THE STRANGE SAGA OF THE PARROT WORLD'S SEA-GREEN SCARLET PIMPERNEL - DOES THE ULTRA-ELUSIVE GLAUCOUS MACAW STILL EXIST?

Digital creation of glaucous macaws, by Andrés González (© Andrés González/Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

Most ornithologists currently recognise 17 species of living macaw. However, there are varying degrees of evidence to suggest that several additional forms have also existed in modern times but do so no longer. Some of them were confined to various Caribbean islands, and I have previously reviewed those examples briefly here on ShukerNature (I have now conducted and written up a much more extensive investigation of their cases that will be appearing shortly). But the ostensibly lost, highly controversial species under consideration by me right now hailed from continental South America – and, who knows, it may still do so.

Some of the most spectacular of all macaws are unquestionably those breathtaking beauties in blue that belong to the genus Anodorhynchus. Both in size and in colour, the three officially-recognised blue macaw species belonging to this genus exhibit an interesting gradation.

Glaucous macaw (centre) with hyacinth macaw (left) and Lear's macaw (right), on a Brazilian postage stamp (public domain)

The largest of this trio is the hyacinth or hyacinthine macaw A. hyacinthinus, named after its magnificent, exclusively blue plumage. Next in line is the mid-sized Lear's macaw A. leari, in which much of the hyacinth macaw's vivid cobalt shading has been replaced by subdued turquoise.

Then comes the glaucous macaw A. glaucus, slightly smaller than Lear's, with a plumage incorporating (as its name stresses) a subtle range of greenish-blue and sea-green hues - particularly upon its head, belly, and the upper surface of its tail feathers. In addition, its throat is brownish-grey, and the feathers around the lower portion of its face are sooty in colour. Tragically, however, this last-mentioned species is now extinct – or is it?

Glaucous macaw, as painted by Paul Louis Oudart for Louis Pierre Vieillot's work La Galerie des Oiseaux, 1825-1834, appearing in it as Plate 24 (public domain)

The scientific debut of the glaucous macaw took place in 1816, when it was formally described by French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot. Its distribution at that time appeared to encompass southern Brazil, central and southern Paraguay, northern Argentina, and northeastern Uruguay, but by the end of the 19th Century this once-common species had seemingly vanished throughout its entire range. The reasons for this astonishing disappearance are still unknown, because the glaucous macaw had rarely been studied in the wild, although the major felling of yatay palms whose nuts were its staple diet, and the capturing of birds for the pet trade undoubtedly contributed.

Over the years, however, a few specimens had been exhibited in various of the world's major zoos - one of these was received by London Zoo in 1886, and a well-known example lived at Paris's Jardin d'Acclimatation from 1895 until 1905. Indeed, it is often claimed that this Paris specimen was the very last glaucous macaw. Conversely, some authorities confer that sombre distinction upon an individual that arrived at Buenos Aires Zoo in the 1920s and was still alive there in 1936, but there are others who believe that this latter bird was actually a Lear's macaw.

A glaucous macaw (foreground) with a Spix's macaw Cyanopsitta spixii, in a Hamburg animal dealer's premises, snapped by Karl Neunzig in 1895 (public domain)

Yet even if it was a genuine glaucous macaw, there is no certainty that it really was the last one. On the contrary, the published literature dealing with this exceptionally secretive species contains an appreciable number of reports alleging the much more recent existence of glaucous macaws, both in captivity and in the wild. Some of these are very vague, little more than rumours; but certain others are compelling enough to have stimulated cautious expectation within ornithological circles that this controversial bird's formal rediscovery is not very far away.

For instance, in her book Macaws: A Complete Guide (1990), parrot specialist Rosemary Low revealed that in 1970 the late Rossi dalla Riva of Brazil, an occasional breeder of rare parrots and very knowledgeable regarding his local region's avifauna, claimed that glaucous macaws nested there, but he would not name the precise locality, fearing that local collectors would send their hunters to trap them. Low also noted that in 1988, after spending some months in the field (she did not name the area), a very experienced bird trapper came back home and announced that he had spied glaucous macaws, but had not been able to photograph or capture any of them.

Another early glaucous macaw illustration, from Alexandre Bourjot Saint-Hilaire's Histoire Naturelle des Perroquets, 1837-1838 (public domain)

In his own book, The World of Macaws (1985), Dieter Hoppe noted that he had heard tell that during the 1970s a glaucous macaw had apparently been exhibited in a bird park either in Belgium or in the Netherlands, and that another supposed specimen had been alive somewhere in Australia during or around 1960. Hoppe also documented a much more tangible, firsthand encounter. Several years earlier, he had visited an animal dealer who had shown him two very strange hyacinth macaws, much smaller than normal and with atypical sea-green plumage; Hoppe believed that these were glaucous macaws.

