Meet Will and Gracie






Macaws are the largest parrots in the world. They’re beautiful birds, often showing off brilliantly colored feathers. Most macaws live in Central and South America. Macaws are part of the parrot family. They are related to all parrots but are less closely related to parakeets and cockatoos.
The blue-throated macaw is critically endangered. The small number of wild blue-throated macaws live in eastern Bolivia. The birds are illegally captured and sold as pets all over the world.

Sadly, these colorful, intelligent creatures are in trouble. Some species of macaws are extinct already. Many more are endangered, which means they could become extinct. Only about one million macaws are still living in the wild. A million sounds like a big number, but only three species (blue-and-yellow, red-and-green, and scarlet macaws) make up most of it. Most species have very few members left. For example, there are thought to be fewer than 100 blue-throated macaws left in the wild.

Macaws are members of the parrot family and have the typical parrot features. They have large, strong, curved beaks designed to crush nuts and seeds. Strong, agile toes are used like hands to grasp things. Loud, screeching and squawking voices help make their presence known in dense rain forests. Macaws are built to fly through the trees in the forest, with a streamlined body and tail shape and wings that don’t flap deeply. They are also famous for their bright colors, which seem bold and conspicuous to us but actually blend in well with the green leaves, red and yellow fruits, and bluish shadows in the rain forest.

What’s on the menu?

Macaws eat a variety of ripe and unripe fruits, nuts and seeds, flowers, leaves, and stems of plants, and sources of protein like insects and snails. Some species specialize in eating the hard fruits and nuts of palm trees. One trick they use for this is to forage in fields where cattle live. The cattle eat the palm nuts, which pass through their digestive systems and come out the other end with the hard coating removed. This makes the nuts softer and easier for the macaws to eat! Macaws also visit riverbanks and cliffs made of clay soil, which they eat. Scientists think that the soil neutralizes any toxic chemicals the birds might eat in seeds or unripe fruits, so they don’t get a stomach ache.