushes and flowers
bloom. Within a few weeks, seldom months, all is again sere; for what little
water does not immediately run off, into the temporary water-courses, is soon
evaporated away. The leaves fall, the seeds and fruit ripen and, except on the
'islands' of the serras, and
the natural and artificially irrigated plots, the earth once again is quite
parched.
It should not surprise that the endemic
birds, adapted to such a hostile environment, have catastrophically diminished
over the past four centuries. For ever since settlement began they have endured
an unremitting, one-sided, vicious competition with the introduced livestock,
and their graziers. Donkeys, goats, sheep, cattle,
fire, axe, and the practice of cooking over wood-charcoal have simplified
almost all of the original habitat to a poorer, near-desertified, pasture. Man and beast have not only destroyed
but ever prevent the natural regeneration of bushes, trees and herbs. This
incessant, vegetational impoverishment has
progressively diminished the foods available for the Spix's Macaw. Also it has
taken away the larger portion of their tree shelter, together with a very great
quantity of nesting sites. During the past few decades the Brazilian government
has been putting considerable amounts of money into this impoverished area by
building dams. Wherever subsequent irrigation then follows,
exactly as with
have become intolerable for the endemics. The remnants
of the native fauna and flora find it fatal, ot they quit and alien forms become established.
The belief that this caatinga-adapted
bird needs palm-groves of buritizais (thick stands of
buriti palms Mauritia flexuosa)may be pure assumption.
For Roth (1989) has shown that the caatinga of the Curaca region, had neither. Here,
in its only positively known breeding area, the vegetation is predominately
composed of xerophytes. Amongst which aro
spurges (Euphorbiaceae; such as 'faveleira' Cnidoscolus phyllacanthus and 'pinhao'
Jatropha pohliana.
The bush 'paudecolher' Maytenus rigida,
and two gnarled, small, trees ' catinguerira' Caesalpinia sp. and ' joazeiro' Ziziphus squamosus. There
are cacti such as 'facheiro' Cereus squamosus, 'xique-xique' Pilocereus gounellei and species
of Opuntia. One striking geological feature, of this
particular area cf caatinga,
(which was once home to so many Spix’s Macaws) is the number of gouged out
transient and partially dried-out water courses. Where these ravined streams have some greater permanence they can be
margined with taller trees. Particularly represented amongst which is the ‘craibeira’ Tabebuia caraiba. Most of the information comes from Roth 1989).
BIOLOGY
Roth noted that, within the area of Curaca, mature craibeira trees
had a supreme, perhaps an irreplaceable, importance for the bird. They are big,
and being taller, their top-most branches were preferentially used as day-time
resting, and observation, posts. Those Brazilians involved in the horrid
business of extirpation, for the aviary bird trade, when interrogated by Roth
(just as those we questioned) insisted that the macaw exclusively nested in
holes of ancient specimens of this tree.
The long wings and tail and the
observations of all who have seen it wild, inform us that the Spix’s Macaw can
fly fast. Indeed the skeletons (
It is also an extremely wary bird: likely
to be off and well away before it can be correctly identified. Logically it can
stay only in those areas where there is something to eat. This has to be
sufficiently plentiful for it to breed successfully. Like other parrots that
inhabit arid areas elsewhere, they must be nomadic and are likely to condense
into flocks if they chance upon an abundance of food amid the general scarcity.
The croaking contact call made by my individual was far less strident and certainly far less carrying than that made by similar-sized American parrots. It proved to be totally subservient to the Illiger’s Macaw with which it shared aviary accommodation.
STATUS IN THE
WILD AND CAUSES FOR ITS DECLINE
It had been agreed by conservationists
(CITES meeting 9th to 21st October 1989 in Lausanne)that there were no more wild Spix’s Macaws. (Yet, in June
1990 an intensive search by Tony Juniper, of the IUCN, found one that was
paired to an Illiger’s Macaw A. maracana.
Before strongly disputing this capitulation of weak-kneed officials, who wish
us to believe that they have fully surveyed and accounted for all, let us
consider the evidence. We find out that more RECORDED individuals have surfaced
in the past two decades than at any time in all their previous history. Most
reports apply to captive birds taken from wild-ranging parents: though,
lamentably, this has changed and now concerns adults.
