Spix's Macaw

by Tony Juniper

  The two farm buildings were right next to the Melância Creek. It was like no other place that we had visited during the previous four weeks of constant searching. The tall caraiba trees formed a long thin green gallery through the otherwise dry and spiny caatinga. These trees had been given their scientific name of Tabebuia caraiba by Martius. The Bavarian explorers had certainly seen the caraibas woodlands when they passed this way, indeed, many of the older trees now stood exactly where they did then. I wondered if one of these magnificent craggy trees might be the one in which Spix shot his bird.

  Caraiba trees are not a rare species; they occur widely over the drier parts of South America and south to Paraguay. But here in the caatinga of north-eastern Brazil they formed unique ribbons of woodland that the macaws evidently preferred and which seemed to be found nowhere else other than along the creeks that flanked the São Francisco River over its middle reaches. In that respect, they were the key element in a unique habitat confined to only a small part of the dry interior. What, if any, relationship the macaws had with buriti palms was not obvious: there didn’t seem to be any.

  The bed of the creek was composed of deep fine sandy soils. In places it was wet, and here and there were little pools. Even in the dry season there was ground water near the surface; this sustained the distinctive parkland-like vegetation. Among the lush green growth there were a number of dead or partially dead trees whose bare branches reached aloft like thin white fingers.

  We searched the banks of the Melância Creek until dark, but found nothing. I was now edgy and impatient, frustrated that yet another sighting might prove illusory or mistaken. I was tired and suffering from diarrhoea, the novelty of being in these wild lands was wearing off and I was beginning to wonder if it was all worth it. I yearned for the bright lights and comfortable bars of Rio de Janeiro.

  The next day, 8 July 1990, at 4 a.m., Yamashita woke me from shallow slumber in my hammock. It was time to resume the search. We silently climbed into the vehicles. It was too early to expect any coffee so we set off bleary-eyed and still half asleep. By dawn, equipped with binoculars, a telescope, long camera lenses and a video camera, our little troupe hid on a bend in the creek. We had decided to follow the advice of the cowboy’s wife who insisted the blue macaws could often be seen there.

  As the first light of day pushed back the shadows cast by a low yellowish moon, the creek began to come to life. Some distance away a parrot called. It cried a resonant rolling kraaa kraaa kraaa. It was neither harsh and gruff like the big macaws seen in the cerrado, nor did it shriek like the smaller ones that had apparently been mistaken for Spix’s. This sound echoed the tape recordings of Spix’s Macaw that Yamashita had brought with him. The cry grew louder, then louder still. Finally the source of it came into view. Its blue plumage was visible in the first proper daylight. With a pale head, a distinctively long tail and deep wingbeats, there was no doubt what it was. We had found a Spix’s Macaw. It flew closer with a flock of the smaller mainly green maracanas29 and settled in a nearby tree. Hidden in the bushes by the creek we had an uninterrupted view. We were speechless as we simply stared at a creature we had come to regard as almost mythical.

  The blue parrot perched and nervously looked round. It was alert, apprehensive. Its keen senses probed the shadows.

  Whoever had told Paul Roth that all of the Spix’s Macaws from the Melância Creek had been captured was mistaken. Spix’s Macaw was not, after all, a dead parrot. It was not extinct. The species had not crossed that threshold on the other side of which lay only diminishing folk memory and then oblivion.

  Our excitement was intense. ‘Christ, we found it,’ I muttered. Yamashita grinned. ‘Spix’s Macaws only live here, nowhere else, just a little strip of woodlands by the river, that’s all,’ he whispered. Marigo and Pontual with their cameras trained on the bird babbled excitedly in Portuguese. Shutters clicked and videotape rolled. I stared at the bird through my heavy East German binoculars. Fearing the parrot might disappear as suddenly as it arrived, I tried to memorise every detail of its form, colour and behaviour. As my eyes flickered over its blue feathers, noted its sharp yellow iris, long tail, pale head and black bill, I knew that the majestic wild blue bird had made an impression so vivid and powerful that it would remain with me for the rest of my life.

