Spix’s Macaw: The Race to Save the World’s Rarest Bird

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.

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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.

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.

(#litres_trial_promo) 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,

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.

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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.

(#litres_trial_promo) 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.