The entire area where they are believed to
exist is vast, extremely inhospitable; unfrequented by travelling
ornithologists; the parrot is elusive, wary and sparsely distributed. Between
1819 when Spix received his type-specimen) to 1903
(when Reisnor 1924 saw one caged, and caught a brief
glimpse of three, on l8th June, and a pair on 2lst June, all of which were too
elusive for him at) no more were recorded in the field.
It was in 1974, but a decade short of the
same long period that it was again reported (Sick 1982) followed shortly
afterwards, in 1977, by Ridgely (l982). In consequence
of the information submitted by Sick, a Swiss ornithologist, Dr Paul Roth was
financed by the WWF,ICBP and ZGAP - all conservation
bodies) to study the wild bird. Goodness how fortunate we are that they acted
when they did; for the investigations Roth made during the three year period
1985 - 1989 came almost too late. The sole population he could find was being
destroyed. His report (1989) was so tragically disturbing that the
conservationists (to whom it was delivered) did a volte
face and seem to have abandoned all attempts to help it in the wild. Posterity
might find this irrational response as incomprehensible, as I do. They
apostatized and adopted the cause of the psittaculturalists:
the very people responsible for bringing the species remnants so near to
oblivion.
Before getting to Roth’s dispiriting
account we have to understand that the bird had evolved to survive in a harsh
environment where even during the most favourable of
circumstances the total numbers might never have exceeded more than a few tens
of thousands. The population must have been contracting back, and back, over
the four centuries of contact with Europeans. Almost beaten into oblivion the
Spix’s Macaw has come to depend on a small number of ‘sanctuaries’. These
remaining havens still exist because they diminishingly prove to be less
attractive for the pastoralists. These asylums are arid, where the ground is
deeply fissured and communication and travelling is
difficult. Here, in these particularly harsh and unattractive sites, sufficient
natural vegetation is retained to supply feeding and, perhaps, breeding needs.
One of refuge was found in the vicinity of Curaca.
This had the added advantage of being on
private land and the owner seems to have given some protection to the bird. On
occasion some macaws might have been shot even though the sparse human
population, poverty, inaccessibility, and the birds
high natural caution, might help protect them against the gun. The introduced,
highly aggressive ‘killer’ African bees might well compete for some of the very
few nest-sites. The known constant source of loss in Curaca
was the annual removal of nestlings for hand-rearing. How many nests there were
in this area cannot be known. My information is that only two were ever found
and this could be the maximum owing to the paucity of suitable hole-bearing
trees.
Jenevora shows one of the breeding boles of a crabeira tree (from a photograph). The foliage is of one
growing in the
Once it became known where the bird
originated this particular population was given over to the ruthless
professional trapper and, into Curaca, came those who
provide stock for the rich psittaculturist; the
wealthy captive-parrot-breeder.
The demand for hand-reared chicks has
always well-exceeded supply. The price has never fallen. In 1983 it was
possible for me, over a leisurely two day period, to examine twelve Spix’s
Macaws in Brazilian captivity. As all were tame each must have been taken from
the nest and hand-reared. Except for three in
That the marmosets and
the birds were but objects for ostentatious display.
Contemporaneously the psittaculturalist
overseas wanted Spix’s Macaws; but he differed from the wealthy Brazilian in
that his prestige would be highest should he get them to breed. In which case
tame, unsexed, immatures (needing two, three, perhaps
four, years before they might reproduce), although desirable were somewhat less
attractive, although cheaper, than a pair of wild taken adults.
Curaca is about eighty kilometres
down-river from Juazeiro. When Paul Roth came to make
his study he found that, under the enormous pressure for psittacultural
possession the thirty or so pairs that were said by the inhabitants, to have
originally formed the Curaca population, had by 1986
collapsed to three individuals.
It was one further demonstration of the
goose-that-lays-the-golden-eggs syndrome. When the trade in Spix’s Macaws was
in the more amateur hands of the local people they were limited taking a few
nests of youngsters for hand-rearing annually. Had they given thought to the
matter they might have reasoned it to be judicious not to harry
the parents or damage the nest-chambers. Certainly such a limited, seasonal,
persecution must have made a marginal difference to the status of the wild
population. Only a proportion of those taken would have survived to enter the
next generation of potential breeders.
