A few days ago I wrote about the Puerto Rican Parrot Amazona vittata, an island endemic which had come perilously close to extinction through a combination of habitat destruction and hunting. Numbers of both wild and aviary birds are now slowly being built up by skilled and dedicated aviculturalists in Puerto Rico and there is every chance the species will now survive. The Puerto Rican Parrot may have come close to extinction in the wild, but one beautiful blue parrot went all the way when the LAST wild individual disappeared in 2000. I’m talking here of Spix’s Macaw Cyanopsitta spixii, a Brazilian species that came within a whisker of being lost all together thanks to habitat destruction and the never-ending attention of trappers who systematically poached every individual they could find for collectors willing to pay increasingly enormous amounts for the world’s rarest parrot…

I can only hope I tell it well enough for you to understand how important a story it is…

Spix’s Macaw - the word’s rarest parrot

The beautiful Spix’s Macaw Cyanopsitta spixii - one of just four species of blue macaws ever known (of the other three the Glaucous Macaw has not been reliably sighted in over 50 years despite systematic searches and is presumed extinct; Lear’s Macaw is designated “Critical,” and numbers in the low hundreds in the wild; the Hyacinth Macaw is now designated “Endangered”) - may not be the largest or most colourful of its kind but it does now have one unenviable claim to fame: Spix’s Macaw has the dubious distinction of being the most critically endangered parrot in the world with no known individuals remaining in the wild. Discovered in 1817 by Dr Johan Ritter von Spix, the son of a Bavarian doctor, in a sliver of riparian gallery forest in northern Brazil the last known wild Spix’s Macaw was last seen less than 200 years later in October 2000.

Probably never numerous in its limited habitat (wooded creeks which extended perhaps 50 kilometres either side of the huge rivers which wound through a peculiar dry thorny desert called caatinga, a habitat that probably never held more than a few tens of thousands macaws) Spix’s fabulous blue birds were not actually seen again in the wild by western naturalists for almost another eighty years, when Othmar Reiser saw them during an expedition of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in June 1903. They were seen again in 1923 (a brief glimpse of three, on l8th June, and a pair on 2lst June) but no more were recorded in the field until they were seen again in 1974.

Local trappers, though, knew where to find them and a steady stream of Spix’s Macaws had been leaving Brazil for zoos and private collections where no-one knew of their requirements (in the wild Spix’s Macaws ate localised fruits and seeds which their new owners didn’t have to hand) and no-one made any meaningful attempt to breed them. An excerpt in Tony Juniper’s book neatly summarises what in all probability had been happening to these unfortunate birds all across Europe for many years:

“In 1878 the Zoological Society of London at Regent’s Park…obtained a live bird…from Paris. It died so the zoo set out to get hold of a replacement. In November 1894 a second bird was procured…that one lasted until 1900. A third was held at the London Zoo from June 1901 but expired after just a year…”

Rare birds are always highly sought-after by collectors - particularly as they become even more rare - and Spix’s Macaw was captured and traded with such persistence that it was feared to be possibly extinct in the wild by the early 1980s. Thankfully it was rediscovered in 1985 during an extensive search of what was left of the region’s caraiba Riparian Woodland habitat. By then though the whole of that part of Brazil had undergone continual and drastic change and perhaps just two patches (about 30km²) of the original forest remained: just five birds, including two pairs, were found.

Sadly this was not the beginning of a recovery for what was already one of the rarest birds on Earth. Trappers had been active in this area for many years, removing at least 23 birds and likely many more, and by 1988 it appeared one well-known trapper based in Petrolina had struck again: these last five birds, which included the only three wild birds to be studied by biologists, had been removed.

A summary given in an article in ‘Cage and Aviary Birds’ magazine details just how the last population was ravaged by collectors and is well worth repeating here (From “Spix’s Macaw - Cyanopsitta spixii. What do we know today about this rare bird?” A report on field work carried out from 1985 to 1988 by Dr. Paul ROTH published in “Papageien” (Issues 3/90 and 4/90), translated from the German by Tony Pittman for Cage & Aviary Birds.):

The adult birds were either caught with lime on their traditional roosting branches or with the young in the nest hole. In this way it was possible to remove completely the entire population, estimated at 30 pairs, within a few years. The following is a short time-scale summary:-

1977-84 According to the locals and the trappers more than 9 birds were taken between 1977 and 1984.

1984-5 From information received from the trappers, 10 to 12 birds were taken, including at least 7 adult birds.

