April 29, 2018 - Costa Rica - Macaws

I’m a birder, so one of the most spectacular experiences of our recent trip to Costa Rica was a visit to a Macaw sanctuary farm. It provides a safe place for the birds to live and breed. The goal is to return these birds to the wild. This is a Scarlet Macaw. It is about three feet long, including the long tail.

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The farm also has a few Great Green Macaws which are even more endangered than the Scarlet Macaw. It’s about the same size as the Scarlet Macaw.

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Scarlet and Green Macaws sometimes interbreed and produce hybrids like this bird. See the next set of photos for a comparison.

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Mating between a Great Green Macaw (left) and a Scarlet Macaw (right) produces a hybrid (center). Note the interesting mixture of red and green feathers on the hybrid bird.

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The farm provides nesting boxes for the Macaws to facilitate breeding. Macaws are large birds, so the nesting box is made from the trunk of a big tree. The 55-gallon drum on which the box is sitting provides some perspective.

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Here’s Alex, one of our top-notch tour guides, feeding peanuts to the Macaws.

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I managed to get a photo of these Macaws flying overhead. There are three Scarlet Macaws and three hybrids in the photo. Can you pick them out?

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