But things change. The rapacious outsiders
came to Curaca. Unlike the indigens
they had a more direct contact with the psittaculturalists.
The parrot-breeder is as impatient as he is ruthless and selfish. He would
prefer to have an immediate breeding success, for himself, rather than compete
or wait for some years for nestlings to grow to maturity. He lusted after
wild-taken adults rather than hand-reared juveniles, often with the mistaken,
indeed superstitious, belief that a greater expectancy of reproductive success
comes from wild-taken birds.
Who, better than the parrot-breeder, knows
the urgency; for captivity has proved so lethal for Spix's Macaws.
Covertness (brutish, blind, egocentric, greed) when it meritriciously
dressed as ‘conservation’ salves the conscience.
The incredibly urgent and selfish demands
of the extra-Brazilian psittaculturalist became
partly satisfied. An almost guaranteed means of getting the birds out of
Fortunately other populations must exist.
That the conservationists have all but washed their hands of the wild bird has
given an extra protection to the exploiters. Whilst in
On the other hand, if we could travel with
him and pay the cost of the expedition, the price could be as low as $ 2,500
per nest with eggs and higher if there were chicks. Adults would cost us more.
The reason for the lower fee was that we would have to smuggle the birds out of
the sertao and into
In March 1990, I was informed that a
dealer, in
FOODS
The captives I’ve seen and that includes a
four year daily observation of a single male, allows me to say that they seem
to have less power to their bite than most other similarly sized parrots. For
example, Illiger’s macaw, which is of about the same
body size, can usually crack open all but the hardest of hawthorn Crataegus monogyna seeds.
However, despite spending time and effort attempting this, my male only
succeeded with exceptionally few. This is bourne out
from an examination of the skull which, for the size of the parrot, is slender
and does not have the added strength given by a closed orbit.
The local people said to Roth (1989) that
they principally fed from the spurges ‘faveleira’ Onidossolus phyllacanthus and pinhao Jatropha pohliana. Other fruits and seeds must be taken. He mentions
the trees joazeiro Ziziphus
joazeiro and the pau-de-colher
Maytenus rigida (?)
CAPTIVE HISTORY
This macaw has a unique charm; unique colouration; has ever maintained an extremely rare place in
captivity; and it has always been expensive to buy. My suggestion is that, in consequence, perhaps, of these four
points, a high proportion of the captives might have
been recorded. Every one of the earlier examples were
nestlings when acquired. The exceptions are the more recently acquired pairs,
taken as breeding birds from the wild. These are those held at Loro Parque Tenerife,
The first reference that I can find (Sclater 1878) to a captive is of one bought by the
Zoological Society of London for exhibition purposes. As this bird, the first
bird that they had, was acquired from the Jardin d’Acclimation in November
it and perhaps its siblings, might well have been shown in
The nest the London Zoo
had was received on
About this time the
The third that the London Zoo had was
received on
How many others, if any, that arrived over
the next two decades, cannot be known. The next report
(Seth-Smith 1926a) is of one from Paignton Zoo in
In the United States Plath,
who was then a curator of birds for the Zoological Society of Chicago, obtained
one in exchange for a Thick-billed Parrot Rhynchopsitta
pachyrhynchos. (Louis Ruhe
Inc., the New York dealers, who made the exchange, considered both to be
equally uncommon.) Several references (Plath 1930,
1934, 1937 and 1969) are made to this bird. It is said that no Spix were imported prior to 1927 and that few, if any, came
afterwards. One that did has been preserved (AMNH 446783) Its
skin bears labels, which tell us that it was in Mr
W.C. Arnold’s aviary for some time. And upon its death was mounted. In December
1935 this was given by Mrs Edward W.C. Arnold of
Babylon, NY, to the museum and turned into a skin.
Plath’s bird, which was killed by a pair of Amazon parrots
on 11th March 1946, has the greatest recorded longevity for this
species as a captive. The second longest survivor, up to then, might have been
the two that the London Zoo had before 1911 (Mitchell 1911) for both lived for
a few months over five years.