  In the vastness of the dry Brazilian interior we had located a wild Spix’s Macaw; 60 centimetres of blue feathers, flesh, blood, bones and instincts, a tiny vessel of unique existence in the sprawling thorn scrub. To have searched the length of this vast country and to have found this bird was nothing short of a miracle.

  We were desperate to find other Spix’s. Frantic searches up and down the creek and into the contiguous Barra Grande Creek were hastily organised. During the day, the one bird was seen or heard a few times but there were no traces of others. Nonetheless, its discovery was a cause for celebration.

  That evening we drove into town for dinner and drinks and to discuss how to spend our time in the coming days. There were some clear priorities. The first was to search for more Spix’s in other areas where the caraiba trees still grew by the creeks. There was every reason to believe that Spix’s Macaws had a strong preference for the gallery woodlands where those trees grew. Another was to do a quick survey of the habitat to see if it could be established what made it especially unique and so important for the parrots.

  The following day the team split up; Pontual and Marigo would go to the creek before dawn to erect a hide near to the bird’s favourite tree, from there they would film and photograph the parrot and any companions. Otoch, Yamashita and I would head east further downriver towards the Vargem Creek, to see if another population of Spix’s could be found in the caraiba trees there.

  Finding the Vargem Creek was easy, although the roads to it were not good. A few houses were scattered along its tree-fringed course. Yamashita and I knocked on doors to ask the locals if they knew of any blue macaws there. ‘It has a long tail and a shining eye,’ reported one old man, who also gave a very convincing imitation of its distinctive call. He said the birds had always been rare and when he had seen them it was among the caraiba trees by the creek. Another local who knew of the bird repeated that it was very rare and that he had not seen any at all lately. A third recognised the Spix by its pale head, a sure sign of an eyewitness, but had not seen the birds for fifteen years. All three said trappers had taken them away.

  Encouraged by the thought that the macaws had perhaps been there until recently we decided to survey the creek. Yamashita and I found that close to the confluence with the São Francisco River the Vargem Creek was broad with a braided channel; caraiba trees were scattered across its course. Further away from the main river, the creek narrowed and the trees became more concentrated like the gallery woodland along the Melância Creek. It was very similar to where we had found the single bird. But the search brought no sightings or trace of any kind that the Spix’s Macaw still lived there. We were compelled reluctantly to deduce that trappers had cleaned it out.

  The discovery of a second suitable habitat that could have supported Spix’s Macaws might explain the rumours of other birds in trade that could not have come from Curaçá. Further evidence that the species had been there came from a farmer interviewed on the way back to the Concordia farm. He said that he had only ever seen the long-tailed blue macaws in the Vargem Creek. They were always very scarce, he said, but could often be seen perched in the bare branches at the top of the tall trees. He added that he hadn’t seen such birds for years.

  Back in the Melância Creek the team exchanged notes. The news from the Vargem Creek was tantalising, but it seemed we had arrived there a few years too late. The photographic work had gone well but no other Spix’s had been seen. The lone macaw we had found was unsurprisingly very nervous. Repeated attempts had, after all, been made to trap it and the sight of any people sent it into panic. Its natural suspicion was what had kept it alive.

  Next morning, we began a detailed survey
of the Melância Creek, to describe in a more systematic manner the preferred habitat of the Spix’s Macaw. We estimated tree heights, recorded trunk diameters, noted bare branches and possible nest holes, described the soils and the distance the tall trees grew from the creek edge. We also noted where nest holes had been opened with saws and axes and observed how several of the caraiba trees had recently been climbed. There were nails hammered into the smooth bare trunks, fallen branches had been propped up beneath some of the lower nest holes to enable the trappers to make closer inspections.

