FEATURE Photograph Steve Brookes


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. 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. 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


BIRD SCENE 17BIRD SCENE 07


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