SPIX’S MACAW

THE RACE TO SAVE THE WORLD’S RAREST BIRD

Tony Juniper

Copyright

Fourth Estate

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Fourth Estate

This edition first published in 2003

Copyright © Tony Juniper 2002 and 2003

The right of Tony Juniper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Dedication

For my Mother and Father

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Chapter 1 The Real Macaw

Chapter 2 The First Spix

Chapter 3 Parrot Fashion

Chapter 4 The Four Blues

Chapter 5 What Are You Looking For at the End of the World?

Chapter 6 The Legions of the Doomed

Chapter 7 Private Arks

Chapter 8 The Rarest Bird in the World

Chapter 9 Uncharted Territory

Chapter 10 Betrayal

Chapter 11 An Extinction Foretold?

Epilogue

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Notes

About the Publisher

Map

1 The Real Macaw

The blue parrot came to rest on a bare sun-bleached branch that stuck out from the bushy crown of a craggy old caraiba tree. The magnificent old plant, some 25 metres tall, was one in a long ribbon of trees that fringed a winding creek. The parrot had chosen a high branch, a natural vantage point. From his lofty position, the bird scanned the flat thorny cactus scrub that lay around in all directions. He climbed to a branch slightly lower down, using his feet and beak, checking behind and above for airborne predators. When hawks were hunting, a second of relaxation could cost him his life. Once the parrot was satisfied it was safe, he cried out, quite a harsh call, but thin with a trilling quality. He received a distant reply, and then another.

Moments later, from around a bend in the creek, two parrots appeared, flying fast and strong above the treetops. They followed the line of the green-fringed channel, their long tails flexed and strained against the air, their flowing blue plumes acting as a rudder to steer a course towards the huge tree. They spread their tails, rotated their wings backwards and fluttered to rest next to the bird already perched there. The thin branches swayed as they took the parrots’ weight. The birds’ scaly grey feet gripped tightly as the branches rocked gently back and forth. The parrots fluffed out their body and flight feathers and waggled their tails to ensure that their plumage lay correctly. This ritual ensured they would be ready for instant flight should they need to leave in a hurry. Finally, every feather in place, they settled down on the caraiba tree.

The trio were the adult male parrot who had first made the call, and a pair of young adults. More chatter followed, then the birds indulged in friendly fencing with their hooked black bills. Their sharp yellowish eyes regarded one another carefully, their dark pupils dilating. Then once more scanning the surrounding land, the first bird began to climb down the caraiba tree. Beneath it was a pool of muddy water.

As the first bird went lower, his companions nervously followed, very quiet now, anxious not to attract unwelcome attention. Going to the ground to drink was dangerous. It was a necessary daily chore, but they didn’t like it. Not only were hawks still a threat but snakes and other predators could catch them down there. There had recently been a population explosion among the local wild cats, and the parrots needed extra caution. They tilted their heads to get a better view of the ground, paying particular attention to the bushy cover at the edge of the creek.

They stopped once more and again checked for danger, then fluttered one by one the last five metres to the moist sandy ground of the creek bed. As they landed and cast shadows over the margins of the pool, tadpoles scattered into the murky brown water at the centre. Whether the larvae of the frogs would progress to a terrestrial existence depended on more rain. This pool would evaporate soon under the hot tropical sun.

The parrots drank deep and fast. Taking their fill in seconds, they immediately flew back up to the bare top of the tree. They called once more, and then took off again down the creek calling loudly. Two kilometres upstream they stopped to perch in another of the tall trees. They knew that they would find food here. It was late in the day and dusk would soon fall but a meal of the caraiba’s seeds would see them through the night.

When the baking sunshine of the day was extinguished a suffocating cloak of warmth rose from the parched earth. It was time to roost. Two of the birds, the pair, would spend the night in a hollow in one of the tall trees. They regularly slept there and felt safe. Their companion, the single male bird, perched atop a tall spiny cactus.

The tall trees that bordered the seasonally flooded creeks formed a rare green oasis. The rest of the woodland, if you could call it woodland, was mostly low and composed of tangled thickets of spindly thorn bushes and cacti. There were baked open areas where little at all grew. It was a melancholy landscape, especially in the heat of the dry season when the stillness and quiet gave a paradoxically wintry feeling. In all directions its vastness rolled in endless undulations towards an ever-receding horizon. Located in the interior of north-eastern Brazil, these dry thorny woodlands, the ‘caatinga’, occupied an immense area, some 800,000 square kilometres in all – considerably larger than the US state of Texas or about three times the size of the island of Great Britain. Amid sharp rocks, viciously spined cacti, the lance-like thorns of the bushes and brutal unrelenting heat, this peculiar place felt lonely, an isolated and forgotten corner of the world.

Drought turned the forest into a desolate and brittle chaos. Animals could hide in the shade, but the plants could not. Adapted to the desiccating climate, the plants eked out the precious water in whatever way they could. Some had thick waxy leaves, others potato-like tuber roots or fine hairs to scavenge moisture from the air. Most trees and shrubs were deciduous and even those said to be evergreen lost their leaves in the worst droughts. And when the droughts dragged on, as they frequently did, there was death. Creatures that succumbed didn’t rot; the dry heat drained their body fluids and mummified them. Sheep and goats killed by lack of food and water lay like specimens preserved for museum display.

The energy in the winds was small and the airstreams that came brought little rain. It was a harsh place and had become known as the backlands: a forgotten country scorned by the outside world as a desolate wasteland fit only for goats and sheep.

In the good years, dark clouds spawned violent thunderstorms that brought relief from the unforgiving drought. As the lifeless desert was for a short time banished, the caatinga became a brief paradise of green dotted with white, yellow and red flowers. When the first rains fell, it was as if the drops of moisture were hitting the face of a red-hot iron. Flashed back into vapour, the first specks of water could not penetrate the earth. If the rain continued to fall, the baked red soil would first become darkly stained, damp and then moistened. Tiny rivulets formed, then streams and finally substantial bodies of water accumulated in the creeks.

What little rain there was fell in a four- or five-month period, generally from about November to April. Most of the year, even in ‘wet’ years, it did not rain at all. But because the creeks that drained the land during the brief annual deluges retained some of the moisture in their deep fine soils, ribbons of tall green trees grew there – little streaks of green in the great dry wilderness.

In this uncompromising environment, the blue parrots had made their home. Tested and honed by the punishing climate, their bodies and instincts had been moulded into the alert exotic blue creatures that flew there now. Perhaps, like many other animals found in these tough lands, they had first evolved in kinder and wetter conditions but now found themselves driven by thousands of years of climatic change to the precious few areas of moister habitat within the caatinga. The tree-lined creek was one such place.

Exquisite blue creatures some 60 centimetres long, darker above, slightly more turquoise below, their heads were paler and greyer and at a distance sometimes appeared almost white. Depending on the angle and intensity of light, the birds sometimes showed a greenish cast. When they fluffed out their head feathers, they took on a different appearance and looked almost reptilian, an impression enhanced by their intense bare faces. Their outward resemblance to small dinosaurs reinforced the impression that these curious birds were descended from a remote past.

At first light next day the trio of blue parrots collected together once more at the top of the huge bare-branched tree and resumed their daily routine. Their first port of call was a fruiting faveleira tree down the creek towards the main river. As the parrots approached their destination and breakfast, they were greeted by a screeching flock of Blue-winged Macaws, a type of small macaw known locally as maracanas. These birds were already feeding in the dense green foliage of the fruit tree’s crown. Despite their bright green plumage, their striking white faces and red and blue patches, to an observer on the ground or even an aerial predator they were almost invisible.

These smaller and mainly green macaws shared the creekside woods with their larger blue cousins. Relations between them were generally quite amicable, unless one of the smaller macaws sat on one of the favourite perches of the bigger ones. If they trespassed in this way, they would be angrily driven off. Although there were several other species of parrot living in the creek, the little maracanas were the only other kinds of macaw. They were also the only other birds the bigger blue species deigned to have any social contact with.

Amid the chattering and bickering of the busy maracanas, a distant growl registered in the blue birds’ finely tuned senses. The sound grew closer. It was a rare sound in this remote place – the sound of a vehicle. The blue parrots knew that the approaching sound often meant trouble. On top of the hawks, wild cats and snakes, the three blue macaws had come to know a still more deadly predator. And that lethal hunter was on the prowl again now. This predator stalked his prey by both night and day. This predator never gave up: if one method of capture failed, he tried a new one. He took babies from their nests and even stole eggs.

The birds fled upstream once more until they arrived at a tall caraiba tree with dense foliage covering the branches in its crown. They had already eaten well and felt able to rest. As the dazzling sun grew hotter, the parrots melted into the shadows, to doze, preen and chatter. They disappeared into the dappled light and shade cast by the long waxy leaves of the caraiba tree. Just as they relaxed, the birds were shocked to full alertness by a startling shrill screeching sound. It was the scream of a distressed parrot, a panic-laden cry made by a wounded bird facing a predator. The macaws’ curiosity was aroused. They were compelled to respond to the call.

They fluttered to an opening in the caraiba’s dense canopy to gain a better view of the creek. Finding no line of sight to the source of the sound they cautiously flew towards it. The noise was coming from some distance away on a bend in the creek. The three birds approached. As they drew nearer they could see on the ground a struggling parrot. It appeared unable to move from its place on the creek bed even though it was violently writhing. The single blue macaw approached while the pair remained at a distance. His natural caution overtaken, the parrot descended to a low perch closer to the bird struggling on the ground.

As he settled, two men burst forth and ran towards him. They crashed over dry sticks and leaves that lay on the sandy bed of the creek. Terrified, the macaw took to his wings, but he couldn’t fly. The spot where he had perched was covered in bird lime, a glue substance used to trap birds. It had trapped him.

Seconds later he was inside a nylon net. The men snapped the branch he was involuntarily gripping and wound the mesh around it, trapping him. The bird’s sharp hooked beak tore at the net but it wouldn’t give. Seconds later the blue macaw, still inside the net and glued to the perch, was caged in a wire mesh-fronted crate. He lay panting on the floor covered in glue, tangled in the net where he had no choice but to grip the branch to which he was stuck. He called out, but there was no answer; his companions were already far away. It was the end of April 1987.

The trapper and his assistant sat on the huge fallen trunk of a dead caraiba tree and smiled. Dressed in modern city clothes they had arrived in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, a rare sight in this poor area where local transport was more often by horse or mule. They smoked cigarettes and talked for a while. Then they rose to their feet and approached the crate. One of the men put on thick leather gloves while his assistant opened the door. The gloved man picked up the bird, still inside the net, while his companion cut away the nylon with a penknife. The parrot’s feet were prised from the broken branch and a scrap of cloth cleaned some of the glue from its feet. The blue bird, paralysed with fear, was put back into the crate and door once more wired fast.