  Aside from the evidence of trapping, the habitat survey soon revealed another critical threat. There were no young caraiba trees. Most of them were large, old and partially dead with hollows and bare boughs. Although the macaws liked holes to nest in and bare perches to sit on, the dying habitat was a disaster. A clue to what had happened was found next to the farm buildings. In the moist creek bed by the cowboy’s house, the family had planted some maize. To prevent the goats and cattle eating the crop, a rough wooden fence had been erected round it. Inside, among the maize plants were thousands of tiny seedlings, caraiba tree seedlings. They had germinated from seeds dropping from the huge trees that grew at the shady edge of the creek. They had survived in the exclosure where they were protected from the grazers, but outside the animals had eaten the lot. You couldn’t blame the poor creatures: in the dry season there was little of anything to eat. A succulent young tree would be a real treat.30

  On finding the young tree seedlings, Yamashita reflected for a moment, and then retired to the shade where I was already writing notes. We had both realised what this discovery portended. The logic was inescapable. The habitat of Spix’s Macaw was clearly the special caraiba gallery woodlands. It wasn’t a palm specialist like the other blue macaws after all. That theory had turned out to be an erroneous guess based on the habits of the other blue macaws; the search during the previous month had demonstrated that, so had Roth’s work. There was, in fact, no photographic evidence or specimens of the Spix from any other habitat apart from these gallery woodlands – everything else was based on rumour and hearsay, or seemed the result of misidentification, including Helmut Sick’s record. The remaining fragments of caraiba woodlands were now confined to just a couple of small patches by the São Francisco River; the rest of it had gone, either logged and grazed out of existence or more quickly swept aside to make way for the vast irrigated farms. The pressures on the special vegetation meant that not only was the bird rare, so was its habitat.

  Once we had worked this out, we chose to study intensively the single blue parrot in an attempt to determine why Spix’s Macaws were so dependent on those curious and obviously rare woodlands. Close observation of the macaw revealed that it had paired with one of the little green maracanas. The two birds flew together all day. The larger Spix’s would accompany a flock of the maracanas but would always be close to one bird in particular. At times they were seen alone together. The maracana appeared nervous and flighty, suggesting that something was desperately wrong, but did not resist the advances of the bigger blue bird. We were baffled by why it had accepted such a partner. Perhaps the bigger bird was better able to drive off predators than its own kind. Whatever the reason, they sat together and flew together and we even saw and filmed the Spix trying to mate with the smaller macaw.

  The blue bird seemed impelled by deep instincts. His unstoppable urge to socialise, win companionship and find a mate had found its outlet with one of the little maracanas. They were a quite different species, but close enough in the Spix’s mind to trigger behaviour that under other circumstances would only be initiated by a partner of his own species. We had already surmised that the Spix pictured in the Polaroid photo we had seen in town had been his mate. She had been captured more than two years before and, despite the fact that he was a strong flier and that his call could travel great distances over the serene flat caatinga, it seemed that the one wild bird we had discovered had found no other parrot like himself. In a desperate bid to preserve the material substance of his being his reproductive instincts had driven him to pair with a different species. No endangered species could possibly face a more desperate state of affairs than this.

  It hadn’t taken vast powers of deduction to work out that the single macaw found in the creek was most likely the last survivor of the trio found by Roth. The other two, the single male and the partner of this last wild bird, had both been captured in 1987; one in April and one at Christmas. Somehow this one had managed to outwit the trappers, who were still evidently after him.

  With this thought came the realisation that not only were we in the presence of the last Spix’s Macaw at Curaçá – it was the last wild Spix’s Macaw anywhere. After searching all the gallery woodland habitat that remained we had found just one bird. And that was it. The awful conclusion was that the world population of wild Spix’s Macaw contained just a single example. The last of the little group of macaws found at Curaçá was the sole representative for an entire genus of unique birds.

  Unlike all other mortal creatures that one day must face the inevitable reality of their own demise, the death of this bird would mark the end not only of himself but his entire kind. The Spix’s Macaw would have perished completely. Extinct.

  6

  The Legions of the Doomed

  The Spix’s Macaw and the other species of imperilled parrots heading fast towards their final showdown with the forces of extinction are not alone. They are just one group among countless irreplaceable life forms being driven to destruction by environmental change of unprecedented speed, set in motion centuries ago during the great age of European exploration.