In addition, he has published a photo of an odd-looking macaw assumed by the photographer, Tony Silva, to have been a Lear's macaw, but which was principally sea-green in colour instead of deep turquoise - another incognito specimen of A. glaucus? Certainly, there is a very real possibility that there are currently a number of unrecognised specimens of this scarcely-known species hiding 'undercover' in captivity, i.e. erroneously labelled as hyacinth or Lear's macaws.

A glaucous macaw skin, at Huub Veldhuijzen van Zanten-Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands (© Huub Veldhuijzen van Zanten-Naturalis Biodiversity Center/Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

In 1982, writing in his Handbook of Macaws, Dr A.E. Decoteau claimed to be in regular correspondence with a European aviculturalist (no name or country of abode given) who was supposedly breeding a flock of glaucous macaws, from a tame pair that he had owned for several years. However, I have yet to see any mention elsewhere of this sensational programme of captive breeding.

Perhaps the most promising of the glaucous macaw's many reputed reappearances in modern times took place during February 1992, following the arrival at British Customs of a pair of Lear's macaws imported by parrot breeder Harry Sissen on loan from Mulhouse Zoo, situated near Strasbourg, in France. When he came to Customs to inspect them, Sissen was amazed to find that the female seemed to be a glaucous macaw. On 31 March 1992, London's The Mail on Sunday newspaper contained a fascinating full-page account of this remarkable episode written by Howard Smith, which included an excellent colour photograph snapped by Lynn Hilton that clearly portrayed the sea-green colour of the bird's breast and head, with indications of brown markings present upon its throat.

The Mail on Sunday newspaper's article, featuring Lynn Hilton's colour photo of the Mulhouse Zoo mystery macaw – please click to enlarge for reading purposes (© The Mail on Sunday/Howard Smith/Lynn Hilton – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational, review purposes only)

Subsequent to its arrival in Britain, this extraordinary specimen was scrutinised by at least two leading parrot experts, Robin Pickering and Joseph Cuddy – among the very few people to have examined every one of the eight preserved skins known to be from genuine glaucous macaws, housed in various of the major museums across the globe. Neither of them reportedly had any doubt regarding the bird's identity as a bona fide A. glaucus.

Moreover, Peter Colston, then scientific officer at the London Natural History Museum's ornithological department at Tring in Hertfordshire, was shown photos of the bird by The Mail on Sunday, and he agreed that its head was reminiscent of the glaucous macaw's. However, he also pointed out that it did not seem to possess this species' characteristic sooty facial feathers.

A second glaucous macaw skin, preserved as a taxiderm specimen, at Huub Veldhuijzen van Zanten-Naturalis Biodiversity Center (© Huub Veldhuijzen van Zanten-Naturalis Biodiversity Center/Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

At present, therefore, Sissen's import remains unidentified. It may yet prove to be nothing more than a Lear's macaw (albeit an aberrant, green-tinged one).

Yet if it really is a glaucous macaw and can be demonstrably shown to be one (perhaps by comparative DNA tests), and if other incognito specimens hiding in plain sight can also be found and unmasked, then the only sizeable species of South American bird believed to have become extinct since this continent's western colonisation will be extinct no longer, and the search for the sea-green scarlet pimpernel of the parrot world will finally be at an end.

Glaucous macaw painting, from Monographia Psittacorum, 1832, authored by Johann Georg Wagler (public domain)

Having said that, expeditions by ornithologists during the 1990s to southwestern Paraguay, a potential hideaway for surviving glaucous macaws, failed to uncover any evidence for its continuing existence. Only the region's oldest residents had any recollection of this species, which was apparently last confirmed there more than a century earlier, back in the 1870s. Conversely, the late George Smith, a naturalist who was very informed regarding the history of the glaucous macaw, believed that it still survived in remote areas of Bolivia, where trappers encountered by him were able to identify it.

Smith also noted that when he had flown over these areas, there were vast stands of palm trees, "as far as they eye could see", but these have still never been scientifically investigated, so who knows what secrets they may be hiding? Tellingly, the IUCN still categorises this enigmatic bird as Critically Endangered rather than as Extinct.

A beautiful modern-day rendition of the glaucous macaw by Rafael Nascimento (© Rafael Nascimento)

Moreover, if we wish to confirm that the longterm concealment of a brightly-hued parrot species of stature in South America is by no means impossible or even unparalleled in modern times, we do not have to look far to offer a very apposite precedent, no further in fact than one of the glaucous macaw's very own congeners – Lear's macaw.

The existence of this famously elusive species first became known to science in 1831, when Victorian bird painter and nonsense-rhymes writer Edward Lear painted a macaw of unrecorded origin that he believed to be (and duly labelled as) a hyacinth macaw but which was later recognised to be a separate species. In 1856, it was named in honour of him by French biologist Charles L. Bonaparte (although some authorities also refer to it as the indigo macaw).

