ARTICLE BY: ROSEMARY LOW


LEAR’S MACAW


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.


I 06 16 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.


remember how excited I was in 1973 when Joseph Forshaw’s ground-breaking book Parrots of the World was published. Here, in


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 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


BIRD SCENE


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48