The gloved man stood back and regarded his prize with obvious pleasure. The sight of the caged blue parrot took his thoughts back to when he was a boy of eleven. A neighbour had asked him to look after some young parrots he was rearing. Soon after the neighbour had had to leave the area and told the boy he could keep the birds. When they were ready for sale he put them in a cart and took them round the streets in his town and found that they sold very well. The boy got some more parrots and as time went by became more knowledgeable and serious about his surprisingly lucrative vocation. By the time he was seventeen he had bought himself a second-hand car; quite an achievement in this part of the world. He marvelled at his good fortune – the birds had helped him escape the grinding poverty suffered by the poor rural people in the caatinga. He was lucky enough to have a small house in town that he shared with his wife and three young children. He only came to the country for more parrots.

As the years went by, his reputation as a parrot dealer grew, first in Brazil and then internationally. If you wanted to buy a Brazilian macaw, he was your man. He had first caught some of the special blue caatinga macaws in the early 1980s when he took a couple of babies from their nest. He traded the azure bundles of fluff for a car; this time it was brand new. Since then he had not looked back. It was easy money; better still it was big money. Capturing another of these special blue parrots was a real achievement. The heavily built trapper had notched up yet another of the special blue prizes.

All kinds of blue macaw were in big demand and the trapper had caught the parrot to fulfil an order placed by a foreign bird collector. The obsession of the men who would own a blue macaw, if they could get one, was such that any bird caught could easily be sold. This one was no exception; it would now travel via a series of dealers working as part of the criminal underworld of the international illegal bird trade.

Unlike some common parrots, this one was not destined for a run-of-the-mill pet keeper. A member of the world’s bird-collecting elite would have this one. There were plenty of people who would happily part with a fortune for such a parrot and he would be sold to one of the real connoisseurs, a collector who would fully appreciate the rarity and value of such a trophy. All kinds of blue macaw fetched excellent prices but these caatinga macaws were different. This bird was like a Rembrandt or a Picasso, one of the finer things that only the really wealthy could afford. Unlike a painting by a great master, however, this bird was a temporary treasure only. One day he would die, his value would be gone and another would be demanded to replace him. No matter how many were caught, there was relentless demand for more.

As the long hot dry season passed, the traumatic memory of the trapping faded, but the surviving pair of blue parrots remained very nervous. Any people near the creek sent them into fast flight. The normal activities of the sparse local population, the odd ranch hand passing by on horseback, or people from one of the isolated houses nearby collecting leafy branches for their goats and sheep to eat, created panic. The birds took no chances even with these casual visitors. They would take flight up the creek until they had travelled what they regarded as a safe distance.

The pair of blue parrots nested in a particular hole that had been used by their kind for generations. High up in one of the big trees, it had been formed by the fall of a huge branch some five decades before. Almost every year since then a pair of the blue parrots had laid their eggs in that same favourite refuge. The hollow was dry and the nesting area was some distance down into the tree from the exit to the outside world. It was just right, the ideal place to rear babies. But such a location was valuable and the blue macaws didn’t have an exclusive claim.

Most of the best tree holes in the creek were accounted for in some way. The woodpeckers, black vultures, the other parrots, like the maracanas, and even snakes liked to use tree cavities as well. Lately, bees introduced from Africa had also moved into the creek. Swarms of these insects were especially dangerous when they wanted to take possession of a tree hole. They had killed parrots, stung them to death, so as to take over a prime site.

With the arrival of the wet season, the birds spent more time around the nest hollow, both to defend it from unwanted squatters and to prepare themselves for breeding. A couple of weeks later, in mid-December, the female bird stayed inside during the day. She had laid three white eggs; they rested in the bottom of the hollow where she would now devote most of her time to maintaining the correct temperature and humidity for the tiny embryos to grow and then hatch.

One night, when the two parrots were asleep with their eggs in the nest hole, the drone of a vehicle was heard once more in the creek. The birds would not venture out; owls were a real danger after dark. They sat tight even when they heard scraping sounds on the outside of the tree. They heard whispering human voices by the hole and huddled silently. But when they felt a presence come inside, they fled. The female made her move for the entrance first. In the darkness all she could see was the gloomy disc of the pre-dawn sky. She made for it, climbing the inside of the tree trunk, a familiar enough task in the day but in the near-total darkness unnatural and frightening. As she made her exit, and spread her wings for flight, she became constrained. She was in a net. Something powerful, hard and unyielding grasped her body. As she struggled to free herself from her captor, her mate struggled past and fluttered free of the hollow. He found his wings and took off down the creek into the darkness as fast as he could.

In the nest the three eggs lay smashed. The two trappers had reached inside for young birds in the hope that they could take baby macaws too; they would fetch an even better price than the sleek adult bird. They were too early for that, however, and their clumsy groping in the dark broke the fragile white shells and spilled the contents into the base of the hollow. The blood-streaked yolks slowly congealed in the wood shavings at the bottom of the nest chamber. Disappointed not to find chicks, the trappers were pleased that they at least had caught one of the adult macaws before someone else did. It was Christmas Eve 1987. The capture of the blue parrot would certainly brighten the trappers’ festivities.

The macaw soon found herself in a crate ready for loading into the back of the four-wheel-drive vehicle. It was now daylight and the men prepared for departure along the long dusty track that led back the main tarmac road. Just before leaving, they saw a man approaching on foot. He approached and then stopped to ask what they were doing.

The stranger seemed harmless enough, certainly not a policeman, so the trappers boasted about the valuable creature they had taken that morning. The man asked to see it. The chief trapper opened the rear door of the jeep and pulled an old blanket to one side revealing the blue bird in its crate. It recoiled at the sudden bright light and shrank back into the shadows. The man was impressed, he asked if he might take a photo of the gorgeous blue creature. After the trapper had shrugged his consent, the man took a Polaroid camera from his green bag, carefully composed his picture and pressed the shutter. He waited a few moments then peeled back the paper backing from the print to reveal the image of the caged parrot.

He did not know it, but the image that was gradually appearing on the Polaroid as it dried in the warm morning air was of the last wild female of the blue caatinga parrots. After her capture, only her partner remained. He was the last Spix.

2 The First Spix

On 3 June 1817, Dr Johan Baptist Ritter von Spix and his travelling companion and fellow scientist Dr Carl Friedrich Philip von Martius set sail for the Atlantic Ocean from Gibraltar. They had arrived in the bustling port some weeks previously from Trieste in the Adriatic. Along with fifty other vessels of various sizes their ship had waited for the right weather conditions for their voyage to South America. This day brought the easterly winds necessary to propel them from the Mediterranean Sea on the 6,000-kilometre voyage to the southern hemisphere and their destination, Rio de Janeiro, the capital of the Portuguese colony of Brazil.

The son of a Bavarian doctor, Spix was born in 1781. Awarded his PhD at the age of only nineteen, his early academic career included studies in theology, medicine and the natural sciences. He qualified as a medical doctor in 1806. In 1808 he was awarded a scholarship by King Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria to study zoology in Paris, at the time the world’s leading natural sciences centre. Here the young Bavarian mixed with the leading biologists and naturalists of the time, including the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the intellectual giant who proposed a mechanism of evolution that would challenge (unsuccessfully as it turned out) the theory of natural selection developed some decades later by Charles Darwin.

In Paris, Spix’s abilities as a scientist grew; in October 1810 the King once again acknowledged his growing reputation, this time with an appointment in the Bavarian Royal Academy of Sciences where he was charged with the care and study of the natural history exhibits. Martius was a gifted academic too. Thirteen years younger than Spix, his interests were mainly botanical, especially palms.

The two scientists found themselves aboard one of two Brazil-bound ships as members of an expedition mounted in the name of the Emperor Francis I of Austria, whose daughter was to marry the son of John VI of Portugal. King John had been forced to live in Brazil following the invasion of his homeland in 1807 by Napoleon Bonaparte of France. The Austrian Emperor had invited a group of Viennese scientists to join the royal party that was to travel to Brazil. Maximilian had agreed that two members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences should go with them.

Spix was to concentrate his effort on animals, the local people and geological recording, including the collection of fossils. Martius was to devote his energies to botanical investigation, including soil types and the study of how plants spread to new lands. The King was a bird collector in his own right and hoped that the two men would bring him novel and unique prizes from their expedition in the New World. ‘After everything possible was got ready, and the books, instruments, medicine chest, and other travelling equipage sent off direct to Trieste, we set out from Munich on 6 February 1817, for Vienna.’ At Trieste they joined the ships, two naval frigates, the Augusta and the Austria. Both were substantial vessels equipped with forty-four guns and a crew of 240 sailors.

On 29 June they crossed the equator and on 13 July Cabo Frio was sighted, ‘and soon after the noble entrance of the bay of Rio de Janeiro’.¹ The arrival in South America made a big impression on the travellers.

Towards noon, approaching nearer and nearer to the enchanting prospect, we came up to those colossal rock portals and at length passed between them into a great amphitheatre, in which the mirror of the water appeared like a tranquil inland lake, and scattered flowery islands, bounded in the background by a woody chain of mountains, rose like a paradise full of luxuriance and magnificence … at length the capital of the infant kingdom, illuminated by the evening sun, lay extended before us.

A sensation, not to be described, overcome us all at the moment when the anchor struck the ground at another continent; and the thunder of the cannon, accompanied with military music hailed the desired goal of the happily accomplished voyage.

The travellers decided to spend some time initially in the relative cool and comfort of the south east of the country, first in Rio de Janeiro and then in São Paulo and Curitiba. Spix and Martius explained, ‘it seemed most expedient to journey first to the southern Captaincy of S. Paulo, mainly to acclimatise ourselves gradually to the hot conditions we would encounter during our travels and acquaint ourselves with this more temperate southern zone. From the Captaincy of S. Paulo we planned to travel through the interior of Minas Gerais to the S. Francisco River and Goyaz, before continuing either down the Tocantins to Pará or across the interior to Bahia and the coast, where we would arrange transport of our collections to Europe before penetrating the interior of the Captaincies of Piauhy and Maranhão to arrive finally at Pará, the goal of our desires.’

To a twenty-first-century traveller, such an itinerary would be demanding enough, entailing a journey of thousands of kilometres, mainly on rough tracks and by river. Although the Bavarians enjoyed the small luxury of letters of recommendation from the Portuguese – Brazilian Government that would help smooth their path with colonial administrators, they could carry only basic equipment, much of which was for scientific purposes rather than their personal comfort. They had incomplete maps, primitive medical supplies and could rely only on mule trails and rivers to cover the vast distances that lay ahead of them. In those times, natural history exploration was a hazardous business. Disease, attack from native people or wild animals, climbing and firearms accidents, starvation and even the use of dangerous chemicals for scientific purposes, like arsenic, all took their toll on the early naturalists.

Despite the dangers, it was with great enthusiasm and apparently little thought for their impending discomfort that on 9 December 1817 Spix and Martius set out from the coast for the interior of Brazil. Although misgivings about their venture were expressed by Brazilian friends, the Bavarians happily set off with a team that included a guide hired in Rio de Janeiro, a mule man, a drover, a ‘newly bought Negro slave’ and eight mules, two for riding and six more for their bags and equipment.

