Spix's macaw

Name and taxonomy

Spix's macaw is the only species in the genus Cyanopsitta. The genus name joins the Ancient Greek words for blue and parrot. The species name honours Johann Baptist von Spix, a German biologist. Spix took the type specimen in April 1819, beside the São Francisco River. He gave it a name that clashed with the hyacinth macaw, so the name did not stand. Johann Georg Wagler corrected the error in 1832 and named the bird again.

Charles Lucien Bonaparte moved the bird into its own genus in 1854. Georg Marcgrave had described the species far earlier, in 1638. He worked in Pernambuco while the Dutch held that part of Brazil. Other names for the bird are little blue macaw and blue macaw. The Brazilian recovery project carries the name Ararinha Azul, which means little blue macaw. Tommaso Salvadori listed the bird under a slightly different spelling in 1891. The name that stands today is Cyanopsitta spixii, the blue parrot of Spix.

Evolution and relatives

The bird sits between the large macaws and the smaller parakeets of the tribe Arini. Early keepers said it looked more like a conure than a macaw. The Brazilian ornithologist Helmut Sick wrote in 1981 that it is not a true macaw. Molecular work has since supported that middle position.

A study of 69 parrot genera placed the species early in the macaw line. A later analysis named the red-bellied macaw and the blue-headed macaw as its closest relatives. Neotropical parrots began to spread into many lineages about 33 million years ago. That period matches the separation of South America from West Antarctica. Not every macaw genus appeared in the first of those studies. A second study in 2011 added the missing genera and settled the position.

Appearance

The adult is about 56 centimetres long, and the tail takes 26 to 38 centimetres of that. The wingspan is about 1.2 metres. Captive males average 318 grams and captive females average 288 grams. The head is grey blue, the underparts pale blue and the upperparts vivid blue. The wings and tail carry the strongest blue.

Bare grey skin surrounds the eye and covers the lores. The beak is dark grey, and the legs and feet are brownish black. An adult has yellow eyes. A young bird has paler facial skin, brown eyes and a white line along the top of the beak. Males and females look the same, although females are a little smaller. The bird is easy to name in a photograph, because no other small macaw is blue. Like other parrots, it has two toes forward and two toes back on each foot.

Habitat and range

The macaw lived along seasonal creeks in the Caatinga of north east Brazil. The Caatinga is a dry thorn forest of stunted trees, shrubs and cacti. Narrow galleries of Caraiba trees followed the watercourses. Those galleries reached at most 18 metres out from each side of a creek. The trees stood about 8 metres tall, at about ten to every 100 metres.

The known range lay in Bahia and Pernambuco, along the Rio São Francisco. It formed a corridor about 50 kilometres wide along a stretch of 150 to 200 kilometres. Earlier writers claimed a far wider range across the dry interior. Study of the last wild bird showed a narrow specialist instead. Large old Caraiba trees held the nest hollows, and no other tree served.

Caraiba grows slowly, and most surviving trees are 200 to 300 years old. No new growth has come through for about 50 years. Goats, sheep and cattle eat the seedlings. About 45 per cent of the Caatinga is now farmland, ranch or plantation. Desertification is shrinking the ground that could still be restored.

Diet and feeding

The macaw ate seeds, nuts and fruit. Favela and pinhao seeds appeared most often in records of wild feeding. Both of those trees are colonisers, so they were probably not the old staple. The bird also took seeds from Joazeiro, Baraúna, Imburana, Angico and Umbu. Cactus fruit and licuri palm fruit went into the diet as well.

Caraiba seedpods fed the birds where they nested. Captive birds get fruit, seeds and nuts, with vitamin and mineral supplements. Keepers add bark and cactus flesh, which supply what a cage cannot. The species is a seed eater and fruit eater, not a hunter. Like other parrots, it holds food in one foot while the beak works. Hard seeds and nuts probably needed the full force of the beak. Feeding records come from a handful of birds, so the wild diet is poorly known.

Behaviour and social life

The macaw kept to a routine. Birds used the same flight paths and bathed at the same hour each day. They travelled in pairs or in small family groups. They roosted and nested together in the crowns of the Caraiba trees. The species was shy and hard to approach.