Edward Lear in 1867, and his exquisite painting from 1831 of the macaw species named after him (public domain)

Yet despite having been represented in aviaries worldwide since 1831, Lear's macaw remained a major conundrum to ornithologists for over a century - because no-one knew where these captive specimens had actually been caught. Not even their country of origin, much less their precise provenance, was known. Indeed, a prevalent view back then was that this species might even be extinct in the wild - always assuming that it was a valid species, and not a hybrid of the hyacinth macaw and the glaucous macaw, as some researchers were beginning to suggest.

In 1964, the late Dr Helmut Sick, a German-born Brazilian ornithologist, began an intensive programme of searches for this mysterious missing macaw in a bid to solve its riddles once and for all. It was a programme that would take 14 years before success arrived, but arrive it did. On 31 December 1978, he spied three Lear's macaws in a little-explored area of Brazil's northeastern Bahia region, called the Raso de Catarina. And in January 1979 he sighted a flock of about 20, proving that it was not a hybrid form. These turned out to be part of a population numbering just over 100 birds.

Lear's macaws (public domain)

Moreover, in June 1995, a team of Brazilian biologists discovered a second population of Lear's macaw, several hundred miles from the first one, consisting of 22 birds on a nesting cliff. By 2010, the total wild population was estimated to be just over 1,000 birds, and it is also represented in captivity.

Although only three species of Anodorhynchus macaw are formally recognised nowadays, there was once an alleged fourth, and even a fifth, member of this genus. The fourth, of which more is known, is (or was) the purple macaw, the fifth the black macaw.

A hyacinth macaw, revealing its plumage's much more intense blue colouration in comparison with the more turquoise counterpart exhibited by Lear's macaw (public domain)

As noted earlier here, in terms of plumage colouration this genus's official trio of species can be arranged in a very neat gradation, beginning with, as its name indicates, the intense hyacinth-blue shade of the hyacinth macaw, then moving subtly into the slightly more turquoise-blue hues of Lear's macaw, which then transforms further, yielding a paler, turquoise-green or sea-green shade, in the aptly-named glaucous macaw.

But what if this colour gradation were also extrapolated in the opposite direction? That is, in addition to the hyacinth macaw's striking blue hue faintly greening into turquoise and thence even more so into a glaucous tone, how about deepening it, to yield a macaw whose plumage was a darker, predominantly violet or purple shade?

The purple macaw, as depicted by celebrated bird artist John G. Keulemans in Lord Walter Rothschild's classic work Extinct Birds, 1907 (public domain)

If this quartet of macaws were then arranged in a continuous linear spectrum of transforming colour, running from purple into blue into turquoise-blue into pale turquoise-green, the line-up would be: purple macaw, hyacinth macaw, Lear's macaw, and glaucous macaw. Of course, the purple macaw is purely hypothetical – isn't it?

In reality, such a bird may actually have existed – so if you'd like to read about the purple macaw's fascinating history, as well as that of a possible fifth Anodorhynnchus species, the even more obscure black macaw, as prepared by me exclusively for ShukerNature, all you need to do is click here!

A pair of digitally-created purple macaws discovered online (original source presently unknown to me – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational, review purposes only)

This ShukerNature article is very greatly expanded and updated from my original 1993-published coverage of the glaucous macaw contained in my book The Lost Ark, which in turn was the first in my trilogy of groundbreaking, definitive tomes collectively documenting new and rediscovered animals of the 20^th and 21^st Centuries.

Incidentally, please note that my glaucous macaw coverage did not reappear in either of The Lost Ark's two sequel tomes – The New Zoo (2002) and The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals (2012). So now, and constituting yet another ShukerNature exclusive, this is the first time that it has been reprinted (and updated) in more than 25 years.

A TRIO OF NEW MYSTERY MACAW CASES

Jan Steen's red mystery macaw (on left) and Roelandt Savery's red mystery macaw (on right)

In five previous ShukerNature posts (click here, here, here, here, and here), I have drawn attention to a number of mystifying forms of macaw, all of which may potentially involve either now-vanished or still-undiscovered species. Now, here are two additional cases, plus a personal encounter with a macaw of undetermined identity.

JAN STEEN AND A MYSTERY MACAW

Certain of my previous mystery macaw investigations featured classical works of art depicting specimens that do not correspond to any species currently known to science from the present day. Yet another example of this kind has lately been brought to my attention, courtesy of Brazilian bird artist and crypto-ornithological researcher Rafael Nascimento.

The bird in question is a large red macaw, depicted sitting on a perch in the top-left corner of an oil painting from c.1665 by Dutch artist Jan Steen, entitled 'The Way You Hear It, Is The Way You Sing It'.