How many more this zoo subsequently
acquired in the next two decades is not known, but on view in the newly constructed
parrot house, were at least one ‘pair’ of Spix’s Macaws (Prestwich
1930). Contemporaneously to these Whitley, who owned Paignton
Zoo, had at least two others (Hopkinson 1931). It may
have been one of these that was shown together with
another owned by Maxwell at the Crystal Palace the next year (Prestwich 1932). Another was to be found in Liverpool Zoo
(Stokes 1932).
The near-universal ban on importation of
parrots following the human psittacosis pandemic of 1929 and 1930 must have
prevented further Spix's Macaws entering into most of Europe and North America.
Restrictions on parrot importation began to be lifted a few years after the end
of the 1939 - 45 war. From then on desultory birds came in: particularly to
Portugal. One such pair of hand-reared birds was acquired by Alfredo Marques in
1960, or thereabouts. After maturing they laid many clutches of fertile eggs.
They were then loaned out to Sir Crawford McCullogh
who lived in Northern Ireland, overlooking Belfast Loch. Before he died (in
1974) they had bred more times, even though no youngsters were reared. The
surviving hen was then sold, by Marques, to Naples (which, at the time, had two
others).
In 1975 I bought, for £350, a male Spix’s
Macaw from Snr. Coehlo in
Portugal. It was said to be three years old and had a permanent limp from
having been suspended from a tethered leg. The sibling, with which
it had been imported, had died the year previously. As the restriction on trade
in endangered species made it impossible to obtain a mate the macaw was loaned
in 1980 to Walsrode Zoo in West Germany to pair with
their surviving bird. My bird died in 1989. Despite my request (at the time of
loaning) to preserve it as a skeleton – which would have been scientifically
useful – it was stuffed.
One of the most notorious of exports was
the two nestlings imported into the UK in 1979 from Paraguay. They escaped
CITES regulations by deceptively being described as being blue mutations of the
Quaker Conure Myiopsittacus monachus.
After a few weeks in the United Kingdom they were dispatched to Mr Burkey in the United States.
(Website editor: one of these nestlings was Presley, now repatriated to Brazil
and located at the Lymington Foundation in the expert care of Linda and Bill
Wittkoff). When shown the two (I believe that it was in February when I photographed them)
it was said by Gordon Cooke, the importer, that for £3,500 it was possible for
me to obtain three further nestlings from Paraguay. One of which was in frail
health. The three would not be split. This trio soon went to Walsrode. It was the sole survivor of these that was the
inducement for loaning them my solitary bird.
Now that Europe was effectively sealed other
outlets were found. Birds could still get into Portugal.
ETCETERA
CONSERVATION
If this bird is to survive into the future
the first essential
must be to understand that some do remain in the wild.
It is premature, presumptive, and wrong to say that there are no more. Such
forlorn helplessness presently leaves the field absolutely free for the
trappers. When young are taken they are then smuggled out to be passed off as
captive bred. Such an indifferent attitude by 'conservationists', at a time
when every thing is so particularly critical is scandalous. Cash must be made
available for a serious ornithological search and expedition. To preserve it in
the wild we must have more knowledge about its ecology.
Salvation is hardly likely to come from psittaculture. Is it not the demand for aviary material
that has been the active cause of the population wilt? It is hypocritical to
suggest that captive breeding can be beneficial. As an example should they be
bred in any number will their future progeny ever get to be loosed back into
the wild? The reverse for whilst any remain free the psittaculturalist will be forever hankering for more.
To believe that the only future for the
Spix’s Macaw is by captive breeding is as ridiculous as believing that it would
have been excellent if the Roman senate had given the municipal firemen tickets
and a paid day off so they could have listened to a violin recital by Nero.
Every bird in captivity, or its immediate ancestor, has been illegally taken.
The wild has been pauperised by their loss. Captive
breeding can only be useful to give us knowledge about captives. Conservation
for a bird so specialised for existence in such a
particularly harsh habitat can only be done by preserving its biotype.
What is absolutely certain is that every
captive should be registered and coded. This may help to prevent further
examples being taken provided that stiff penalties of enforcement also follow.
The intention is to stop trapping by eliminating the market. There should also
be an annual assessment of this captive population and this
needs to be published and interpreted in an easily accessible journal.
End of document