They met several early setbacks. In addition to being assailed by a huge variety of fleas, ticks, flies, mosquitoes and other biting and disease-carrying insects, the scientists’ guide decided to go his own way. He left one night, when everyone was asleep, never to be seen again. He had taken most of their valuables. Spix and Martius were forced to recruit new help and to replace stolen equipment before they resumed their journey through the recently colonised landscape.

The countryside was sparsely settled but in some places the clearance of the native vegetation was already well under way. They wrote that ‘From Ytú we advanced N.W. by the side of beautiful thick woods, and enjoyed a delightful view of the valley of the Tieté, which is now entirely cleared of the forests, and planted with sugar cane, beans, maize and so on.’ It was in this area that their slave decided to follow the earlier example of the guide and make an unscheduled departure himself.

According to Spix and Martius the slave ‘did not know how to appreciate our kind treatment of him, and embraced the first favourable opportunity to abscond’. He was, however, brought back to them next day by professional runaway slave hunters the men had engaged locally. The naturalists wrote ‘we followed the advice of our host, treating him, according to the custom of this place, very kindly … giving him a full glass of brandy.’

In addition to the departure of their staff, flooded roads, swollen streams and cold mist dogged their progress. But despite the difficult conditions the two scientists earnestly persisted with their scientific work. ‘If in the evening we at length met with an open shed, or dilapidated hut, we had to spend the greater part of the night in drying our wet clothes, in taking our collections out of the chests and again exposing them to the air.’ On drier days they would spend twilight and hours after dark ‘writing notes in the journals, in preparing, drying and packing our collections’. Despite the hardships, they recalled how ‘This simple mode of life had its peculiar charms.’

To early Portuguese visitors, Brazil was known as the land of parrots. Spix and Martius came across plenty of them as well. In August 1818, in the region of Januária in Minas Gerais in the upper reaches of the river São Francisco, the Bavarian travellers happened upon what were almost certainly Hyacinth Macaws in a ‘magnificent forest of buriti palms’. The large cobalt-blue birds circled over the travellers in pairs with their croaking calls echoing in the still and peaceful surroundings. A few days later, Martius and Spix briefly split up. Martius set off into the dry semi-arid forests that fringe the river São Francisco. Here he found forests of indaja palms, which, because of the much drier conditions, were the first palm groves that they had found ‘where we dared to roam around with dry feet and safe from giant snakes and alligators’.

Martius observed with fascination how the local Hyacinth Macaws greedily ate the palm fruits. ‘The large nuts of these palms with their very fine rich oil make them the favourite trees of the large blue macaws which often flew off in pairs above us. As beautiful as this bird’s plumage is, its hoarse penetrating call assaults even the most insensitive of ears and if it had been known in ancient times, would have been regarded an ominous bird of deepest foreboding.’

For the Hyacinth Macaw, the arrival of the Europeans was indeed a compelling omen of ill fortune. Martius’s party themselves captured some of the birds. He later remarked, ‘the small menagerie of these quarrelsome birds, which we took with us chained to the roof of a few mule loading platforms, played a special role in that their continuous noise, which could be heard from afar, indicated the location of the caravan, which we usually left far behind in our forays to investigate the region.’

Martius and Spix most likely knew about the Hyacinth Macaw before they arrived in Brazil. That species had by then been described to science by a British ornithologist, Dr John Latham. He had spent years cataloguing museum collections, including the birds collected during Cook’s eighteenth-century voyages in the Pacific. In 1790 he was the first to grant a scientific name to the giant blue parrots. But the two Bavarians were the first to note the relationship between these magnificent blue birds and different kinds of palms, upon the fruits of which they dined.

By November Spix and Martius reached the coast of eastern Brazil and the town of Salvador in Bahia. The grinding travel schedule had taken its toll, so they rested there until mid-February 1819 to recover their strength. They then set out north through the harsh drought-prone north east of Brazil. They suffered extreme hardships, notably lack of water, and often travelled in uninhabited country. By May they had reached the banks of the river São Francisco at Juàzeiro.

Along the north and south shores of the great river they found the thorny caatinga woodlands. This dry country stretched in all directions to the horizon and beyond. It was sparsely settled and mainly used for sheep and cattle pasture. In this strange dry land Spix spent some time collecting birds.

Among other things, it was here that he shot a magnificent long-tailed blue parrot for their collection. The bird was taken from some curious woodlands found along the side of creeks seen in that part of the caatinga. The specimen of the parrot was tagged and brief notes were made about it. Spix recorded that ‘it lives in flocks, although very rare, near Juàzeiro in the region bordering the São Francisco, [and is] notable for its thin voice.’ Spix didn’t realise that he had just taken the very first specimen of a bird that would one day symbolise how human greed and ignorance were wiping countless life forms from the record of creation.

From Juàzeiro the pair travelled through the parched woodlands north along the river Caninde to Oeiras in Piauí, close to the modern city of Floriano. Martius wrote ‘The caatingas mostly consisted of sparse bushes and in the lowland areas, where there was much more water, the carnauva palms formed stately forests, the sight of which was as strange as it was delightful. Blue macaws, which live in the dense tops of these palms, flew up screeching above us.’ It seemed that the travellers had happened on more Hyacinth Macaws or perhaps their rarer and smaller cousins, Lear’s Macaws – one of the ‘four blues’ exhibited in Berlin in 1900 (see chapter 4).

By the end of 1819 Spix and Martius had worked their way inland about 3,000 kilometres further west, mainly by river, penetrating deep inside the seemingly limitless rainforests of the Amazon basin. From here they split up and travelled further into the vast interior of South America. They finally arrived nearly 3,000 kilometres further downstream at the port of Belém in Pará at the mouth of Amazon on 16 April 1820. Their collection of specimens and live animals was loaded aboard the Nova Amazonia and they set sail for Lisbon. They travelled through Spain and France to arrive back in Munich on 10 December 1820, nearly four years after they had left.

Throughout their extensive travels Spix and Martius made careful observations and notes on the wildlife they encountered. They were also careful to note details of the local economy in the places they visited, especially mining and agriculture, and in so doing they painted a picture for those who would follow of investment, trading and other commercial opportunities. It is no coincidence that the greatest concentration of German industry anywhere in the world today is still in the Brazilian super metropolis of São Paulo. Certainly this fact is linked to the historical relationships between the two countries and the commercially significant information provided by early travellers. Thus commenced centuries of encroachment into the world’s biologically richest and remotest places – a process that continues today, only now hugely accelerated and more often with the aid of remote sensing from spacecraft than with the assistance of mules.

Spix and Martius recorded their travels in three substantial volumes published in 1823, 1828 and 1831 in which they dedicated their great scientific achievements to their royal patron. ‘Attachment to Your Majesty and to the sciences was the Guardian Genius that guided us amidst the danger and fatigues of so extensive a journey, through a part of the world so imperfectly known, and brought us back in safety, from that remote hemisphere to our native land,’ they wrote. But only the first volume was a joint venture. Martius completed volumes two and three alone following the death of Spix in 1826. He was forty-six and had never really recovered from extremely poor health that resulted from the privations and sickness he experienced in Brazil. Martius went on to write a classic work on palms that he completed in 1850. He died in 1868.

Not only was the account of what they saw of great importance; their collection made a substantial contribution to the Natural History Museum of Munich. They brought back specimens from 85 species of mammals, 350 species of birds, 116 species of fish, 2,700 insects and 6,500 botanical specimens. They also managed to bring live animals back, including some parrots and monkeys. Many of their specimens were from species of animals and plants new to science.

Among the treasures brought home to Bavaria was the blue parrot shot by Spix near to Juàzeiro in the north of Bahia, not far from the river São Francisco. Since it was blue with a long tail, it seems that Spix believed he had taken a Hyacinth Macaw.

It was customary by this time for all species to be assigned a two-part name, mainly in the then international scientific language of Latin – but also Greek – following the classification system proposed during the eighteenth century by the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné, better known as Linnaeus. The idea was to avoid the confusion often created by the use of several different colloquial names by adopting a common international system. The first part of the name denoted the genus, that is the group of closely related creatures or plants to which the specimen belonged. The second half of the title was to identify the particular species.

Whether he knew about Latham’s name for the blue parrot or simply used the name in ignorance (this occurred quite commonly in the early years of natural history classification), Spix confusingly called the little blue caatinga macaw Arara hyacinthinus in his volume called Avium Brasiliensium Species Novae published in 1824–5. He also had specimens of the larger, and similarly blue, Hyacinth Macaws that he proposed be renamed Anodorhyncho Maximiliani. ‘Anodorhyncho’ was a new name proposed by Spix to denote the genus of large blue macaws to which it belonged, and ‘Maximiliani’ was in honour of the King who had sponsored his explorations in South America.

The confusion that Spix evidently experienced in naming his blue parrots was quite understandable. Unlike modern naturalists, Spix was not able to rely on a glossy field book that succinctly set out with accurate colour pictures, maps and clear descriptions what birds he might encounter on his travels through the interior of Brazil. Even now, at the start of the twenty-first century, there is still no handy field and identification guide for Brazilian birds, although Helmut Sick’s 1993 Birds in Brazil provides a comprehensive overview of birds occurring in the country. It is worth noting that many dozens of guides are available for European birds, a portion of the globe with far fewer endangered species.

With no manual to rely on, it was not a straightforward business for Spix to recognise new species, let alone ones that had already been collected by other museums or expeditions. For a start, any naturalist seeking to catalogue a vast and diverse country like Brazil, even for a relatively obvious and distinctive group of animals like birds (even large blue parrots), would need a basic understanding of what had already been collected and what typical geographical variations might be expected over different species’ sometimes vast ranges. Such knowledge in early nineteenth-century Bavaria was, as elsewhere, extremely scarce.

It was not until 1832, six years after Spix’s death, that the magnitude of his error became apparent. The blue parrot he had collected in the caatinga, and so carefully transported all the way back to Munich, was utterly unique, unlike anything else ever catalogued: Spix had found a new species. It later emerged that not only was it a species new to science, it was a representative of a whole ‘new’ genus.

Spix’s mistake was noticed first by another Bavarian naturalist, his assistant Johann Wagler. Wagler, a Professor of Zoology at the University of Munich, realised that the bird collected by Spix was smaller than the birds previously described as Hyacinth Macaws and was a different colour too. It had a greyish head, black bare skin on its face, instead of the yellow patches seen in the Hyacinth, and it had a smaller and more delicate bill than the bigger Hyacinth Macaw and its relatives.

In his Monograph of Parrots published in 1832, Wagler paid tribute to the bird’s collector in the naming of a ‘new’ species after him; Sittace Spixii, he called it – a name basically meaning ‘Spix’s Parrot’. Wagler, like Spix, completed his bird book just in time. That same year, Wagler was involved in a shooting accident. He peppered his arm with small shot while out collecting birds. He contracted blood poisoning, amputation was fatally delayed and he died in the summer, aged thirty-two.

