Turquoise macaw

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Turquoise macaw
Turquoise Macaw (Anodorhynchus glaucus) (Illustration by Bourjot Saint-Hilaire, 1837/1838)

Turquoise Macaw (Anodorhynchus glaucus)
(Illustration by Bourjot Saint-Hilaire, 1837/1838)

Systematics
Class : Birds (aves)
Order : Parrots (Psittaciformes)
Family : True parrots (Psittacidae)
Tribe : New World Parrots (Arini)
Genre : Blue Macaws ( Anodorhynchus )
Type : Turquoise macaw
Scientific name
Anodorhynchus glaucus
( Vieillot , 1816)

The turquoise macaw ( Anodorhynchus glaucus ), also called sea ​​blue macaw and glaucus macaw , is a species of the New World parrots that is now extinct .

description

The bird was approx. 70 cm long and had a blue-greenish plumage that was more grayish-green-blue on the underside and dark-gray-brown on the throat. The underside of the hand and arm wings and the tail feathers were black. The turquoise macaw had a yellow, featherless eye ring and a large, yellow, bare lower beak. The iris was dark brown, the beak gray-black and the toes dark gray.

A study carried out on bellows material and fossil finds by Herculano Alvarenga , which also compares the distribution areas with that of the Lear's macaw , comes about due to the extensive agreement u. a. the dimensions of both species to the result that both species only have subspecies status. Due to the priority rule, the following new names would result: Anodorhynchus glaucus glaucus as the nominate form and Anodorhynchus glaucus leari for the Lear's macaw.

distribution

Formerly in the provinces of Corrientes and Misiones in NE Argentina , in the province Artigas in NW Uruguay , in S Paraguay and in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina in SW Brazil . The indications of origin of the type specimen described by Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816 (then: Macrcercus glaucus ) read: "South America between 27 ° and 30 ° southern longitude .... on the banks of the Rio Paraná and the Río Uruguay ."

Live freely

Little was known about the species’s free life. The birds lived in pairs and small family groups. They stayed in the tops of the yatay palms ( Butia yatay ), the fruits of which were probably the main food. The decline of the species goes hand in hand with the colonization of the region. Turquoise macaws lived in the gallery forests of the rivers. These narrow strips of forest were cut down very quickly by the first settlers and turned into farmland.

In the wild, the species probably finally disappeared before 1920. However, Decoteau (1982) mentions field observations that are said to have been successful in the north-east of Argentina around 1960 . According Decoteau are in small remainders Uruguay live. However, this information has not been confirmed. The Swiss animal catcher and trader Cordier allegedly saw three or four specimens of the sea-blue macaw in a group of hyacinth macaws in 1975 at an animal trader in Bolivia . These parrots are said to have originated from the Bolivia / Brazil border area (in: Robiller, 1990).

Keeping and breeding

Some turquoise macaws made their way into European zoos in the late nineteenth century. In the Berlin Zoo a glaucous macaw died in 1892; the bellows is in the Berlin Natural History Museum. Another bird of the species probably died in the Paris Zoo in 1905. A turquoise macaw housed in the Buenos Aires Zoo died in 1938 - it was probably the last living bird of this species.

Decoteau (1982) mentions a breeding success with this species by a European breeder (without further details).

Museum copies

The turquoise macaw was a very rare species even at the beginning of the land occupation by the Europeans . So it is not surprising that only very few specimens made it to natural history museums around the world.

One preparation or one bellows is located in the following museums: Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturalas in Buenos Aires , Natural History Museum in Berlin , Louis Agassiz Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge / USA, Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in Geneva , Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris , World Museum in Liverpool and Natural History Museum in Vienna .

The Natural History Museum in London , Naturalis in Leiden , the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC , the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the American Museum of Natural History in New York each have two specimens or bellows .

literature

  • NJ Collar, LP Gonzaga, N. Krabbe, A. Madroño Nieto, LG Naranjo, TA Parker, DC Ways: Threatened Birds of the Americas. The ICBP / IUCN Red Data Book. Smithsonian Inst. Press, Washington / London 1992.
  • O. Finsch: The parrots - edited monograph. Brill, Leiden 1867-1868.
  • AG Knox, MP Walters: Extinct and Endangered Birds in the Collections of the Natural History Museum. BOU, Publications No. 1, 1994.
  • RN Orfila: Los psittaformes argentinos. In: El Hornero. Volume 6, 1937, pp. 197-225, 365-382; Volume 7, pp. 1-21; HDH.
  • AE Decoteau: Handbook of Macaw. THF Publ. , Neptune 1982.
  • L. Lepperhoff: Macaws. Eugen Ulmer Verlag , Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8001-3821-2 .
  • D. Hoppe: Aras Eugen Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-8001-7081-7 .
  • W. Lantermann: Macaws. Horst Müller-Verlag , Walsrode 1983, ISBN 3-923269-11-0 .
  • JL Peters: Check-List of Birds of the World. Vol. III, Harvard University Press , Cambridge 1937.
  • F. Robiller: Parrots. Vol. 3, Deutscher Landwirtschaftsverlag , Berlin / Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 1990.
  • H. Sick: Birds in Brazil . Princeton University Press , Princeton 1993.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Herculano Alvarenga: Anodorhynchus glaucus e A. leari (Psittaciformes, Psittacidae): osteologia, registros fósseis e antiga distribuição geográfica. ( Memento of November 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) In: Revista Brasileira de Ornitologia. Volume 15, No. 3, September 2007, pp. 427-432.

Web links

Commons : Turquoise Macaw ( Anodorhynchus glaucus )  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files