40 Fun Facts About Hyacinth Macaw

The hyacinth macaw is the longest parrot, but which New Zealand species is the heaviest parrot of all?

Kakapo outweigh every other parrot, averaging about 400 g more than the hyacinth macaw. The macaw keeps two titles: longest parrot, at about a metre, and largest parrot that can fly.

Hyacinth macaws often eat acuri nuts only after they have passed through the gut of which farm animal?

Cattle swallow the fruit and pass the nut with its pulp stripped away, which leaves it ready to crack. Hyacinth macaws then seek out the cleaned nuts around ranches.

Captive hyacinth macaws are often fed which hard-shelled nut, native to Australia rather than South America?

Macadamia nuts stand in for the wild nuts a hyacinth macaw eats at home, which zoos can rarely obtain. Few other birds have the jaw strength to open one.

Which animated film's hero Blu is a Spix's macaw, a smaller and far rarer blue parrot than the hyacinth macaw?

Rio follows Blu, a tame Spix's macaw taken to Rio de Janeiro to meet the last known female of his species. A hyacinth macaw is nearly twice his length.

Which colour is the bare skin that rings the eyes and edges the lower bill of the blue hyacinth macaw?

Yellow skin shows in the only two places a hyacinth macaw's head lacks feathers: a ring round each eye and a strip beside the lower bill. Most other macaws have a far larger bare face patch.

Escaped hyacinth macaws have been recorded living wild in which US state, though none are known to breed there?

Florida has records of free-flying hyacinth macaws, all put down to escapes or deliberate releases. With no sign of breeding, the birds seem to persist only because new ones keep arriving.

Which nickname have keepers given the hyacinth macaw for its temperament around people?

Gentle giants is the usual tag for these even-tempered birds, which seem to enjoy playing with people. The play still needs care, because a bill built for hard nuts can injure by accident.

The hyacinth macaw shares its name with a flower that, in Greek myth, grew from the blood of which god's lover?

Apollo made the flower from the spilled blood of Hyacinthus, a Spartan prince he killed by accident with a discus. The mythical bloom was said to be deep blue or purple, a fitting match for the bird.

Like other parrots, the hyacinth macaw has zygodactyl feet; how are the four toes on each foot arranged?

Two forward, two back is the parrot arrangement, and it gives a grip strong enough for climbing and swinging. Macaws also use those agile toes like hands to grasp things.

The wild hyacinth macaw's diet is built almost entirely around the hard nuts of which kind of tree?

Palms supply most of what a wild hyacinth macaw eats, and each population leans on just one or two local species. That narrow menu leaves the bird exposed whenever those trees are cleared.

When hyacinth macaws settle to feed in a group, which role does one bird always take?

Lookout duty falls to one bird, which screeches at any strange noise or movement so that the whole group takes off at once. Researchers in Brazil see it every time a group settles to eat.

Hyacinth macaws rarely start a nest hole themselves; which birds often open the small cavities they enlarge?

Woodpeckers, termites and fungi start the hollows, and the hyacinth macaw then widens them and lines the floor with sawdust. Researchers call the species a secondary digger.

While a female hyacinth macaw sits on her eggs for about a month, how does she get her food?

Her mate brings it to the nest, which lets her spend about 70 percent of her time on the eggs. Once the chick is a week old, he helps to supply it too.

The Pantanal, stronghold of the hyacinth macaw, holds which world record among tropical landscapes?

Largest wetland in the tropics is the Pantanal's title, a floodplain that spills across three countries. Most of the world's wild hyacinth macaws live on its ranches and woodland edges.

Which habitat does the hyacinth macaw usually avoid, keeping to its edges and to open stretches along major rivers?

Dense humid forest is where a hyacinth macaw is least likely to turn up, a surprise to anyone who pictures every big parrot in deep jungle. It prefers semi-open, lightly wooded country.

Owners of a hyacinth macaw are told to buy a custom cage of which material, since its bill wrecks most others?

Stainless steel is the standard advice because the bird's bill can take apart most cages sold in shops. Keepers are also urged to give it a whole room and plenty of safe things to chew.

Biologist Neiva Guedes's Hyacinth Macaw Project is known for fixing what high in Pantanal trees?

Nest boxes fixed high in the trees gave pairs somewhere to breed, and ranchers let the team onto their land to fit them. Around 17 other species have moved into the artificial hollows too.

Which English nonsense poet painted a bird he labelled a hyacinth macaw that was later named after him?

Edward Lear's painting was judged in 1856 to show a separate, smaller species, which was named in his honour. Lear's macaw is still the bird most easily confused with the hyacinth macaw.

Wild hyacinth macaws live in Brazil, eastern Bolivia and the northeast of which third South American country?

Paraguay's northeast sits beside the Pantanal, which spills over the border from Brazil. The hyacinth macaw's other two population centres lie wholly inside Brazil.

Which international convention bans commercial export of wild hyacinth macaws through its Appendix I listing?

CITES places the hyacinth macaw in Appendix I, its strictest tier, alongside gorillas and the red panda. Every other blue macaw in the same genus shares the listing.