Following Wagler’s realisation that a species new to science had been found, the French naturalist Prince Charles Bonaparte proposed in the 1850s that it be placed in a new genus called Cyanopsittaca. Bonaparte, the son of Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother Lucien, was a passionate ornithologist who had a special interest in parrots. Since this bird was unlike the other blue macaws in several important respects, Bonaparte believed that a whole new genus of parrots was warranted. He took the Greek word for blue, Kyanos, and the Latin for parrot, Psittacus, to denote a new genus literally meaning ‘blue parrot’.

In the 1860s in a monograph of parrots compiled by the German ornithologist Otto Finsch there is an everyday German name that translated means ‘Spix’s Blue Macaw’. Finsch wrote that the small blue macaw was easy to distinguish from the Hyacinth Macaw because of its smaller size and more bare skin on its face and around its eyes. He concluded that it was ‘An exceedingly rare species and found in few museums. Discovered by Spix on the river São Francisco at Juàzeiro’. Significantly, he wrote that, ‘Other travellers do not mention it at all.’

Three decades later, the Italian zoologist Count Tommaso Salvadori compiled the Catalogue of the Parrots in the Collection of the British Museum. Salvadori completed his two-year task in 1891. He retained Spix’s bird in a genus called Cyanopsittacus. The fact that no other birds quite like it had been discovered meant that it remained in the genus on its own, thereby signalling that it was quite unique with characteristics seen in no other bird.

The second half of its scientific name was spixii. From now on, the bird collected in 1819 by the river São Francisco would be known in its scientific Latin form as Cyanopsittacus – or more commonly today Cyanopsitta spixii, and in English as Spix’s Macaw.

The fact that the species was now officially recorded was, however, to prove a mixed blessing. It intrigued not only scientists, but also conservationists and collectors, the former seeking to save the species, the latter to own and possess the most sought-after of all birds. But the blue caatinga parrots were to prove an elusive quarry for all concerned.

Astonishingly, Spix’s Macaw effectively disappeared from the eyes of naturalists and travellers, and was not observed in the wild for eighty-four years after Spix had first encountered one. The fact that Spix’s Macaw was a rare bird was not lost on the early cataloguers and naturalists. Indeed, no European recorded one alive in the wild again until the start of the twentieth century when Othmar Reiser saw Spix’s Macaws during an expedition of the Austrian Academy of Sciences to north-eastern Brazil in June 1903.

He wrote, ‘As I knew that Spix had discovered this rare and beautiful parrot in the area of the river São Francisco near Juàzeiro, I made sure to keep an eye out for it in the area described. Unfortunately without success. Any enquiries made to the local people were also negative.’ Finally, at the lake at Parnaguá in the state of Piauí, more than 400 kilometres to the west of Juàzeiro, Reiser and his companions were rewarded with two sightings of the elusive blue bird. They reported one sighting of three birds and another of a pair. ‘They arrive apparently from a long distance and the thirsty birds at first perch, calling, on the tops of the trees on the beach to survey the surrounding area as a precaution. After flapping their wings for a few times they fly down to the ground with ease and drink slowly and long from pools or the water at the bank.’²

Reiser tried to approach but found the birds nervous and not tolerant of people. His attempts to shoot the macaws in order to obtain a specimen failed. ‘So it was that the parrot species most desired by us was the only one to be observed, but not collected’, he wrote. The only other encounter with Spix’s Macaw noted during this expedition was a captive bird shown to the party in the town of Remanso. Reiser tried to buy it, but lamented that it was not for sale.

But other Spix’s Macaws were for sale. Despite the lack of scientific observations by naturalists working in the field, the blue parrots were certainly leaving Brazil for a life in captivity overseas.

In 1878, the Zoological Society of London at Regent’s Park had obtained a live bird for its collection from Paris. It died and so the zoo set out to get hold of a replacement. In November 1894, a second bird was procured for the Society by Walter Rothschild: that one lasted until 1900. A third was held at the London Zoo from June 1901 but expired after just a year. These individuals were among a steady trickle that by the late nineteenth century were being exported to meet a growing demand for live rare parrots. In common with other rare species, when these birds died they were often included in museum collections. Following the demise of the first Zoological Society specimen, its skin was preserved and placed in the collection held by the British (now Natural History) Museum at Tring in Hertfordshire. The second London bird’s skin is now kept in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. And it wasn’t only the large zoological institutions like London that were interested in owning them. In late Victorian England, as in other parts of the world, aviculture was growing in popularity, and private bird collectors certainly knew of the Spix’s Macaw as a rare and desirable addition to a parrot fancier’s aviaries.

In the December 1897 issue of Avicultural Magazine, a journal for serious bird keepers, the Honourable and Reverend F. G. Dutton from Bibury in Gloucestershire wrote, ‘Have any of our members kept a Spix? I have seen only two – one that our zoo acquired some years ago from the Jardin d’Acclimatation [in Paris], and one bought by Mr Rothschild … They were both ill tempered: but as the first had a broken wing, it had probably been caught old. I was greatly tempted by the offer of one from Mr Cross the other day, but there are so many calls on a parson’s purse, that he cannot always treat himself to expensive parrots. I ought to have been keeper at the parrot-house in the zoo.’ Although he does not mention a price, it is clear that even in the late nineteenth century Spix’s Macaws were the preserve of the more discerning and wealthier bird collectors.

After Dutton had published his request for details on any Spix’s Macaws kept in Britain at that time, a Mr Henry Fulljames of Elmbourne Road in Balham, London, came forward. The Reverend soon paid Fulljames a visit at his house to view his parrot collection. Dutton wrote, ‘Lastly, the most interesting bird was the Spix’s Macaw … It was very tame and gentle, but not, as regards plumage, in the best of condition. I never can see a bird in rough plumage without longing to get it right. And so it has been arranged between Mr Fulljames and myself that I should have the Spix at Bibury, and try what a little outdoor life might do for it.’ Although Dutton had hatched an apparently foolproof plan to have a Spix’s Macaw for free, at least temporarily, Henry Fulljames’s housekeeper put an end to the scheme. She was very reluctant to lose sight of the Spix’s and the bird stayed where it was.

The Reverend persevered, however, and by September 1900 he had acquired a Spix’s Macaw of his own. ‘My Spix, which is really more a conure than a macaw, will not look at sop of any sort,’ he wrote, ‘except sponge cake given from one’s fingers, only drinks plain water and lives mainly on sunflower seed. It has hemp, millet, canary and peanuts but I do not think it eats much of any of them. It barks the branches of the tree where it is loose, and may eat the bark. It would very likely be all the better if it would eat bread and milk, as it might then produce some flight feathers, which it never yet has had.’ He later wrote that his Spix’s Macaw, which lived in his study, was learning to talk.

The Reverend Dutton was not the only one to wonder if Spix’s Macaw might not be closer to the conures than the other macaws. Conures are slender parrots with long tails. They are confined to the Americas and are mainly included in two genera: Aratinga and Pyrrhura. Several writers repeated Dutton’s conjecture, but given the many macaw-like characteristics of Cyanopsitta it is safer to assume that it is a macaw.

By the early twentieth century, Spix’s Macaws were well known among bird keepers, at least from books. In Butler’s 1909 Foreign Birds for Cage and Aviary, the author refers to the earlier published claims that Spix’s Macaws are bad-tempered birds. ‘As all bird keepers know well,’ Butler wrote, ‘it is impossible to be certain of the character of any species from the study of one or two examples only. Even in the case of birds which are generally ill tempered and malicious, amiable individuals may occasionally be met with. Moreover circumstances may alter cases, and a Parrot chained by the leg to a stand may be excused for being more morose than one in a roomy cage.’ Butler, in common with previous commentators, remarked that Spix’s Macaws were extremely rare.

Another famous aviculturist in the early part of the twentieth century was the Marquis of Tavistock. In his book on Parrots and Parrot-like Birds in Aviculture published in the 1920s, he remarked that, ‘This rather attractive little blue macaw was formerly extremely rare, but a few have been brought over during recent years. It is not noisy, is easily tamed and sometimes makes a fair talker. There seems to be little information as to its ability to stand cold or as to its behaviour in mixed company, but it is probably neither delicate nor spiteful … In the living bird the feathers of the head and neck stand out in a curious fashion, giving a peculiar and distinctive appearance.’

While birds occasionally turned up in collections, attempts to find Spix’s Macaws in the wild were repeatedly frustrated. In 1927, Ernst Kaempfer had been in the field with his wife collecting birds in eastern Brazil for two years. Although the Kaempfers had managed to ship some 3,500 bird specimens back to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Spix’s Macaw still eluded them.

Following a search on the north shore of the river São Francisco near to Juàzeiro, Kaempfer wrote that

The region is one of the ugliest we have seen on the whole trip. No forest or anything alike; the vegetation is a low underbrush and open camp where grass only grows. The river is very large here forming on both shores large strips of swamp; the latter ones without any particular bird life besides small Ardeidae [heron family] and common rails. Owing to the character of the country the collection we could make was small only. All questions about Cyanopsitta Spixii that Spix discovered here a hundred years ago were fruitless, nobody knew anything about such a parrot.

The only Spix’s Macaw that Kaempfer was able to track down was a captive one that he saw at Juàzeiro railway station, another bird taken locally from the wild and about to embark by train on the first leg of a journey to lead a life in distant and obscure captivity.

In the early twentieth century, the only certainty surrounding Spix’s Macaw was its scarcity. As Carl Hellmayr, an Austrian naturalist studying the birds of South America with the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, put it in 1929: it is ‘one of the great rarities among South American parrots’. Indeed, during the entire first half of the century, the only other possible record of the species in the wild, apart from Reiser’s in 1903, was a vague mention from Piauí before 1938.³ This report, from the extreme south of the dry and remote state, was in an area of deciduous woodlands that comprises a transition zone between the arid caatinga and the more lush savannas of central Brazil.

The species was not heard from again in the wild until the 1970s. Various collectors and zoos however owned Spix’s Macaws. Living birds were exported from Brazil to a wide variety of final destinations. Several went to the United States, where one was for example kept in the Chicago Zoo from 1928 for nearly twenty years. Others finished up in the UK, where several private collectors and zoos, such as Paignton in Devon and Mossley Hill in Liverpool, kept them. In all, there were up to seven in the UK in the 1930s. At least one was kept in Ulster during the late 1960s; a recording of this bird’s call is in the British Library of Wildlife Sounds. Spix’s Macaws were also kept in The Netherlands at Rotterdam Zoo and in Germany. One spent some time at the Vienna Zoo during the 1920s, while at least a pair had been imported to Portugal from Paraguay.

