Dhe first tree this morning is just a few minutes’ drive from the research station, densely packed with a few dozen palm and deciduous trees on a small rise – an island in a sea of grass. These forests are called Capão here in Brazil in the Pantanal, one of the largest wetlands on earth. It’s November, the rainy season is just beginning, in a few weeks the grassy area will be flooded, and then the tree will actually be on an island. It is easy to see that there is something special about this tree. A silver metal dress surrounds its trunk at a height of two meters. Biologist Neiva Guedes explains protection against animals that could climb up. It is a Panama tree, and birds have made their nests high up in a natural cave that Guedes desperately wants to protect: hyacinth macaws.
There are more than 350 species of parrots worldwide. The macaws are the largest among them, and Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus, the hyacinth macaw, is the largest of the macaws with a length of up to one meter. But worldwide, according to estimates, only about 6500 specimens live in the wild, the largest population can be found in the Pantanal. Their species is endangered because the blue macaws are popular in the animal trade and poachers hunt them down because ever larger fires threaten the Pantanal in the dry season. And because the imposing birds are real specialists: They feed almost exclusively on the fruits of two types of palm, the acuri and bocaiuva palms. And they prefer the caves in large, old Panama trees for their nests (Sterculia apetala), here called Manduvi.
In order to examine the young birds, Lucas Rocha Novaes climbs up to the nests and then drops the macaws well-packed on the ground.
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Image: Kai Kupferschmidt
A string is tied to one side of the tree that Guedes is visiting that morning. A huge loop that hangs from a branch high above. The researchers tie a solid rope to it, pull it over the branch and attach the end to a palm tree. Now Lucas Rocha Novaes can latch onto the rope and climb up to the nest hole. At a height of ten meters, he uses a temperature gun to measure how warm it is in and around the nest. Then he carefully reaches in with gloves, takes the young animal out, puts it in a cloth bag and puts it in a basket, which he gently drops on the floor. There Guedes receives the basket, and on the unfolded loading area of the pick-up, she carefully takes the bird out of the bag. This macaw is almost three months old and is already beautiful with its bright blue plumage, only the skin around the eyes and on the lower beak is yellow. “What a fine fellow,” says Guedes. She measures the animal, weighs it and takes a blood sample. This is the only way to determine the sex with certainty, and the plumage does not reveal anything later. Finally, it gets a metal ring on its leg, it says “Projeto Arara Azul”.
In November 1989, Neiva Guedes was very close by. At the time, the studied biologist worked for the environmental agency of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul in the capital Campo Grande. At a training event in the Pantanal, she was just 26 years old when she saw hyacinth macaws in the wild for the first time: “That was love at first sight.” At that time, it was estimated that there were far more animals in captivity than in nature. The bird, it seemed at the time, could soon have disappeared from the Pantanal. Guedes decided to fight to preserve the species. She quit her job, went back to university, studied forest sciences and started the “Projeto Arara Azul” in 1990, now one of the longest-running species protection projects in Brazil. The goal: to research the hyacinth macaw in order to better protect it.
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