English           -             Blue and Yellow Macaw

Portuguese   -              Arara-canindé      

Latin              -              Ara ararauna     

The Blue and Yellow Macaw, also known as the Blue-and-Gold Macaw, is a large South American parrot. They are often considered to be one of the most intelligent and most beautiful of all the parrot species.

Blue and Yellow Macaws have blue wings and tail, black chin, golden underparts and a green forehead. Their beaks are black and very strong for crushing nuts. The naked face is white, turning pink in excited birds and lined with small black feathers. There is little variation in plumage across the range. Some birds have a more orangey or ‘butterscotch’ underside colour, particularly on the breast. The Blue and Yellow Macaw measures around 91 cm in length from the tip of its head to the tip of its tail making them one of the biggest parrots in the world. It has a wing span of 114 cm and weighs around  to 1.3 kgs. They give a loud, guttural “rraa-aaar” or “kurr-raak”. These calls are uttered with quavering tone. Their shrill calls can be heard over long distances. The Blue and Yellow Macaw can live up to 60 years of age.

They are found in Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay. There range extends slightly into Central America, where it is restricted to Panama. They live in seasonally flooded forests, mainly at edges, also in gallery forests, along streams, savannahs with scattered trees and palm swamps. It can also be found in deciduous woodlands away from water. It can live from lowlands to 500 metres in most parts of the range, but occasionally to 1500 metres in Peru.

Blue and Yellow Macaw feeds on fruits or some parts of them, nuts, berries, blooms, leaves, and flowers of Combretum. Its favourite seeds come from Hura Crepitans trees. Blue-and-Yellow Macaw, as other macaws, eats clay and minerals on riverbanks. These macaws feed on several plant species, including toxic plants. To eat clay allows them to digest the poison contained in the fruits and seeds of these plants. 

The Blue and Yellow Macaw reaches breeding age when they are 3 to 4 years old. The male bird’s colour signals readiness for breeding. The brighter and bolder the colours, the better the chance of getting a mate. They are known to pair for life and live in small family groups. They nest high above the ground in cavities found in large, dead trees. The female typically lays two or three eggs. The female incubates the eggs for about 28 days. When the young hatch, they are blind and featherless. The strongest nestling take most of the food leaving the others nestlings to perish in the nest. The young Macaws do not develop their full plumage until they are at least 10 weeks old. The surviving chicks fledge from the nest about 97 days after hatching. They normally remain with their parents for several months before becoming independent. 

Blue and Yellow Macaws are popular pets, highly prized for their beautiful colours and intelligence. Unfortunately this has caused a decrease in their numbers in the wild due to illegal trapping for the pet trade. Although they are classed as “not threatened in the wild” due to their large range, the forests they live in are fast disappearing. This means smaller populations of this magnificent birds survive in the wild. The species range formerly included Trinidad, but it became extinct there by 1970 as a result of human activities. At this stage the Blue and Yellow Macaw  is considered as a species “of least concern”. As previously mentioned, the population trend is declining but not enough to reach vulnerable status but their status could easily change in the future.

Photos of the Blue and Yellow Macaws were taken at Parque das Arves - Foz do Iguacu - Parana.

English            -             Striped Owl

Portuguese    -              Coruja-orelhuda

Latin               -               Asio clamator

The Striped Owl is a poorly-known resident of the Neotropics. Although it is a relatively large and distinctive owl, the Striped Owl is easily overlooked, and even its geographic distribution is poorly known. 

The Striped Owl is a medium-sized owl with large ear tufts and a brownish-white facial disk rimmed with black. Its beak is black, and it has cinnamon-coloured eyes. It has shorter, rounder wings than most of its close relatives. The upper parts are cinnamon with fine black vermiculation and heavy stripes. The underparts are a pale tawny colour with dusky streaks. It can get to around 38 cm in length, with a  Wing span of 228-294 mm and it can weigh up to 550g. Both sexes are similar, with females slightly larger than the males.
The juvenile resembles adults, but it has cinnamon to buffy-white facial disk. On the body, its plumage is rather buff, with greyish to dark brown streaks. They emits a long, strident, hawk-like whistle wheeyoo. The song of the male is a series of well-spaced nasal hoots, while female gives a similar but more shrill song. Both sexes have series of barking calls and fledged young give high-pitched screams, weehe.

Striped owls are distributed from southern Mexico to Panama, and from northern South America to Uruguay and north Argentina, east of the Andes. They prefers open or semi-open grassland and savannah with scattered trees, small groves and bushes. It also occurs in open marshland with bushes, pasture and agricultural land, as well as in wooded suburban areas. Ranges from sea-level up to approximately 1600m.