Spix’s Macaws were also supplied to collectors in Brazil itself and at least one was successful in breeding them. During the 1950s a parrot collector called Alvaro Carvalhães obtained one from a local merchant and managed to borrow another from a friend. They fortunately formed a breeding pair – by no means a foregone conclusion with fickle parrots – and after several breeding attempts young were reared. Carvalhães built up a breeding stock of four pairs that between them produced twenty hatchlings. One of these later finished up in the Naples Zoo. The rest remained in Brazil where they were split up with another breeder, Carvalhães’s friend and neighbour, Ulisses Moreira. The birds began to die one by one as time passed, but the final blow that finished off Moreira’s macaws was a batch of sunflower seeds contaminated with agricultural pesticides. This killed most of the parrots in the collection, including his Spix’s Macaws.

Although there was evidently a continuing flow of wild-caught Spix’s Macaws during the 1970s to meet international demand in bird-collecting circles, the openness with which collectors declared the ownership of such rare creatures sharply declined in the late 1960s. At that point, the trade in such birds was attracting the attention of agencies and governments who were increasingly concerned about the impact of trapping and trade on rare species.

Brazil banned the export of its native wildlife in 1967⁴ and the Spix’s Macaw became further prohibited in international trade under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 1975.⁵ With effect from 1 July that year, all international commercial trade in Spix’s Macaws between countries that had ratified the Convention was illegal, except in cases where the birds were involved in official captive-breeding programmes, or were being transferred for approved educational or scientific purposes.

This new legal protection didn’t stop the trade, however; it simply forced it underground. To the extent that the trafficking was increasingly secret, the volume of commerce and the final destinations for birds being captured was unknown to anyone but a few dealers, trappers and rare parrot collectors. Despite the increasingly clandestine exploitation of wild Spix’s Macaws and a near-total absence of details about its impact, it was becoming ever more clear that the species must be in danger of extinction in the wild. The blue parrot first collected by Spix would come to symbolise a bitter irony: people’s obsessive fascination with parrots was paradoxically wiping them out.

3 Parrot Fashion

Parrots are surprisingly like people and can bring out both the best and worst in humans. From love and loyalty to greed and jealousy, the human qualities of parrots can provoke the most basic of our human responses in their keepers. Perhaps that is why for centuries parrots have been our closest and most cherished avian companions.

There are hundreds of kinds of parrot. The smallest are the tiny pygmy parrots of New Guinea that weigh in at just 10 grams – about the size of a wren or kinglet. These minuscule parrots creep like delicate animated jewellery along the trunks and branches of trees in the dense, dark rainforests of New Guinea. The heaviest parrot, the rotund nocturnal Kakapo (Strigops habroptilis) of New Zealand, grows up to 300 times larger. These great flightless parrots, camouflaged so they resemble a huge ball of moss, can weigh up to 3 kilos.⁶

Some parrots are stocky with short tails, others elegant with long flowing plumes. The smaller slender ones with long tails are often known as parakeets (the budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulata, is one), while it is the stouter birds that most people would generally recognise as ‘parrots’. The mainly white ones with prominent crests are called cockatoos and the large gaudy South American ones with long tails macaws. Despite this remarkable diversity, all of them are instantly recognisable, even to lay people, as members of the same biological family. The unique hooked bill, and feet, with two toes facing forwards and two backwards, identify them straight away.

Where the parrots came from is a baffling biological question. Many different ancestries have been suggested, including distant relationships with birds as diverse as pigeons, hawks and toucans. Even with modern genetic techniques it has not been possible to unravel the ancestral relationships between parrots and other modern birds. What is known, however, is that parrot-like birds have been around for a very long time.

The oldest parrot is known from a fossil found by a Mr S. Vincent in 1978 at Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, England. The tiny fragile clues that these diminutive birds ever existed were painstakingly investigated by scientists who identified the species as ‘new’: they named the creature Pulchrapollia gracilis. ‘Pulchrapollia’ translates literally as ‘beautiful Polly’, and ‘gracilis’ means slender.

This ancient parrot was small and delicate – not much larger than a modern-day budgie. Its remains were found in Early Eocene London Clay deposits dated at about 55.4 million years old. More remarkable than even this great antiquity is the suggestion that parrots might have been around even earlier. A fossil bird found in the Lance Formation in Wyoming in the USA might be a parrot too. If it is, it would demonstrate the presence of such birds in the Late Cretaceous, more than 65 million years ago, thereby confirming that parrots coexisted with the animals they are ultimately descended from: the dinosaurs. Awesome antiquity indeed.⁷ To place this ancestry in perspective, the earliest modern humans (Homo sapiens) are believed to have appeared only about 200,000 years ago.

Across the aeons of biological time since the first parrots appeared, the group has evolved into one of the world’s largest bird families. Of the 350 or so species of parrot known today, some are widespread, others confined to tiny areas. In either case, most species are found in the warm tropical latitudes. Some do, however, brave freezing temperatures in high mountains in the tropics, for example the high Andes, or extend into cooler temperate areas, such as New Zealand and southern South America. The Austral Conure (Enicognathus ferrugineus) for example toughs out a living in the raw cool climate of Tierra del Fuego, while the Antipodes Parakeet (Cyanoramphus unicolor) occupies the windswept outpost of Antipodes Island and neighbouring rugged islets in the Pacific well to the south of New Zealand. The Andean Parakeet (Bolborhynchus orbygnesius) has been recorded on the high montane grasslands at over 6,000 metres in the high Andes.

The majority of the world’s parrot species are found today in South America, Australia and New Guinea. The single country with most species is Brazil: over seventy different kinds are known from there. In mainland Asia from Indochina to Pakistan and in Africa there are remarkably few. This uneven distribution appears to be linked to the break-up of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwanaland.⁸ Whether people have as yet documented the existence of all the living parrots is an open question. Three species of parrot new to science have been found since the late 1980s.⁹ All are from South America and amazingly have waited until the Space Age to be noticed, let alone studied.

Though we still know little of these birds’ place in nature, parrots have become uniquely familiar to humans and have been closely associated with people for centuries. The oldest document in the literature of the Indian subcontinent is the Rigveda, or Veda of the Stanzas, of about 1,400 BC. This ancient work, written in Sanskrit, remarks on the great fidelity of parrots and records how in the mythology of that time they were symbols of the moon.

The Ancient Greeks were also well aware of parrots. The historian and physician Ctesias travelled widely in the East in around 400 BC. As well as holding the great distinction of producing the first published account of unicorns, he also brought news to Europe of curious human-like birds kept by the natives in the lands he visited. Aristotle wrote some 100 years later about a parrot, but he may not have seen it himself because he described it, presumably on the strength of its hooked bill, as a kind of hawk.

During his conquests of the fourth century BC the Macedonian general Alexander the Great marched through Afghanistan to the Indus valley in modern-day Pakistan. There his men acquired parrots that were later brought home with their other spoils of war. Alexander was probably the first person to bring live parrots to Europe. They were medium-sized green parakeets marked with black on the face and with maroon patches on the wings. They had long tails and a shrill cry. They are today known as Alexandrine Parakeets (Psittacula eupatria).

After Alexander’s conquests, the expansion of trade between the Greek city states and the Orient ensured that Europeans would soon become more familiar with parrots. In the second century BC the earliest known picture of a parrot was produced in a mosaic at the ancient Greek city of Pergamum.

The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote in 50 BC about parrots he had seen in Syria. Since no parrot is native to that country today, they were most likely imported; probably from Africa. In AD 50 Pliny described parrots that he said were discovered by explorers sent to Egypt. Although these birds are not known to occur naturally in Egypt now, they might have been imported from the savannas beyond the desert, or it might have been that the desert was less extensive than it is today. Other accounts of the same birds gave their origin as India. Since there is only one parrot in the world that has a natural distribution that embraces both Africa and India it is very likely that these birds were Ring-necked Parakeets (Psittacula krameri). This species is one of the most widespread, adaptable and common parrots in the world today, and has a long history of living with people.

Ring-necked Parakeets were, for example, prized in Ancient Rome where they were kept as pets. So valuable did they become that they were often sold for more than the price of a human slave. Demand was intense, so a brisk trade built up with birds brought into Europe in large numbers. They were kept in ornate cages made from silver and decorated with ivory and tortoiseshell. Noblemen carried the birds through the streets of Rome as a colourful accessory. The statesman and philosopher Marcus Cato wrote, ‘Oh, wretched Rome! What times are these that women should feed dogs upon their laps and men should carry parrots on their hands.’ Some parrots, however, found a less fortunate fate in Rome. During the rule of Emperor Heliogabalus from 222 to 205 BC they became a table delicacy. Not only that but they were fed to his lions too, along with peacocks.

With the decline of Rome and its excesses, parrot keeping faded in Europe. A few Ring-necked Parakeets made it back with Crusaders and merchants during the Middle Ages and Marco Polo came across cockatoos in India, although they are not native to the Subcontinent and presumably had made their way there on the trade routes from further east. Today the most westerly distributed naturally occurring cockatoos are found in islands in the Moluccan Sea and in the Philippines. French sailors also found African Grey Parrots (Psittacus erithacus) in the Canary Islands. They had been imported there from West Africa. These parrots were found to be excellent talkers and by the middle of the fifteenth century a steady flow of birds to the islands had been established from Portuguese trading posts along the African coast.

Popular, colourful and in short supply, parrots once again became expensive status symbols. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – the great age of exploration – the fact that parrots were fashionable, in big demand and valuable meant that sailors travelling to new lands in tropical latitudes were on the look-out for them.

When Columbus returned to Seville in 1493 from his first expedition to the Caribbean, the parrots he brought back were displayed at his ceremonial reception. He had obtained the birds from natives who had tamed them. A pair was presented to his royal patron, Queen Isabella of Castile. These parrots were probably the species of bird from the genus Amazona that remains native to Cuba and the Bahamas today, the Cuban Amazon or Cuban Parrot (Amazona leucocephala).

As the Conquistadors pressed their explorations throughout the islands and deeper into the mainlands of Central and South America, they found the practice of taming and keeping parrots was commonplace among the local populations. There is every reason to believe that the indigenous peoples of the tropics have kept parrots for thousands of years, and certainly for a lot longer than Europeans, a practice that many tribal societies continue to this day. Forest dwelling peoples with an intimate knowledge of their surroundings took the colourful birds to the heart of their culture where they became prized and revered possessions. Small-scale collecting by indigenous people for local trade was, however, very different from the approach of the Europeans. The foreigners had wholeheartedly embarked on their globalisation adventure and wanted volume supplies for the mass markets back home.

The parrots and the forest people were to have a lot in common. One was to face biological oblivion, the other cultural genocide. There is a story from 1509 in which the tame parrots belonging to local villages raised the alarm about an impending attack. Perched in the trees and on huts around a village, the birds screamed and shouted at the approach of Spanish soldiers, thereby enabling the local population to escape from their assailants into the forest. But the alliance of birds and ‘Stone Age’ humans was no match for muskets and axes. They did not resist the might of the colonial powers for long. The birds and the forests were soon victims of an unprecedented age of plunder.