As of 2024, which IUCN Red List category did the hyacinth macaw hold after decades of habitat loss and illegal capture?

Vulnerable reflects a wild population first estimated at only about 3,000 birds in 1987. Protection on Pantanal ranches has since helped numbers climb to roughly twice that.

Which Indigenous people of Brazil use hyacinth macaw feathers in headdresses that can each take up to ten birds?

Kayapo feather art drew rising commercial demand, which became a threat to the bird in its own right. Brazil has limited such feather use to ceremonies since 2005.

In far southeastern Bolivia, locals often scatter which grain for wild hyacinth macaws, as they would for chickens?

Maize is the handout, tossed to the birds much as it is to farmyard hens. People in that corner of Bolivia treat the hyacinth macaw as an emblem of their region.

Hyacinth macaws are tool users; what do they wedge against a hard nut to stop it slipping in the bill?

A piece of wood or a chewed leaf acts as a wedge, holding the nut steady while the bill gnaws through. Even hand-raised hyacinth macaws do it, so the habit may be inborn.

Besides jays and crows, which long-nosed relative of the raccoon is a regular raider of hyacinth macaw eggs?

Coati raids add to those of opossums and skunks, yet most eggs survive. Field studies put the hatch rate for hyacinth macaw eggs at about 90 percent.

Hyacinth macaw chicks are parasitised by Philornis larvae that burrow under the skin; what kind of insect are they?

Flies of the genus Philornis attack nestlings across Central and South America, and people often call them bot flies. They are no relation of the true bot flies, though.

An estimated 10,000 hyacinth macaws were taken from the wild in the 1980s to supply which market?

The pet trade paid well enough to strip whole regions, and half of the captured birds were sold inside Brazil. Many died on the way: one dealer received 300 chicks in 1972 and all but three perished.

Which English naturalist, first to give a scientific account of mimicry, wrote of hyacinth macaws crushing hard nuts?

Henry Walter Bates wrote that the nuts were hard to break with a heavy hammer, yet the bird's bill crushed them to a pulp. The account comes from his 1863 travel book, The Naturalist on the River Amazons.

About 90% of hyacinth macaw nests in the Pantanal are hollows in which soft-hearted tree, Panama's national tree?

Manduvi trunks have a soft core that hollows out easily, but only trees of about 60 years or more are big enough to hold a nest. Fire and grazing kill many saplings long before that age.

Hyacinth macaws also live in the semi-arid thorn scrub of northeastern Brazil, a biome known by which Tupi name?

Caatinga comes from an Old Tupi word meaning white forest, and its small, thorny trees shed their leaves in the dry months. The biome covers nearly a tenth of Brazil.

The hyacinth macaw's genus name Anodorhynchus comes from Greek and describes the bird's bill as lacking what?

Teeth are what the name rules out, since Anodorhynchus means roughly 'toothless beak'. The species name hyacinthinus simply refers to the bird's colour.

Which English physician, called the grandfather of Australian ornithology, first described the hyacinth macaw?

John Latham worked in 1790 from a single stuffed specimen, a bird that had belonged to Lord Orford before it went on show in a museum. He knew of no other example for three decades.

What produces the blue in the plumage of many parrots, including the cobalt hyacinth macaw?

Microscopic layers inside the plumage reflect light so that blue wavelengths reinforce one another. Parrot reds and oranges, by contrast, come from pigments unique to the group.

Because owls, ducks and hawks later use the hollows they enlarge, hyacinth macaws are called environmental what?

Engineers is the label researchers use, because each hollow a hyacinth macaw widens goes on to house other animals. The birds also carry seeds far from the parent tree.

Many ranch owners in the Pantanal now protect hyacinth macaws by refusing whom access to their land?

Trappers once took chicks and adults freely, but many landowners now turn them away. Ranch support is one reason the Pantanal remains the hyacinth macaw's safest home.

Hyacinth macaws often lay two eggs several days apart; what normally becomes of the younger chick?

It usually dies within days, because it cannot compete with the older chick for food. Biologists see the second egg as insurance in case the first one fails.

Roughly how long can a well-kept hyacinth macaw live in captivity?

About 50 years is the usual estimate for a well-kept bird, and some live longer. Wild lifespans are unknown, partly because the species lives so long.

Hyacinth macaws are usually seen flying in pairs; how long does a bonded pair typically stay together?

For life is the rule: a hyacinth macaw normally keeps one partner, and the two share the work at the nest. Pairs breed slowly, and some raise young only every second year.

At roughly what age does a hyacinth macaw chick leave the nest hollow and start to fly?

About 3 months is typical: chicks first fly at around 107 days and never return to the nest. Their parents keep supplying food for months more while the youngsters learn what to eat.

Which colour, shared with its massive bill, covers the underside of the hyacinth macaw's wing and tail feathers?

Black shows beneath the wings and tail whenever a hyacinth macaw takes off, a sharp contrast with the cobalt above. The thick tongue is dark as well, with a bright band along each side.