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LEAR’S MACAW
ARTICLE BY ROSEMARY LOW
remember how excited I was in 1973 when Joseph Forshaw’s ground- breaking book Parrots of the World was published. Here, in a 584-page tome, weighing seven kilos was at last a work that covered the natural history of all the members of the parrot family. Previously the information was scattered, mainly in scientific papers, and the actual appearance of many species had been a mystery. Here they were all illustrated in plates measuring 38cm in height. Younger people these days can hardly imagine what this book meant -- for few on parrots had been published and, of course, there was no internet to refer to. For every species in Forshaw’s book there was a distribution map as well as a written description of the area in which it occurred. There were four exceptions. The Intermediate Parakeet (Psittacula intermedia) turned out to
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be a hybrid, and the Blue-thighed Lory (Lorius tibialis) and Rufous-tailed Parrot (Tanygnathus heterurus) are probably aberrant specimens of Purple-naped Lory and Muller’s Parrot. There was only one genuine species noted as “Exact range unknown.” This was Lear’s Macaw. These words were qualified with: “… probably north-eastern Brazil in the states of Pernambuco and Bahia.” The author continued: “Lear’s Macaw is a mysterious bird known only from specimens held in captivity.” The species was described by Bonaparte in 1856, from a prepared specimen in the Paris Museum, whose origin was known only as Brazil, and another specimen from Antwerp Zoo, Belgium, of unknown origin. For more than a century all the birds acquired by American and European zoos and museums had been given an incorrect origin.
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