Spix's Macaw

by Tony Juniper

  Why Newton’s Parakeet died out is not known for sure but educated guesses can be made. These birds apparently tasted good and were shot for food. Others were caught for pets; not only did they look very attractive but they could talk well. One tame bird apparently mastered both Flemish and French words. The settlement and clearance of the native forests from Rodrigues and their replacement with maize, coconuts, sugar and other crops would have considerably hastened the parakeets’ demise. And not only was their habitat removed, like the similarly-fated Seychelles Parakeet (Psittacula wardi), the arrival of agriculture brought the persecution and destruction of the birds as crop pests. Parrots ate grain and fruit, and for this they were mercilessly shot.

  The English naturalist Slater described in a letter to Alfred Newton how on 30 September 1874 he had sighted one of the parrots in some forest at the south-west end of the island. In 1875 the second of the two surviving specimens was collected. By 1876 the little blue parrots of Rodrigues were scarce. One observer said in that year that they were unapproachable. Perhaps by then they had learned to fear the two-legged newcomers. But it was too late. These passing references are the last evidence of surviving Newton’s Parakeets.

  Several other parrots quickly disappeared from the islands of the dodos. One was the impressive Mascarene Parrot (Mascarinus mascarinus). A large, light brown bird with a lilac head, black face and great red bill, it was common on Réunion (and possibly Mauritius) when the Europeans came. The establishment of the plantations of coffee, bananas, maize, vanilla and sugar sealed its fate. By the early part of the nineteenth century it had disappeared in the wild. The last known living bird was housed in the collection of Spix’s patron, King Maximilian of Bavaria, where it died during the 1830s. Like the Spix’s Macaw it was unique: the only species included in its genus. When it disappeared, another piece from the jigsaw of evolution was lost with it.

  The Broad-billed Parrot (Lophopsittacus mauritanus) was probably flightless and today a few bones are its only legacy. It lived on Mauritius but was extinct very soon after the arrival of Europeans. The Rodrigues Parrot (Necropsittacus rodericanus) was referred to in a few manuscripts but again soon disappeared. Both these birds had massive bills but given the rather weak structure it seems likely that they ate soft foods.

  These parrots often fell victim to animals introduced to the islands, including pigs and goats set free by sailors to provide food for ships that would drop anchor there later on. Monkeys and rats also became established. These animals played havoc with the cavity-nesting parrots, predating eggs, young and adult birds.

  But if the rats and monkeys were one thing, the people were something else again. Willem Bontekoe van Hoorn visited Réunion in 1618. Reflecting on his experiences there, he wrote, ‘The most amazing thing is that when we catch a parrot or other bird and pinch it a bit so that it shrieks, all the others that were in the neighbourhood come by as if they wanted to free it, and were therefore taken. We went back to the ship with a load of feathered food.’

  Only one species of parrot survived the colonial onslaught against the Mascarene Islands’ wildlife: this was the pretty green Echo Parakeet (Psittacula echo). It still lives on Mauritius where it feeds on the seeds and fruits of indigenous trees. But because of the near-total clearance of the island’s native forests and the effects of non-native animals it had by the late 1980s declined to under ten individuals, and most of those were males. This tiny remnant population clung to existence in the last 2 per cent of remaining native forest.

  A similar fate befell the parrots living on the islands in the Caribbean. After Columbus had firmly placed the West Indies on Europeans’ world map, a free-for-all began. The imperial powers vied with one another to claim new possessions before a competitor country staked its claim. Britain, France, Holland and Spain were quick to establish colonies. The islands became a source of cheap commodities: sugar, tobacco, hardwoods and coffee among them. There were also the native peoples, a source of slaves, at least to begin with, before they were killed off through brutal treatment and newly introduced diseases, including smallpox.

