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© Sedgwick County Zoo, credit: Dean Foy

Scarlet Macaw

Ara macao

Physical Characteristics

  • These large parrots are blue, light blue, red and yellow. The face is covered in white "hairs." The lower beak is black and the upper is light.
  • Size of average adult
    • length: 3 feet head to tail
    • weight: 2 - 2.5 pounds

Diet

  • Wild: fruit and nuts

Behavior

  • Excellent climbers
  • Mate for life
  • Nest in hollow in tree, usually a palm tree
  • Reproduction
    • clutch size: 2 - 4 eggs
    • incubation: 24 - 25 days
    • young fledge at 105 days  and stay with parents for up to a year

Environmental/Global

  • Habitat: rain forest areas below 3,000 feet
  • Distribution: Mexico through Central America and south to N.E. Argentina
  • Status: CITES Appendix I
    • destruction of habitat
    • international and local trade
    • poaching for food and feathers

Conservation Efforts

  • Establishment of the World Parrot Trust in 1989
  • Private breeders providing feathers to try to slow the poaching of birds for feathers

Research and Investigation

  • Field studies to determine breeding biology
  • Population studies

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