  The tentacles of Europe’s imperial powers rapidly spread across the world during the sixteenth century. The adventurers and entrepreneurs who set forth in search of fortunes and new worlds found remote places that had remained untouched by external influences for millions of years. The Europeans would happen upon ecosystems so remote and fragile that the disruption they brought caused the natural fabric of those places to unravel completely.

  One of the best-known examples was the Mascarene Islands. Lying between about 1,000 and 1,500 kilometres east of Madagascar inside the southern tropic in the Indian Ocean, the islands of Réunion, Rodrigues and Mauritius had evolved a unique flora and fauna. Borne of millions of years of isolation, these volcanic outposts had given life to species of birds, animals and plants seen nowhere else. In common with the wildlife species on hundreds of other islands, the ancestors of these distinctive life forms had arrived by chance. Some of the accidental immigrants thrived, gradually changing over time and ultimately evolving into new species under the unique conditions found there.

  When Portuguese and then Dutch sailors arrived in the Mascarenes in the sixteenth century they were greeted by rich green forests that clothed the islands’ towering volcanic peaks. The bountiful wildlife seemed a gift from God. Dozens of varieties of tasty meat and fruit were set out for the taking. Because these human voyagers were the first land predators to reach this remote part of the ocean, the islands’ birds were tame and defenceless. They had no reason to be naturally wary and lacked the means to escape or fight when threatened. Mass slaughter ensued.

  One species became symbolic of the plunder. It was a flightless member of the pigeon family. With no predators to worry about and abundant food on the ground, these curious-looking creatures had lost the power of flight and grown large. They became known by a comic-sounding name – the Dodo. There might have been several species of Dodo-like birds found in the Mascarenes. The Mauritius Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) disappeared first, gone by 1670.

  When Europeans first put ashore in 1505, at least twenty-eight endemic birds lived in these islands and nowhere else; the three dodos were simply the most famous emblems of this irreplaceable ecosystem. The great majority were quickly plunged into oblivion. Among these ecological casualties were several species of parrot. One was a rather beautiful blue bird that flew among the forest tre
es on Rodrigues. This parrot belonged to the genus of Psittacula parakeets that were popular in Ancient Rome. But unlike its cosmopolitan cousins that ranged naturally from the Atlantic coast of Africa across Asia to central Burma, it lived on just one tiny Indian Ocean island. Not only was its total population confined to that minuscule portion of the earth’s surface, it also had the distinction of being the only other wholly blue parrot known to man.

  In the 1870s two specimens of these birds were shot, preserved in alcohol and shipped to England. These same artefacts today constitute the total earthly remains of a gorgeous bird we now know as Newton’s Parakeet (Psittacula exsul). They are kept in the bird collection at Cambridge University’s Zoology Museum.

  Safely stowed in an old mahogany cabinet, they are not on public display and have to be specially fetched by the museum’s meticulous curator for inspection. The skins are irreplaceable, and no one is left unaccompanied with them. The parrots’ remains reek of mothballs and shed a fine dust when handled. These last shreds of a bright thread cut from the fabric of life are in good condition and give an idea of what the living birds once looked like. They are remarkably similar in colour to Glaucous Macaws – a dull greenish-blue with brighter turquoise highlights. The specimens are from a male and female, both long and slender birds about 40 centimetres from bill to tail tip. These stiff, still and lifeless remains aside, their kind is gone for ever.

  The original labels are still attached to the birds’ now stiff dry legs. The male’s says in ancient ink ‘Rodrigues 14 August 1875’. The female was collected a little earlier. Her label is made from a fragment of card that was previously part of a dinner party invitation. On one side are her details written by a longgone museum curator; on the other it reads ‘Mr and Mrs W. H. Thompson request the pleasure …’. The label speaks of a time when card was treated as a valuable commodity. In those days forests were abundant and our means to process them primitive. Today the situation is reversed: natural forests are everywhere disappearing while our ability to convert them to wood, card and paper, which we largely waste, is hugely advanced. The disappearing forests are of course where most of the world’s endangered birds live.