  The West Indies were rapidly settled and soon of great economic importance. The colonial governments back home found not only new sources of tax revenue but also new export markets for consumer goods. By the 1640s there were about seven thousand French and over fifty thousand English colonists in the West Indies. Later that century they would be joined by many thousands more, and then hundreds of thousands of slaves brought from Africa. The plantation economy and the plunder of natural resources that followed transformed the islands.

  When Columbus first charted the West Indies, there were unique parrots on most of the main islands. Many would not last long. Across the more than 2,000-kilometre-long chain from the Lesser Antilles adjacent to the coast of Venezuela in the south through the larger islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica and Puerto Rico in the centre to the Bahamas in the north, many of these unique species were doomed. In addition to trapping, trade and hunting, habitat loss undoubtedly played a part in the demise of most if not all of the Caribbean parrots. The forests were ransacked for their valuable hardwood trees and cleared to make way for crops. For some, so total has been the removal of material evidence of their existence that we know of them now only from a few remarks handed down in contemporary manuscripts. In this category are several species of macaw.

  The accounts of colonists, explorers and naturalists suggest that as many as five (and perhaps more) kinds of macaw lived on the Caribbean islands. All have vanished. One was reported from Dominica in the Lesser Antilles. It was green and yellow and was apparently eaten and collected as a pet. It was not seen alive after the 1790s. Another green-and-yellow species apparently lived in the mountains of Trelawny and St Anne’s on Jamaica. A specimen was collected from the Oxford Estate but does not survive today. It is presumed that this species, too, was hunted to extinction, probably by the early nineteenth century. Jamaica also had a red macaw, but this too was probably extinct by the end of the eighteenth century.

  Another species, the Lesser Antillean Macaw, was found on the French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. This one was violet-blue and placed in the genus Anodorhynchus alongside the Hyacinth Macaw of South America. Whether it was native to the islands or actually descended from Hyacinth Macaws imported from the mainland that had gone wild we shall never know. They were trapped, traded and eaten, and by 1760 were rare. They disappeared soon afterwards leaving no surviving specimens. Another macaw, known only from a single bone found on the island of St Croix, remains shrouded in mystery.

  The Caribbean macaw that survived longest lived on the largest island: Cuba, and possibly Hispaniola as well. It also occurred on the Isle of Pines, Cuba’s little neighbour. A splendid red-bodied creature with a golden-yellow nape, a darker crimson back and intense blue in the tail and flight feathers, it would today be priceless. It was hunted for food, taken for pets, and its nest trees were felled to get hold of young birds. The last one to be shot was taken in the Zapata Swamp on the south side of Cuba in 1864. It was extinct in the wild by 1885. A few survived in captivity. Berlin Zoo had some up until the turn of the century. The Cuban Macaw could have been seen there alongside that other unrepeatable show – the four species of blue macaw.

  The accidental extermination of the Caribbean parrots embraced a beautiful purple and green Amazon parrot from Guadeloupe and another from Martinique. The naturalist Labat, writing in 1742 about the Martinique bird, remarked, ‘the parrot is too common a bird for me to stop to give a description of it.’ He took its abundance too much for granted: within sixty years it too had gone for ever.

  The little islands and secluded bays of the Caribbean made perfect hiding places and bases for the English, French and Dutch buccaneers who preyed on vessels returning home with colonial bounty. The badge of office for practitioners in this industry was a parrot or macaw. Sitting on their masters’ shoulders issuing oaths and foul language, the parrots later became symbolic
of the region in the age of exploration. One of the characters in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island was a parrot. It was a female bird called Captain Flint and she belonged to Long John Silver. Stevenson didn’t give too many details about the bird but he probably meant it to be an amazon parrot. Such was the importance of her role that this fictional bird uttered the last words in his classic novel: ‘pieces of eight, pieces of eight’.

  During the pirates’ heyday in the late sixteenth century through to the middle of the eighteenth, it must be safe to presume that some captains had aboard their ships birds that are now extinct. Red Cuban Macaws, the violet parrots once found on Guadeloupe and the yellow and green macaws from Jamaica would no doubt have once graced the quarterdecks of boats flying the Jolly Roger. If some of those birds had survived, the modern pirates who collect rare parrots today would undoubtedly pay a fortune for them. The privateer captains could not have guessed that the most precious plunder of all was perched on their shoulder.