In the 1500s the plumage of brightly coloured birds became fashionable for personal ornamentation. Taxes levied on the Indian populations recently subjugated by European armies were partly paid in macaw feathers. The long plumes of these birds were naturally collectable, desirable, exotic and beautiful. European consumers wanted them and would pay handsomely. Feathers were one thing, whole birds quite another. As the voyages of novelty-hungry explorers penetrated more and more remote localities, so the variety of parrots brought home increased. In 1501, Portuguese sailors brought the first macaws back to Europe from Brazil. The birds were known to the local people as ‘macauba’ and were probably Scarlet Macaws (Ara macao). Such birds were to become among the most desirable of all parrots to cage and own. Later on, a blue one would also enter the trade. That creature, the Spix’s Macaw, would become the most valuable of all.

In 1505 parrots were imported to England. They were an instant success and became fashionable accessories, at least for the better off. In addition to his six wives, Henry VIII kept one (an African Grey) at Hampton Court. A portrait of William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham, with his family painted in the middle 1500s hangs at Longleat House in Wiltshire, England. It portrays a family dressed in typical Tudor clothes seated around a meal table. A parrot stands among the dishes of food. It looks like some species of amazon but is not any bird we know today.

Being vegetarian and able to thrive on a diet of seeds and fruits,¹⁰ parrots could endure the long sea voyages that would kill most insectivorous birds. The trade became more regular and grew increasingly lucrative as the birds’ popularity soared. The establishment of Portuguese and Dutch colonies in Asia would soon ensure a supply of birds from the East too.

Mass-produced metal cages meant that the birds became more widespread in captivity as the ever-expanding supply of wild parrots brought down prices. When zoological gardens were opened in European cities during the nineteenth century, the cheeky, colourful parrots were an instant hit with the public. London Zoo was the first scientific zoological garden in the modern world. It was founded in 1828 and opened its gates on the fringes of the green expanse of Regent’s Park as a means to fund the scientific work of the London Zoological Society. Parrots were a big draw; so a special building, the Parrot House, was opened.

The red-brick Parrot House at the Zoo today is an essential part of the gardens’ character and stands as a monument to the popularity of parrots during Britain’s imperial age. Many of the parrots that have passed through there are among the rarest, most beautiful and coveted creatures in the world. Spix’s Macaws were fleetingly among them, but in an age when the fragility of our world was undreamt of, little or no thought would have been spared for the precariousness of these birds’ existence.

In those times, the complete disappearance of entire species through collecting must have seemed a most unlikely prospect. During this colonial age in which collecting was obsessive, the accumulation of animals would not have seemed very different from amassing, cataloguing and displaying inanimate objects. Today we know better. While our forebears took precautions to safeguard paintings, statues and other works of art for posterity, they could not fully understand the implications of hoarding these precious living creatures.

Even though the individual feathered treasures could not be preserved indefinitely, the rise of zoological gardens contributed to the growing familiarity and popularity of parrots to the point where such birds gradually took on symbolic values. Parrots came to stand for exotic places, tropical forests, colour and intelligence. These aspects of the birds’ appeal was in turn ruthlessly exploited by advertising and marketing executives.

The earliest example of parrots being used for sales purposes was in ancient India where high-class prostitutes carried a parrot on their wrists in order to advertise their profession. In the age of the mass media these birds have reached vast audiences to sell a wide array of products. One television advertisement had an amazon parrot playing the role of a talkative companion to a pirate. This was to sell rumflavoured chocolate.

Other parrots appeared in promotions for fruit drinks and tropical holidays, while a major British food retailer in 2001 adopted the ‘Blue Parrot Café’ brand for a range of children’s foods, featuring a blue macaw chosen for its friendliness and intelligence, and the sharp eyes it would need to select the very best ingredients. Gaudy Scarlet Macaws are the symbol of a Central American airline based in El Salvador: the fact that such birds are now extinct in that country has not deterred the marketing people. For obvious reasons, parrots have also repeatedly featured in promotions for telecommunications and copier products. This promotional use of parrots further elevated their popular familiarity. Inadvertently, it also further stimulated demand for the birds as pets.

Today, a large majority of the world’s different species of parrot are held somewhere in captivity. One estimate is that between 50 and 60 million of them are kept worldwide. Hundreds of parrot, parakeet, cockatoo and macaw clubs and societies exist for enthusiasts. They have hundreds of thousands of members drawn from the many millions who keep parrots of some sort.

The most widespread parrot in captivity today is the humble budgie. These pretty little green parakeets were first brought back from Australia in 1840 by John Gould, and since then have been effectively domesticated. The word budgerigar appears to be derived from the name given to the bird by Australia’s Aboriginal people. Budgies are probably the commonest pets after dogs and cats and have been bred in captivity for hundreds of generations into a variety of colour variants, including white, blue and yellow.

It wasn’t of course simply the convenience of parrots’ ability to tolerate long sea voyages that led to their popularity in captivity. Of the thousands of bird species alive today, it is remarkable how one group, the parrots, has so clearly emerged as being our most popular and valuable feathered companion. Animal traders and pet shops seldom stock seagulls, herons or thrushes; beautiful as these birds are, there is little or no demand for them as pets.

One reason why parrots are so hugely engaging compared with most other birds is that they can manipulate objects. In their natural forest homes, parrots clamber through foliage using their beak like a grappling hook or third foot swinging in all directions to reach the finest fruit, nectar and seed delicacies at the tips of even the thinnest twigs. Once they have procured their favoured feast, they need great dexterity in manipulating tricky food items with their feet, bill and fleshy prehensile tongues.

This acrobatic ability and ‘hand’ to eye coordination makes these birds’ behaviour instantly charming to dextrous humans who can see aspects of themselves in the brightly coloured and inquisitive birds. And, like people, individual parrots show a distinct preference in the use of one or other of their reptile-like feet for manipulating objects. One study of South American Brown-throated Conures (Aratinga pertinax) revealed that about half habitually used their right foot and half the left.

On top of this though, surely the principal reason why we find parrots so irresistible is because of their ability to copy the human voice. From earliest times, the capacity of parrots to ‘talk’ has fascinated us. After thousands of years, it is still their most famed and demanded attribute. The talent for mimicry has impressed people down the ages. Parrots were, for example, allocated roles in various Indian fables and plays. The Hindu sex manual the Kama Sutra sets out no fewer than 64 achievements that a man must strive for – one was to teach a parrot to talk. Four centuries before Christ it was perhaps more surprising for Ctesias’s European readers to learn of a bird that could talk than the mythical one-horned unicorn that he wrote about. His writings in Indica about a Blossom-headed Parakeet (Psittacula roseata) he saw in the East included an account of its abilities in copying the human voice. The bird belonged to an apothecary he had met on his travels, and Ctesias said it ‘could speak an Indian language or Greek, if it had been taught to do so’. Pliny’s description of parrots included the observation that they ‘conducted clear conversations and that, in order to teach them to speak, they must be given a few raps with a small stick on the head, which is as hard as their beak’.

Although in Ancient Rome it was often the responsibility of the household slave to teach the parrot to talk, professional parrot teachers offered a service too. Presumably this skilled job would have been well paid and highly regarded. Certainly the best modern-day animal trainers who teach animals to perform in zoos and for film and television shows can earn a good living. But being trained by a professional teacher to be a good talker didn’t guarantee a long and comfortable life in captivity. The tongues of talking parrots were eaten as a cure for speech impediments.

Later on, parrots like African Greys that could talk very well were revered in Europe. It was believed by the Roman Church that these birds’ ability to speak elevated them in the hierarchy of creation. A parrot belonging to a Venetian Cardinal undoubtedly reinforced this impression; his bird could faultlessly repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Although today we use the phrase ‘parrot fashion’ as a derogatory figure of speech to denote unthinking repetition, modern science has recently suggested that the medieval Church might in fact have had a point. It seems that parrots don’t simply copy: they use words to communicate specific meanings.

One famous African Grey Parrot called Alex has worked for years with American psychologist Irene Pepperberg. Alex has been intensively trained under laboratory conditions to use sounds in relation to their meaning and as a form of communication with people. Alex has demonstrated an ability to use words to describe dozens of objects, colours and materials and uses commands such as ‘come here’ or ‘I want’. Alex has also begun to communicate with words that he has not been taught but overheard and put into the correct context. He also picked up the idea of ‘no’ – a conceptual breakthrough. He would say ‘no’ to his keepers when he wanted to be left alone. Although a long way from being able to hold conversations, Alex does interact with people via human speech.

Pepperberg’s work suggests that parrots, like people, are biologically primed to learn, socialise and communicate. It seems that in common with human children, parrots need to learn from their peers and elders which sounds are significant and worth remembering. The fact that this kind of social learning goes on in the wild is demonstrated by the fact that different flocks of parrots develop their own ‘dialects’. These ‘language’ differences have emerged in studies of geographically isolated populations of parrots and show how their use of sound is not instinctive but learned and cultural. In captivity, where the parrot’s normal feathered companions are instead replaced by human ‘flock members’, the significant sounds are the ones ‘taught’ by people or which seem to elicit a strong response from their human companions. Since the sound of a telephone or the beep of a microwave oven sends the owner (flock member) running to them, these sounds acquire importance and the parrot will therefore reproduce them.¹¹

Alex’s achievements in mastering aspects of human communication are quite staggering. It is worth considering that while parrots have learned our language, we humans have so far failed to communicate with these birds in the whistles, squeaks and squawks that comprise their native tongues. It is also worth dwelling for a moment on the question of who is mimicking whom. The next time a parrot says ‘hello’ and you return the greeting, remind yourself who said it first. There is every impression that some parrots seek attention by talking to people. They use the words that experience has shown them will get a response. The bird says ‘hello’, the human responds. Following this most human-like introduction, the bird acquires the social contact, attention and stimulation it craves. Most people can identify with that.

Despite parrots’ legendary ability to talk, it is remarkable how little is understood of their use of sound in the wild. It was not until 1993, for example, that there was firm evidence of vocal mimicry of wild African Grey Parrots.¹² What does seem ever clearer, however, is that their sophisticated use of sounds is more than simply an ability to duplicate. It appears to be a reflection of these birds’ capacity to process and exchange information and is linked to their behavioural and mental flexibility.

One reason parrots need such mental abilities is because, like people, they are social animals. Their brains and instincts are those of creatures that interact at an individual level. Most species live in flocks, at least outside the breeding season. Throughout the year and especially when they are nesting, individual parrots maintain a strong bond with their partner. What goes on in their minds, what emotional dimension there is to the bond between pairs of birds, we can only guess at. Like people, however, it seems that the attachment between a pair goes very deep. Where ‘love’ meets instinct we cannot know, but considering the intelligence of parrots we should not rule out the possibility that an emotional state comparable to that found in humans might bind pairs of these birds together.

