Spix's (or Little Blue) Macaw - Cyanopsitta spixii

Spix's (or Little Blue) Macaw - Cyanopsitta spixii.

IUCN STATUS CATEGORY Critically Endangered

HABITAT Associated with gallery forest dominated by caraiba Tabebuia caraiba within the caatinga (dry scrub) zone.

GEOGRAPHICAL SPREAD Occurs only in remnant gallery forest along the Rio Sao Francisco in northern Bahia, Brazil.

CURRENT POPULATION One wild male, one introduced female. 30 in captivity.

SIZE 55cm.

WEIGHT Male 0.39kg. Female 0.33kg.

AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY Long-lived.

NORMAL DIET Seeds and fruits.

NORMAL LIFESTYLE Closely associated with caraiba trees, which provide holes for nesting, often used year after year, and perches. Birds usually occur in pairs, and although they often use regular flight paths locally, they may also move some distance to drink or possibly to search for fruiting trees.

PREVIOUS GEOGRAPHICAL SPREAD On the slender evidence available, the species seems always to have been rare and local, and probably largely restricted to a more extensive strip along the Sao Francisco river, encompassing the present locality.

REASONS FOR DECLINE Apparent rarity may be largely attributed to the loss of much caraiba woodland and the impact of settlers moving through the species' range during the past 300 years.

CURRENT THREATS The illegal bird trade since 1970 is certainly responsible for the critically endangered status of the species.

CONSERVATION PROJECTS The reported total of birds in captivity (now under the overall control of the Brazilian government's Permanent Committee for the Recovery of Spix's Macaw) was 31 in September 1994. At least 21 of these are captive bred and the degree of relatedness between birds is unknown. During December 1994 the single wild bird, a male, was introduced to a wild-born female taken from a Brazilian collection to a holding facility near the male's home tree.

SPECIAL FEATURES Known for more than 150 years only by traded birds from an unknown area in the interior of Brazil. The extreme rarity of this Macaw was not realised until the mid 1980s. The remaining single wild specimen has been well publicised and guarded.

REFERENCES

Collar, N.J., Gonzaga, L.P., Krabbe, N., Madroņo Nieto, A., Naranjo, L.G., Parker (III), T.A., and Wege, D.C. 1992. Threatened Birds of the Americas. The ICBP/IUCN Red Data Book. ICBP (now BirdLife International), Cambridge.

Collar, N.J., Crosby, M.J., and Stattersfield, A.J. 1994. Birds to Watch 2. The World List of Threatened Birds. BirdLife International, Cambridge.

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