Hyacinth Macaw: The King of the Parrots

The Hyacinth Macaw is a very large, brilliantly blue bird. Both males and females have a gorgeous covering of deep blue feathers.. Up near the head and neck, the feathers lighten up slightly. The skin just touching the lower mandible of the bird, as well as the skin around the eyes, is bald and colored a bright yellow. The yellowing near the beak almost makes this bird look like it’s smiling. The beak is a greyish black as are the feet. The eyes are a deep black.

This strikingly beautiful bird is also amazingly large. The length upon maturity is around 40 inches and the weight on average is about 3 pounds. This bird can reach up to 4 pounds. That’s very large for a Macaw. The Hyacinth is actually the largest flying parrot known to be in existence.

The Hyacinth Macaw is very much an endangered species due to habitat destruction and capture for pet-trade. Located in Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia, the Hyacinth is struggling to keep their numbers at a level high enough to prevent extinction. Numbers that used to be somewhere in the ten’s of thousands are now around just a few thousand in the wild today. Most of the problem lies in deforestation. Some locals kill them for meat, many people capture them for the pet trade (and most of these birds that are caught die in transit), farmers destroy their tree nests by setting fires to the land for cultivation purposes, and many native indians hunt them for their feathers to make headdresses to sell to tourists.

This Macaw is not likely to be found deep in the rainforest, as many would assume. They are more likely found on the outskirts of the forest, living near the broken canopy or even around grassy marshes. They live in large groups of up to 30 members or more where they will pick pairs for mating and stick with that one mate for life.