They are mainly nocturnal, and are more active at sunset. By day the Striped owl roosts in dense foliage of small trees or shrubs, sometimes on the ground beneath vegetation cover or even in pine plantation. During the non-breeding season several individuals may gather in flocks and roost together by daytime. 

Striped Owls eat many kinds of small animals, including squirrels, mice, voles, rabbits, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and invertebrates. They hunt by sitting and waiting on an elevated perch, while scanning all around for prey with their sharp eyes and ears. Though they do most of their hunting after sunset and during the night, sometimes they feed during the day. Barred Owls may temporarily store their prey in a nest, in the crook of a branch, or at the top of a snag. They swallow small prey whole and large prey in pieces, eating the head first and then the body. 

Breeding season may vary, but mainly from August to March. At the beginning of the breeding season, the male vocalises. It may perform some wing-clapping displays while flying. Some displays may occur at the nest-site, such as ritualised scraping. The Striped Owl nests on flat ground, hidden in long grassy clumps or thick bush. Some nests can be found in trees. The female lays between one to five eggs and she alone incubates the eggs for approximately 33 days. She hardly leaves the nest during this period. The male provides food for the female and young. The female takes the prey from the male and tears it into small pieces for the nestlings. When the nestlings are bigger, the male drops the prey at nest when they are able to feed themselves. Nestlings fledge after 46th days after hatching and after 140 days the young  are expelled from the parents territory. At the time of expulsion, only one or two nestling have normally survived.

Besides man made threats, (like vehicles and being shot) the Striped Owl has natural predators such as birds of prey and larger owls.
This species is widespread and has a large range, This species occupies open or semi-open habitats, and often is found in anthropogenic habitats such as airstrips, rice fields, plantations, and even in urban open areas. It is possible, therefore, that the Striped Owl may be increasing in abundance and expanding its range, due to forests being cleared for agricultural and commercial purposes. Therefore the Striped Owl is a species classed as “a species of least concern”.

All photos of the Striped owl were taken at “Parque das Arves - Foz do Iguacu - Parana.

English            -           Neotropic cormorant

Portuguese    -           Biguá

Latin               -            Phalacrocorax brasilianus

The Neotropic Cormorant, (formerly called Olivaceous Cormorant) as implied by its common names, is the only species of cormorant that can be found in just about every aquatic ecosystem in the Neotropics from just above the Tropic of Cancer to Tierra del Fuego. It can often be identified by range alone, but when overlapping with other species in the northern and southwestern portions of its range, it is obviously the smaller species.

This bird is 64 cm long with a 100 cm  wingspan. Adults males weigh from 1.1 to 1.5 kg, adult females weigh around 50 to 100 g less. Birds of the southern populations tend to be bigger than the more northerly birds. It is small and slender, especially compared to the larger, heavier-looking Double-crested cormorant. It has a long tail and frequently holds its neck in an S-shape. Adult plumage is mainly black, with a yellow-brown throat patch. During breeding, white tufts appear on the sides of the head, along with scattered white filoplumes on the side of the head and neck, and the throat patch develops a white edge. The upper wings are somewhat grayer than the rest of the body. Juveniles are brownish in colour.

Neotropic Cormorants are found in all of South and central America and in Southern parts of the USA. They are versatile birds that live around freshwater or saltwater, and even brackish water. Prefers habitats such as coastal marshes, large rivers to small streams, mangroves, high elevation Andean lakes, up to 5000m and extensive marshlands.

They feed mainly on small fish and shrimp, which they catch by diving and swimming underwater but they will also eat tadpoles, frogs, and aquatic insects. The Neotropic Cormorant is the only cormorant known to plunge-dive, which is a specific type of diving not performed from a great height. They normally begin less than half of a meter above the water. 

The Neotropic cormorant breeds in colonies. The male tries to attract the female by sitting with tail raised, bill pointed up, while raising and lowering tips of folded wings. Both sexes display by stretching neck up, bill open, waving head back and forth. The nest site is usually in live or dead bushes or trees, 3-25 feet above water; sometimes on ground on islands. Nest which is built by both sexes is a solid platform of sticks with depression at centre lined with twigs and grass. The female lays between 1 to 5. bluish white eggs. which are Incubated by both sexes for around 25-30 days. Age at first flight is not well documented but the young raised on islands are able to swim and dive at 8 weeks. The nestlings are fed by the adults for the first  11th week and are independent after 12 weeks. The Neotropic cormorant raise only one brood per year.

The Neotropic cormorant has an extremely large range and in areas the population trend appears to be increasing as well as spreading north into the USA. Therefore, this species is classified as a “species of least concern”.

Photo No. 1 was taken at Parque Tingüi - Curitiba - Parana

Photo No 2 was taken at Ilha do Frade - Vitoria - Espirito Santo