Scarlet Macaw

The scarlet macaw is a large, loud parrot with mostly scarlet plumage, yellow upper wing coverts, dark blue flight feathers, a light blue rump and tail coverts, and a long pointed tail. The face has bare white skin and tiny white feathers; the upper bill is pale horn and the lower black. Adults have pale yellow eyes. It looks much like the green-winged macaw, which has red lines in the face and no yellow in the wing. The Central American form is larger than the South American one (Wikipedia, general species account).

A typical sighting is a single bird or a pair flying over the canopy, although flocks can form in places. Field observations in Costa Rica found that macaws spend nearly all their time high in the forest canopy, over 10m above the ground, where most of their food grows. Their raucous calls carry for kilometres. In the central Pacific they have learned to eat introduced teak seeds and beach almond, and conservationists have begun intervening at some Costa Rican nests after finding that adults sometimes kill their own chicks when food and nest sites are short (Wikipedia, general species account).

In Costa Rica the species is restricted to isolated Pacific-slope regions. On this guide it is a target species of La Selva, Palo Verde, Carara, Corcovado, the Osa Peninsula and Drake Bay.