Photograph Steve Brookes


When Les gave me the news that the conservation committee of the Parrot Society had decided to donate £5,000 I was absolutely delighted! Here was proof that PS members really are helping to aid the survival of one of the world’s most vulnerable parrots…


How could it be that such a large


parrot, over 70cm in length, had never been seen in the wild except, obviously, by local people? The answer was that its small area of distribution was remote and visited by very few outsiders. The first clue to the origin of Lear’s Macaw came in 1978 when Olivério Pinto, found one in captivity in Juazeiro in Bahia during an expedition to north-east Brazil.


36 BIRD SCENE


By the time the third (revised) edition


of Parrots of the World was published in 1989 the Distribution entry for Lear’s Macaw read “Known only from north- western Bahia, northern Brazil.” The renowned German Brazilian


ornithologist, Helmut Sick (who died in 1991) together with D.Teixeira and L.P.Gonzaga, discovered the home range of Lear’s Macaw in December 1978. It is not quite correct to say that they discovered it as they were, of course, guided by local people who knew the macaw. It lived in a plateau called Raso da Catarina, where the altitude varied from 380m to about 800m -- higher in parts. It is an extraordinary beautiful area of red sandstone canyons and cliffs, the cliffs being used by the macaws


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