  In spite of the litany of woe that fills the stories of parrots from the tropical islands of the New World, happily some did survive, albeit more by accident than design. The parrots that do remain are mainly confined to the last remote fragments of forest that cling to the sides of volcanoes and mountains. From these remote outposts, about a dozen species of Caribbean parrot saw in the third millennium. Most of them are included in the genus Amazona and no fewer than ten of them are in immediate danger of extinction.

  In common with the parrots of the Mascarene islands, these birds evolved into their present unique forms following the arrival of their ancestors on the islands at various times in prehistory. The parrots that gave rise to the birds we know today may have been blown from the mainland on the Caribbean’s frequent hurricanes. Indeed, the species found on the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Jamaica) do resemble some of their cousins in Central America and appear to be quite recent descendants of birds found there now. By contrast, those in the smaller Windward Islands to the south are very different from any other modern-day parrots in Central or South America, suggesting that their ancestors arrived on their islands long ago. Whatever their origin, the result is spectacular. The four species of Amazon parrots found in the Lesser Antilles are among the most impressive parrots anywhere.

  The little island of Dominica is blessed with two of them: the magnificent Red-necked Parrot (Amazona arausiaca) and the truly majestic Imperial Parrot (Amazona imperialis). The Imperial Parrot is one of the largest parrots alive today. It is a dark, thickset iridescent purple and green bird that dwells in the wet forests that clothe the brooding volcanic peak of Morne Diablotin, the island’s biggest mountain. The parrots retreated to higher and higher altitudes as their native forest habitat was claimed by banana plantations and as continued persecution took its toll. In 1975 the population was estimated at up to 250 birds; by 1983 its numbers had dropped to barely 60. Its cousin the Red-necked Parrot fared a little better with a population of a few hundred. Both are utterly vulnerable to disasters like a direct hit from a powerful hurricane. The number of Red-necked Parrots was halved by such events in 1979 and 1980.

  St Lucia and St Vincent have unique parrots too. The amazing-looking creature from St Vincent occurs in two broad colour schemes: brown or green. Both are striking with white heads, blue faces and bright shocks of yellow in their wings and tails. In the early 1970s about 1,000 of these birds were estimated to be hanging on. By the late 1980s the population was believed to be about half that. The St Lucia birds did worse still. In 1950, this breathtaking beauty, a great green parrot with an iridescent blue face and scalloped black and red breast, was believed to have a population of about 1,000. A survey in 1978 estimated that only about 100 survived.

  It almost goes without saying that all four of these rare, chunky, beautiful parrots are highly collectable and highly valuable.

  Many other parrot species were wiped out after the colonial settlers arrived. They became a symbol of how, in the quest for wealth and new lands, people’s disregard for wild nature led to the destruction of beautiful life forms and unique habitats. Indeed, most of the species of bird that we know to have gone extinct during the last 500 years lived on small islands.

  There is now a new emergency. It seems that the rash of extinctions seen in island life forms is set to overtake the continents too. It is now clear that the processes initiated in the 1500s that altered the course of biological history on hundreds of islands are now shaping the destiny of the larger land masses too. Today, dozens of parrots found in continental areas are at risk of extinction. In addition to the Glaucous Macaw, the classic example of a parrot that speaks of the shape of things to come is the Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis).

  In the 1880s, a bird of this kind came into the possession of Cincinnati Zoo, where they named him Incas. When he died on 21 February 1918, he was widely mourned. The little green bird with a lemon-yellow hood and orange forehead had arrived at the zoo with his mate Lady Jane in a crate of the birds captured from the wild. At that time they sold for about US$2.50 each. As the years went by and the birds’ impending fate in the wild became more obvious, the zoo’s few birds became hugely valuable: US$4,000 was at one point offered for their last pair. According to Colonel Stephan, the general manager at the zoo, the cause of Incas’s death was grief at the loss of his partner of three decades: she died a few months before his own demise. There was no way she could be replaced, for there were no more to replace her with.