1985 Five birds still remained. One Spix’s Macaw was killed by a rancher (fazendeiro) according to the local people.

1986 When we arrived for the first time in the Curaçá area, there were still three Spix’s Macaws remaining.

1987 Up to April three birds were sighted, but from May onwards only two. We could obtain no information about the fate of the third bird.

1987-8 A few days before Christmas 1987 a trapper from Petrolina caught one of the remaining two birds and according to telephoned information from the local people the very last member of this Spix’s Macaw population was caught by the same trapper in the first few days of 1988.

As far as anyone knew then the last wild Spix’s Macaws - so rare that by now they had become literally worth more than their weight in gold by the time they reached Europe’s secretive bird dealers - had been poached and sold on. The species was now thought to exist only in captivity.

However, in 1990 one last exhaustive survey of the area (funded by the World Parrot Trust and which Tony Juniper himself was a part of and of which he writes brilliantly) resulted in the astonishing discovery of a single surviving macaw at Concordia Farm, Melancia Creek, near Curaçá. This sole surviving bird was determined to be a male by the DNA analysis of one of its feathers. The hunt was begun to find him a partner, and the Brazilian Authorities eventually located a wild caught female Spix’s Macaw being held at a private breeding facility. Astonishingly they had good reason to believe that this female was actually the former breeding companion of the last male. Thankfully the owner of the bird was willing to cooperate in a bid to return her to the wild.

A release aviary was constructed on Concordia Farm in Curaçá with money generously donated by Tenerife’s Loro Parque Foundation (a leading partner in the attempts to bring the Spix’s Macaw back from the brink of extinction). In 1994 the female was introduced to a large aviary where before release she was re-acquainted with natural foods and allowed to gain much needed flight strength and fitness as it had now been at least six years since she was poached from the wild. After being released in 1995 her fitness quickly improved and her adjustment to life back in the wild was apparently going very well. She was spending less time near the release aviary and her reliance on supplementary feeding was gradually reducing. She had been observed on numerous occasions flying and socializing with the wild male but unfortunately after two and a half months of repatriation she disappeared never to be seen again. It was later reported by a local ranch-hand that he had found the carcass of this precious bird directly below some power lines.

The male - the last wild Spix’s Macaw, who had earlier desperately attempted to fulfil his innate desire to breed by pairing with a female Blue-winged (Illiger’s) Macaw Prophyrrura maracana - hung on somehow evading the poachers that came looking for him and the hawks that hunted him for another five years. He was last seen alive on October 5th 2000, but following a drought in the area was never seen again. He is thought to have died of natural causes as by this stage he was more than 20 years old.

And that could have been the end of Spix’s Macaw, yet another psittaciforme to join the ranks of eg the Carolina Parakeet, Mascarene Parrot, and Glaucous Macaw to have been lost through habitat change, over-hunting, and/or collection.

In the second part of “Spix’s Macaw” I take a look at the fantastic work being done at the Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation in Qatar, where seven chicks were raised in 2006 and where (as of December 2008) forty-seven Spix’s were being held in state-of-the-art aviaries with round the clock care…

For further reading many links to articles on Spix’s Macaw can be found at http://www.bluemacaws.org/spixart.htm

As a footnote I found a fascinating 2002 press-release on the World Parrot Trust’s website which concerns a Spix’s Macaw found in captivity in a Colorado living room! Called by its owner ‘Presley’ this bird - which had been ‘lost’ for twenty-five years after being poached from the wild and apparently smuggled to Europe and then subsequently to the USA - has now been returned to Brazil to add much-needed new genetic input into the a government breeding programme

For more information please go to http://www.parrots.org/index.php/presskit/spix_macaw_return/

Photo left copyright of Alain Breyer/World Parrot Trust. 2002.

Produced in association with BirdLife International and edited by Erik Hirschfeld, the excellent “Rare Birds Yearbook” (RBYB) series looks in detail at each of the 190 Critically Endangered bird species on the planet - including Spix’s Macaw.

We gave the Rare Birds Yearbook 2009 a very enthusiastic review, describing it as “beautifully presented, lavishly illustrated, comprehensive, and superbly written” amongst other things. No other publication available is so up-to-date, is so crammed with data, and has so many outstanding photographs of the world’s Critically Endangered species, and it is highly recommended.

STOP PRESS: Erik is generously offering a 25% Discount from the cover price to all 10,000 Birds readers! Simply visit the Rare Birds Yearbook website at RBYB - Order, place your order, enter the discount code facrusp, and the total will be automatically adjusted before you go to the checkout.

Like to see for yourself how good this book is?
To download a full colour .pdf of the pages relating to the Spix’s click Species Account: Spix’s Macaw