Tender love between a pair of Scarlet macaws in Costa Rica where they should be – in the wild.
Watching these magnificent birds in the wild is amazing, even more so when they in some places come regularly to feed on handouts from humans and are thus so comfortable around humans that they will land on your head or wherever they chose.
The sad fact is that this and most species of macaws are threatened to endangered due to trafficking to quench the seemingly insatiable appetite for a colorful pet. This is both supporting criminals fund their activities and promoting the idea that these intelligent birds thrive and are happy in captivity and that your specimen has been bred in captivity from a long line of captive birds, which of course is hard to prove and does not justify that these have evolved and belong in the wild and hold important roles in their homeland.
Long ago you could see hundreds upon hundreds gather on clay licks – now this is a rare event. But in Costa Rica there are places they can be seen in large numbers visiting some impressive feeders set up just for these beauties. They come and go as they please, which is is much better and a win-win as those facilitating this charge visitors who flock to get an intimate encounter that can be hard to experience in the wild.
It sounds like this:
Last updated on 14 January 2022