  The Carolina Parakeet was a common species when colonists arrived in the lands we know today as the United States, occurring in large flocks east of the Great Plains. They ventured into open country to feed but preferred river valleys with dense forests filled with mature trees. These parrots fed on a variety of native seeds and fruits, but their favourite was the tough-shelled seed of the cockleburr. When cultivation and orchards arrived, the birds naturally also turned their attention to crop plants. This was to be their undoing.

  John James Audubon, who would later gain worldwide fame for his illustrations of the birds of North America, wrote about the parakeets in 1831. ‘The stacks of grain put up in a field are resorted to by flocks of these birds, which frequently cover them so entirely, that they present to the eye the same effect as if a brilliantly coloured carpet had been thrown over them. They cling around the whole stack, pull out straws, and destroy twice as much grain as would suffice to satisfy their hunger.’ Audubon went on to describe how the birds took tiny unripe pears and apples to extract the seeds. The birds would pass from branch to branch picking the fruit in search of mature seeds but of course found none. They would strip entire trees in their futile search. The farmers, unsurprisingly, didn’t approve.

  They were shot in their millions and, like many other parrots, they didn’t depart when fired on but instead stayed loyally to help their wounded and dying companions. They were easy prey. Farmers had the additional incentive of shooting them for the pot. It really was a question of killing two birds with one stone. On top of all that, they were killed for their fine green feathers, which were used to adorn ladies’ hats.

  As the native forests of the eastern USA were cleared, so was the birds’ habitat. Settlers often felled hollow trees to get hold of honey and in so doing deprived the birds of their nest sites. With the retreat of the forests, the birds were forced into greater contact with people. The slaughter continued. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the Carolina Parakeet was in freefall decline and by the end of that century survived in only two states, Florida and Oklahoma. Following the death of Incas in Cincinnati, there were a few reports of wild birds still hanging on; the last was from Okeechobee County in Florida. Parakeets seen there in 1926 could have been of this species or perhaps of some other type escaped from captivity. A few unconfirmed reports followed but by the 1930s it was certainly extinct and probably had been for some time. The USA’s only unique native parrot had been struck from the register of life.

&n
bsp; Not so obvious are the millions of species disappearing with the parrots. Talkative, colourful birds in demand as pets are noticed, recorded, described and catalogued. Not so for many inconspicuous species. Despite the widely held feeling that we know a lot about the living treasures of our planet, the opposite is in fact the case.

  During the 1980s Brazilian scientists found a new species of monkey living in a fragment of surviving forest within an hour’s drive of São Paulo, one of the world’s largest cities. This is almost the equivalent to discovering a new species of badger on the outskirts of London or an entirely new raccoon in the suburbs of Los Angeles. And it was not an isolated event.

  More worrying than our ignorance of what is still to be found is our reckless disregard of species we evidently prize very highly: even big bright blue birds valued at thousands of dollars each could be pushed to, or even over, the brink of extinction with no one noticing. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, after more than three centuries of intensive effort, people have managed to describe and give names to about one and a half million different life forms; this includes plants, bugs, slugs, fish, birds and the rest. But this is by no means a full inventory of life. While the headline writers salivate at the possibility of life on Mars, the living threads of this planet’s web of unique organisms are slashed with barely a mention.

  Estimates of the total number of different species that share the earth with humans extend to over 100 million. In the rainforests, amid the coral reefs, in the depths of the oceans and even in the soil beneath our feet there are living systems about which we are still grossly ignorant. Whether you believe this incredible diversity is the result of evolution or creation, the fact is we don’t know the half of it. On the contrary, if the top-end estimates of total species numbers are correct, it may be that we know much less than 2 per cent of it.