Observers rarely saw more than two or three birds at once. Flocks of up to fifteen may have been normal before the decline. The last wild male escorted a female blue-winged macaw to her nest each evening. The birds are active by day and they do not migrate. A threatened bird will lie on its side on the ground to draw attention. Pairs stayed close and fed each other outside the breeding season. The species held a small home range, set by the width of the tree galleries.

Communication and senses

The flight call is a harsh kra-ark. The bird calls almost every time it flies. The mating call has been written down as whichaka. It starts as a low rumble in the belly and rises to a high note. The ordinary voice is a short repeated grating sound.

Like other macaws, the species can copy human speech. Constant calling probably kept a moving group together. Loud calls and beating wings drive off a rival or a predator. Parrots see colour well, so the blue plumage is likely a signal to other macaws. A bird in a group probably calls again as soon as another answers.

Reproduction and life cycle

The breeding season ran from November to March. Most eggs hatched in January, as the rains began. Pairs nested in hollows of large old Caraiba trees. They returned to the same hollow year after year. Courtship included feeding each other and flying together.

Wild clutches were thought to hold three eggs. Captive clutches average four eggs, and the range runs from one to seven. Only the female incubates, for 25 to 28 days. Chicks fledge after about 70 days. They become independent between 100 and 130 days after hatching.

Captive birds reach breeding age at about seven years. That is late for a parrot of this size, and inbreeding may be the cause. Captive lifespan runs from 20 to 33 years. The oldest captive bird died at 34 years. Nobody measured the lifespan of a wild bird, though the last male passed 20 years.

Predators and threats

Trapping for the bird trade drove the final collapse. Dozens of birds left the wild around 1980, at the peak of the illegal trade. Introduced black rats, feral cats, mongooses and marmosets took eggs and young. Africanized bees spread north and competed for nest hollows. People cut Caraiba trees for firewood.

The Sobradinho Dam, begun in 1974, put woodland along the river under an artificial lake. Farming replaced much of the habitat on the north bank of the river. Surveys suggest the remaining habitat could never have held more than about 60 birds. In November 2025 the agency ICMBio reported a circovirus in the released flock. That disease attacks the beak and the feathers and usually kills. The bird was already rare by 1819, after a century of burning and grazing. Trapping, habitat loss and a small range probably acted together rather than one at a time.

Population and conservation

The IUCN declared the species Extinct in the Wild in 2019. The whole captive population descends from seven wild caught founders. Those founders probably came from only two nests. About 177 birds lived in captivity in 2022. Inbreeding leaves many eggs infertile and kills many embryos.

Brazil set up the Ararinha Azul project in 1990 to recover the species. Conservation groups bought farmland at Curaçá to protect and restore habitat. A national action plan in 2012 set targets for breeding and for release. Work at one collection produced the first chicks by artificial insemination in 2013. Two protected areas now cover the release ground in Bahia.

The first release returned birds to Bahia in June 2022. A second group followed in December of the same year. A pair drawn from those two releases bred at the end of 2023. CITES Appendix I bans commercial international trade in the species. The circovirus outbreak in the released flock is now the main worry.

Relationship with humans

The macaw was always rare in captivity. The London Zoological Society held three birds between 1878 and 1902. The Berlin Zoo showed four blue macaw species together in 1900. Alvaro Carvalhaes bred the first captive chicks in Brazil in the 1950s. Poison killed most of his birds in the 1970s.

Collectors valued the bird for its rarity, which made the trapping worse. A bird called Presley turned up in Colorado in 2002 and went home to Brazil. Presley died near São Paulo in 2014 at about 40 years of age. Nobody can buy one now, because the Brazilian government owns every known bird. People at Curaçá take part in the release programme. Brazil banned wildlife export in 1967 and joined CITES in 1975. Those laws pushed the owners of captive birds out of sight.

In culture and myth

The animated film Rio, released in 2011, made the species famous. Its main characters, Blu and Jewel, stand for the last male and the last female. Brazilian cinemas gave it their widest opening for any film at that time. The sequel invented a hidden population in the Amazon, which is fiction.

The bird appeared in an episode of the American series Law and Order about smuggling. It also featured in the cartoon series Noah's Island. Brazilians know the macaw as the ararinha azul. The recovery project and the two protected areas carry that name. The species now appears to serve as a symbol of both extinction and return.

In his 1638 account Marcgrave wrote that the bird loved fruit, above all passion fruit. Spix wrote that it lived in flocks and had a thin voice. Those two notes are the earliest European records of the bird.