Many species pair for life and will only change partners if theirs dies. The pair bond is reinforced by various behaviours including mutual preening and feeding. This aspect of their make-up explains why in most species males and females are similar in size and colour. Sexual dimorphism is most marked in mammals and birds where the males are polygamous and compete with one another for the attentions of several females. In monogamous breeding systems the need to show off with bright plumes and displays is less necessary and for that reason (in the majority of parrots) the sexes look alike. A close bond has great value. Birds that have bred together generally get better at it as time goes by. Rather like first-time human parents, new pairs of parrots can get into difficulties while older and more experienced birds appear to cope much better. Some species might also benefit from a close monogamous relationship in being instantly ready to breed when conditions permit. Many parrots have no defined nesting season and begin their breeding cycle when conditions are suitable; some of the Australian grass parakeets are notable in this respect. The budgerigar for example quickly nests after unpredictable rains, when it lays up to eight eggs. The birds wander in search of areas where rain has fallen and are triggered into breeding condition when such an area is located. The chicks mature fast and leave the nest after only a month. The establishment of a year-round monogamous pair bond is an advantage under these conditions as it saves time when the unpredictable rains fall. The search for a partner and the formalities of courtship are dispensed with and any possible delay in the birds’ ability to make the most of abundant food to feed their chicks is avoided. Again, an advantage that many people will identify with.

Even when the birds are forced to be less sociable and to spread out to take advantage of widely scattered nesting sites or food sources, in most species of parrot the family group forms a tight social unit. When the young fledge from the nest they fly with their parents to learn the feeding techniques and skills of vigilance and predator recognition and avoidance they will need to survive.

In their various levels of social organisation, there are hierarchies, peer groups, families and breeding partners. To cope with such a complex social environment parrots must recognise individuals and know their place in the social order. That in turn requires memory, an ability to learn and to communicate. And such abilities are of premium value to creatures that live a long time. The longer they live, the more they can learn. Longer-lived birds can pass on more information and wisdom to their offspring, thereby improving the young birds’ chances of survival in the unforgiving world of the forest.

Parrots are almost legendary for their longevity. There are many stories of parrots living in excess of 100 years and of birds that have become family heirlooms passed down between generations. Certainly there are birds that have been in families for many years, but the oldest documented birds have not lived beyond their sixties.¹³ By the time macaws reach their fifties they often have cataracts, arthritis and are approaching senility. Some other birds live for a long time, members of the albatross family for example,¹⁴ but the longevity of parrots is quite exceptional nonetheless.

Their human-like traits give parrots a unique personality and character. What other birds have so consistently managed to grab tabloid newspaper headlines? There have been stories of parrots that wolf-whistle at blondes, about a parrot that swore at wild birds when it got stuck up a tree in the garden, the parrot who told the firemen to rescue him before putting the fire out and the ship’s mascot that yelled ‘arse’ and ‘bollocks’ from a cupboard during an important speech by the Admiral and told the rating to ‘fuck off’ when asked to be quiet. There was another story about a parrot that telephoned the police when its owner was locked out.

Tens of millions of years of quite separate evolutionary advance lies between people and parrots. Yet the psychology of these birds and humans has uniquely converged. They are the most human-like of birds, which has made them irresistible to human curiosity. And the appeal seems to go both ways. Not only can parrots build long-term relationships with other parrots, but also with other long-lived sociable creatures – people.

Rosemary Low knows all about that. She has kept parrots for more than forty years. Starting with budgies when she was twelve, Low progressed from there to larger and more demanding species. She has a vast published literature to her name, including a seminal work on the care and breeding of parrots printed in three editions.¹⁵ She has looked after some of the world’s largest parrot collections and has an impressive track record of breeding the birds in captivity. In the early 1960s at sixteen, she acquired an African Grey via a friend’s father who was a bank manager in Nigeria. She says it was her first real parrot and gave her many insights into the challenges of keeping the birds in captivity.

Low believes that parrots’ ability to mimic human sounds and to interact emotionally with people has been their downfall.

This is why the African Grey is so popular, but it is a tragedy. They are among the most sensitive birds and there is probably no parrot species less suited to a life in captivity. They have so many behavioural problems when caged. You practically need a degree in psychology to understand grey parrots. They are very clever birds. Like cockatoos they soon learn to manipulate people. The owners can’t cope with them any more so they get passed on from one place to another. It would be like a child finding itself in a new home every eighteen months or so. If it was a person it would be enough for it to end up in a psychiatric hospital.

Captive-bred parrots make better companions but cost at least twice as much. Until very recently there was little interest in breeding the likes of the more common species of amazon parrots, cockatoos or macaws for the pet market because they were so cheap and readily available from the wild. And costs aside, captive breeding is not as straightforward as it sounds.

With the larger and more intelligent parrots in particular, one of the main issues in captive breeding is compatibility. As is the case with humans, it is not sufficient to put a male and female parrot together and expect them to produce and rear young. A pair of birds randomly selected by human keepers can sit together for years and do nothing but, if provided with a partner they like, will nest immediately. Although it can be worth leaving birds together for a period to see if they will finally accept one another, placing parrots with incompatible partners can also lead to stress and emotional damage – something else people can relate to.

The natural commitment to one partner can translate into close relationships with their human keepers and has given pet parrots a reputation for devotion, faithfulness and affection. But the fact that parrots choose who they will or will not bond with can also be a source of disappointment for parrot owners. Having bought a bird, the new keeper can sometimes find that it decides to bond with another member of the human family or a friend. And parrots can also demonstrate fierce jealousy in taking a dislike to individuals whom they regard as competitors for the affections of their ‘partners’. Such selective bonding and expression of choice leads Low to believe that parrots are capable of almost human emotions.

The combination of this human-like emotional sophistication, an instinct for loyalty, the ability to mimic speech – and even to communicate with words – added to their astonishing and vivid beauty, has paradoxically proved a curse to the parrots. The range and depth of their attractions have made some species immensely valuable financially.

A large part of the problem is that parrots are highly collectable. Reminiscent of stamps, antiquarian books and paintings, there are lots of different kinds and several subsets for individual collectors to specialise in. Once the human obsession for rarity is added to the list of attractions in demand, then a lethal combination emerges: not least because one effect of scarcity is to escalate demand. This pushes up prices, leading to more trapping and then more scarcity. This market vortex has sucked down some species to the very brink of extinction.

Although most rare parrots are protected from trade under international law, as well as in most cases national legislation in the countries were they are found, the clandestine traffic in rare birds flourishes. Parrots are today part of an illegal trade in wildlife that ranks second in value only to the multibillion-dollar clandestine drugs and arms markets.

Even though the rarest and most protected kinds must often be kept in secret for fear of detection by the authorities, for the collectors there is still the irresistible allure of possessing birds that other people in your circle do not. The parallels with stolen works of art are surely apposite. The ‘owners’ enjoy the bird’s beauty and uniqueness with the added kick of exclusive control of an object passionately sought and admired by others. The fact that other clandestine collectors know (or believe) that you have it adds further to the attraction. This is a shadowy world of rumour, double-dealing and half-truths.

For some of the leading parrot collectors the challenge of breeding is important. Many also rationalise a conservation motive into their passion for rare birds, and in this respect a minority are sincere. But in the end it is rarity that is the sharpest spur. As in Ancient Rome, parrots are potent symbols of civilisation, wealth and high living; they remain in demand as expensive accessories of rich and powerful men. In this close-knit world, birds like Spix’s Macaws are the epitome of quality and grace; they are in the realm of the true elite.

At this end of the market, large sums of money change hands. Many thousands of dollars are routinely paid for a single rare parrot. But even though the resale value of birds and their offspring can be considerable, for the majority of these specialists cash is not the primary motivation. Some collectors spend fortunes on their parrot-keeping facilities and there is no way they could regain their costs from the sale of birds. A small number are much more businesslike and breed rare parrots on a commercial basis.

And where there is valuable property and jealousy, there is theft. Rare parrots are frequently stolen from their owners. The rarest and most endangered parrots are most at risk. Puerto Rican Parrots (Amazona vittata) are one of the most endangered of all species. Some of these birds are kept in breeding aviaries run by the US Government at the Luquillo National Forest on their native island. In April 2001 bird thieves broke in and took several birds despite the careful attention of the biologists who had been working for decades to save them from extinction.

Until as recently as the late 1980s, the effect of trapping on many of the rare and collectable species in the wild was unknown. The driving force behind the demand for the birds was rarity in captivity. Parrots weren’t considered as real wild birds with natural habitats. So familiar a commodity had they become to the collectors that the idea of them disappearing from their native forests was not seriously considered. Even when the obvious rarity of some parrots was acknowledged and the impact of trapping logically seen as a threat, most enthusiasts denied they were connected to the plight of parrots in the wild. Collectors preferred to blame poor farmers clearing forests or developing-country governments rather than face the consequences of their own obsession.

But by the end of the twentieth century it was clear that many of the main target species taken for the elite collectors’ market were getting into serious trouble. They now comprised some of the rarest and most endangered birds in the world. Many of the worst-affected species occupied tiny ranges in the wild, often only a single small island.

When the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) came into force in 1975 (see page 34), thereby banning trade in some of the most threatened parrots, the smugglers tried every means possible to circumvent the treaty’s protective measures. Rare parrot laundering via countries with more open borders or less strict regulations, document falsification, disguising rare species as common ones and straightforward smuggling all occurred and still do.

Even in countries that had the will to enforce the Convention, the means used by the traders to evade detection grew ever more sophisticated. Parrots are packed inside sections of drainpipe, hidden inside vehicles’ spare tyres and put in plastic bottles to smuggle them past customs officials. Rare parrot eggs are taken on planes strapped against the body of smugglers to keep them warm, hatched in incubators, the babies hand-reared and the birds sold on for a fortune. Where detection of smuggling in some places has improved, the trade routes have shifted to exploit the next weakest point of entry.¹⁶

During the second half of the 1980s, the scale of the disaster about to overtake the world’s most familiar and popular birds finally became clear. One man was devoting his working life to the matter: Dr Nigel Collar at the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP), a network of bird conservation groups from around the world headquartered at Cambridge in England.¹⁷ He had been writing about endangered birds for years and was the world expert on the subject. Collar had accumulated a vast global network of museum curators, academics and ornithologists who helped him piece together a picture of what was happening to the world’s fast-disappearing birds.

The results of this sifting through old manuscripts, field reports and collections, was the compilation of so-called Red Data Books. Collar’s great tomes systematically set out the situation faced by individual endangered species so that action to save them could be properly directed and prioritised. Basing his research on the collections and journals of the early natural history explorers like Spix and Martius, the fieldwork of top ornithologists and bird records compiled by different societies and academic bodies, Collar coordinated research that in 1988 led to the publication of Birds to Watch. It showed that more than one thousand species of bird out of a total of about ten thousand were in danger of disappearing for good.

One family was doing worse than any others – the parrots. Some 71 out of the 350 known species were then listed as at risk of extinction. Collar found that the principal reasons for this catastrophic decline were collection of birds for the pet and collector markets and destruction of the birds’ forest homes.¹⁸

Collar’s findings demanded that there was a change in the one-sided relationship between people and parrots. Hundreds of years of trapping and deforestation had taken their toll: there wasn’t much time to spare. Some of the most beautiful parrots were already at the very brink of extinction; for them the endgame was now in play. Just a few last moves were left as a final prelude to more than 50 million years of evolutionary memory being wiped away for good.

The group of parrots nearest to the edge was the blue macaws. Once seen in the flesh it is obvious why this group of spectacular blue parrots above all others should attract special attention from the trappers, dealers and collectors. Outstanding among even the parrots for charisma, charm and visual impact, the blue macaws – Spix’s among them – have been doomed by their unique qualities to become one of humanity’s most prized possessions.

4 The Four Blues

Visitors to the Berlin Zoo in 1900 enjoyed a unique spectacle. The crowds filing past the cages didn’t know it, but they were the only people in history to have seen all four species of the spectacular blue macaw alive together. In addition to the rare Spix’s Macaw, captive Hyacinth, Glaucous and Lear’s Macaws were then held in the Berlin aviaries as well. All had been imported from South America. These highly coveted zoological treasures would never meet again.

Today, the three large and similar-looking blue macaws are included in the biological genus Anodorhynchus, the name coined by Spix. These macaws are larger than the Cyanopsitta macaw first collected by Spix. They also differ from Spix’s in having a proportionately larger bill and curious patches of bare yellow skin at the base of the beak and around the eyes. The function of the bright startling highlights is unknown but could be to aid recognition, some form of adornment that is important for bonding and breeding or a means to reduce their temperature when the birds get too hot.

The large, black, hooked bill of the Anodorhynchus macaws is uniquely adapted for eating the fruits of various palms. The largest nuts eaten by the largest species, the Hyacinth Macaw, are about the size of a golf ball. Even with a big hammer or heavy-duty bench vice, it is impossible for a person to break them open. The macaws are, however, experts. They rotate the nuts in their bill manipulating where necessary with tongue and foot to place the tough objects in exactly the correct positioning for peeling. Once they have removed the tough external skin, the birds make perfect transverse cuts with the heavy square chisel at the cutting edge of the lower half of the bill that enables them to split the nuts in two. Inside is the prize, a nutritious fatty kernel.

As the palm trees evolved tougher and tougher shells to prevent their seeds being eaten, so the big blue macaws advanced a larger bill to crack them. And so it went on: an ecological arms race that produced surely the most impressive of all bird bills. Remarkably, the huge and powerful bill of these macaws is rarely used in anger. Despite having the potential to remove fingers easily, the birds are the gentle giants of the parrot world.

Fieldworkers studying Hyacinth Macaws have described the effect of their work on palm nuts as resembling that of a machine tool or laser rather than that of a bird’s bill. Once opened, the coconut-like flesh of the nut is crushed into a paste that the birds find absolutely irresistible. Hyacinth Macaws are clever when it comes to cracking such tough nuts. One German aviculturist noticed that when his macaws were given Acrocomia nuts brought home from a visit to South America the birds used small pieces of wood to help grip the fruits firmly in their beaks. His macaws would shave a small piece of wood 3–4 millimetres long from their perch, position it inside the upper half of their bill and use it as a wedge to keep the smooth nuts in place for easier opening.

These 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 they had dug out of the cliffs in order to lay down their brood, or perched on the hanging branches of trees which crowned the banks.’

Other reports of these birds, or reports of parrots that might have been Glaucous Macaws, during the middle part of the nineteenth century, were few and far between. After 1860 no new wild specimens were added to museums and only a very few were procured by European zoos. There were three in the Amsterdam Zoo during the 1860s, several in Hamburg and Antwerp Zoos during the 1870s and 1880s respectively, two in London between 1886 and 1912, one in Berlin from 1892 to the early twentieth century and one in Paris from 1895 to 1905. Another one was reportedly kept in the Buenos Aires Zoo until as late as 1936, but was said to be an old bird that was by then forty-five.

From the early twentieth century, even reports of captive Glaucous Macaws became less frequent, while reports of birds in the wild virtually come to an end. Indeed, after 1900 there were only two records that may have been of living wild birds, one from Uruguay in 1950 where a single bird was seen on a fence post, and another from Paraná in Brazil in the 1960s, where locals said they lived in the steep banks that flanked the Iguazu River. The locality where the macaw on the fence post was seen was later turned over to a eucalyptus plantation. They were not reported again on the Iguazu. By the late 1970s, the Glaucous Macaw seemed to be extinct.

Then in June 1991 a British newspaper made the remarkable claim that parrot breeder and collector Harry Sissen had a Glaucous Macaw among the birds he kept at his farm in Yorkshire, England. As it turned out, the claim was wrong. It was a similar-looking but quite different species, a Lear’s Macaw. But the report was one among persistent and continuing rumours that birds still existed in the wild and were still being supplied to bird collectors in the USA, Brazil and Europe. Another parrot enthusiast who was more concerned for the birds’ conservation was Tony Pittman. He believed the Glaucous Macaw could still exist and decided to go and look for it.

Pittman had been interested in parrots for years and his special enthusiasm was for the blue macaws. He and his associate Joe Cuddy planned to trace the routes of the explorers, naturalists and writers who visited South America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They used research assembled by endangered bird expert Nigel Collar to find all the manuscripts and early accounts of the Glaucous Macaw that they could lay their hands on.

The firm records formed a circle covering Corrientes and Misiones Provinces in north-east Argentina, Artigas Province in north-west Uruguay and portions of the southernmost states of Brazil. Collar was convinced that the species might yet survive, and Pittman and Cuddy were determined to look for themselves. In June 1992 they set off for Buenos Aires en route to search in the places where the birds had been reliably reported, in some cases more than 200 years before.

They assumed that the original habitat of the bird was gallery forests along the main rivers from which the birds would foray into palm groves to feed. They also had good reason to believe that the Glaucous Macaws once nested in the steep cliffs and banks along the main rivers. With these likely habitat preferences in mind, they looked in the most promising areas.

Pittman remarked that ‘driving through the countryside where the Glaucous Macaw was found in the eighteenth century is just like driving through parts of southern England. There is no way a bird that size could be around with no one noticing it. It’s very bare of trees and heavily ranched.’ In addition to large-scale cultivation and ranching in the areas where the yatay palms once grew, large sections of the river valleys had been modified or flooded by huge engineering works, such as the Salto Grande hydroelectric complex on the river Uruguay. The men spoke to the locals but could find no one who knew of it. Not only that, but they encountered genuine astonishment from people at the idea that such a bird could possibly still exist.

Disappointed, Pittman and Cuddy returned with no evidence that the bird survived. But in 1997, following new information, they went back and this time they did find someone who knew of the blue macaw they looked for. While in the vicinity of the little town of Pilar that lies on the Paraguayan bank of the river Paraguay, Pittman was introduced to Ceferino Santa Cruz, a 95-year-old cotton farmer who lived in a little village.

The old man spoke only the local Guaraní Indian language, so Paraguayan friends had to translate his words into Spanish. He told them that he had been born there in 1902. His father had moved to the place in 1875 following the devastating War of Triple Alliance with Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. This bitter conflict ruined Paraguay, killing 90 per cent of the country’s adult male population. Ceferino’s father was among the survivors. Although the old man had never himself seen the blue macaw, his father had told him about them. His father had said that the parrots fed on fresh green palm fruits. This interview, across generations through the Indian tradition of storytelling, provided perhaps the only direct link that remained with the Glaucous Macaw. No one else in the world seemed to know anything about it.

The inescapable conclusion was that the Glaucous Macaw was extinct, and probably had been for some years. The most likely reason for its disappearance was degradation and disappearance of its habitat, especially the loss of the yatay palms on which it probably fed. One analysis found that yatays are the only colonial palm species occurring where these birds once lived with a nut of the right size and type. Ornithologists examining the bird’s likely diet concluded that, ‘There has been no palm regeneration in the range of this extinct macaw, and the remnant palm groves are more than 200 years old.’²⁰

The reason for the palm’s disappearance was the introduction of European agriculture. The colonists soon learned that the places where the yatay palms grew indicated the richest soils, and naturally that was where the farmers first settled. The region was accessible by river and a substantial population grew up in early colonial times. The city of Corrientes that lies in the heart of the bird’s historical range was founded in 1588, the year the Spanish Armada sailed on England, so the impact of an advanced European society had, by the time of Pittman’s visit, already lasted more than 400 years.

Even in areas where the birds’ favourite palms might have survived the onslaught of ploughing, their eventual loss was assured by extensive cattle-grazing. Ranching was already an economic mainstay by the end of the eighteenth century, and meant that the effective regeneration of sufficient palms for the macaws to survive did not occur; their staple food plants were nibbled away by the cattle before they had a chance to grow or produce fruit, and eventually died out. Indeed, several species of palm in the genus Butia (to which the yatay belongs) are themselves listed as threatened with extinction. The trapping of birds for captivity certainly hastened the macaw on its way, but to what extent this pressure was complicit in its disappearance cannot be known.

It seems that the last living Glaucous Macaw reliably identified by a scientist was the one kept in the Paris Zoo (Jardin d’Acclimatation) for ten years from 1895. Whatever the reasons for its rapid slide into oblivion, the Glaucous Macaw – a large and conspicuous blue parrot – had become extinct and no one had noticed until decades after the event. Indeed, one leading parrot expert blithely described the species as ‘rare’ even in the late 1970s, by when it had not been seen for certain in the wild for more than a century. Certainly no one in the Berlin Zoo in 1900 would have realised that they were gazing upon a doomed species.

THE LEAR’S MACAW

In the 1970s, ornithologists believed that a similar fate awaited the gorgeous blue Lear’s Macaw (Anodorhynchus leari). This parrot was known to Victorian naturalists as a similar-sized species to the Glaucous Macaw (although a little larger at 71 centimetres) and the two were obviously close evolutionary relatives. The Lear’s was, however, darker, deeper blue and more glossy; in some respects it was more like the Hyacinth Macaw, from which it was distinguished not only by size but by a curious facial expression created by the oval bare yellow skin patches around the eyes that made the birds look a bit sleepy.

The English name ‘Lear’s Macaw’ came from the title conferred on the species by French biologist Prince Charles Bonaparte – the nephew of Napoleon – who in 1856 wrote the first scientific description of the species. The Englishman Edward Lear, much better known for his nonsense verse, had illustrated the macaw in his book Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots. The first instalment of this work appeared in 1830. Lear was then a promising young artist who had begun work on painting parrots at a time when their popularity was soaring. Despite the care Lear devoted to his work, in common with others he mistakenly believed that his painting of the blue macaw was of a Hyacinth. Although he had the ‘wrong’ species, he did produce an excellent painting and the name stuck and remains with us today, alongside the bird’s other common English name: Indigo Macaw.

But during the nineteenth century, Lear’s Macaw was even less well documented than its enigmatic cousin the Glaucous. A very few specimens were added to museum collections following the death of birds in zoos, but their natural origin was quite obscure. Although odd ones turned up in the USA and Europe in consignments of Hyacinth Macaws from Brazil, they were also rare in captivity. Scarcity and mystery added to their collectability; the rarity and obscurity made demand for them greater, not less.

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