Jan Steen's oil painting, 'The Way You Hear It, Is The Way You Sing It' (click picture to enlarge it)

Although several living species of macaw are partly red, none is almost exclusively so, like the specimen in this painting.

Conversely, as I soon realised when viewing it, this bird does closely resemble another red mystery macaw – one which appears on the left-hand-side in Flemish artist Roelandt Savery's celebrated painting from 1626 of Mauritius's famously-demised flightless icon, the dodo Raphus cucullatus.

Roelandt Savery's 1626 dodo painting, featuring the red mystery macaw on the left (click picture to enlarge it)

Both macaws have pale wing plumes but otherwise uniformly red plumage. Yet although no living species of macaw corresponds with such birds, they readily recall an account penned during the 1650s by French missionary Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre of a very large, almost entirely red parrot native to the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

Close-up comparison of the red mystery macaw in Jan Steen's painting (on left) and the red mystery macaw in Roelandt Savery's dodo painting (on right)

A century and a half earlier, this still-unidentified but now long-vanished parrot form had also been observed there by Christopher Columbus's landing party, who claimed that it was as big as a chicken (which certain species of macaw are indeed). Could some specimens of Guadeloupe's red parrots have been brought back to Holland by travellers sometime after Columbus's time, upon which the mystery red parrots in the paintings by Savery and Steen were duly based, either independently or with Steen's being inspired by Savery's? Who can say for certain?

Nevertheless, for there now to be two classical works of art depicting what is clearly one and the same variety of mystery red macaw certainly suggests that the transportation of some such parrots into Europe from Guadeloupe might indeed be the case, and also that continued examination of such works may well reveal other cryptozoological surprises. Nor is this the only hitherto-unpublicised mystery macaw to have been brought to my attention lately…

GUYANA'S BLUE MYSTERY MACAW

Just four species of predominantly blue-plumaged macaw are recognised by science. These are: the hyacinthine macaw Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus, Lear's macaw A. leari (endangered in the wild), glaucous macaw A. glaucus (probably extinct), and Spix's macaw Cyanopsitta spixii (extinct in the wild), all of which are only on record from central South America, predominantly Brazil.

Brazilian postage stamp from 1993, depicting the hyacinthine macaw (on left), glaucous macaw (centre), and Lear's macaw (right)

On 28 October 2013, however, I received an email from pets expert/author David Alderton that contained the following very interesting news:

"I was going through some old papers last week, and I came across some notes that I'd made at a CITES meeting…I discussed this with the Guyanese representative - a vet called Mrs Pilgrim, and a parrot enthusiast who lived in Guyana - Louis Martin. They both independently told me of reports of a rare, large blue macaw that inhabited the hinterland forests of Guyana. Louis confirmed that it was not a hyacinthine macaw, but believed it to be a new species.  I wondered whether you'd ever come across reports of this type? It was the fact that two experienced parrot observers told me independently that made me think these sightings could be more than just hearsay. According to Louis, it was completely blue, but not as big as a hyacinthine. (It had initially struck me that these reports might possibly refer to blue & gold (Ara ararauna) macaws missing their gold plumage, which is then replaced by white, based on the range of this species.  Individuals of this type have been recorded in the wild, and I think there is one in a zoo in France, but this seems unlikely)."

I agree that it is unlikely that a mutant of this nature would be responsible, because it would be blue and white, not completely blue.

Apart from two highly controversial blue-type macaws – the so-called purple macaw and the black macaw – that may (or may not) have once existed on certain Caribbean islands but which are now long-extinct (click here for my ShukerNature article on these two enigmatic forms) – I have not encountered reports of mystery all-blue macaws before.

Spix's macaw, the fourth, and smallest, known species of blue macaw, depicted in a painting from 1878 by Joseph Smit

Consequently, David's disclosure is most interesting, especially as Louis Martin discounted the possibility that the unidentified Guyanan form was a hyacinthine macaw – the only common species of blue macaw in the wild.

If any parrot enthusiasts are reading this, and have any additional information, Id love to hear from you!

A MYSTERY MACAW OF MY OWN

Finally, while on the subject of unidentified macaws, I have a little mystery of my own.

In 2004, while visiting the Mandalay Bay Hotel (since renamed the Delano Las Vegas) on the Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, I saw and photographed a very beautiful macaw (with its equally glamorous handler!). It reminded me of various hybrid macaws that I had previously seen in photos in books, so I naturally assumed that I'd soon be able to identify it once I was back home (when photographing the macaw with its handler, it never occurred to me to enquire about the identity of her macaw, as my concentration seemed to be a little distracted - can't think why!! lol).

Unidentified hybrid macaw observed by me at the Mandalay Bay Hotel, Las Vegas, in 2004 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Anyway, when I did eventually get around to investigating this macaw back home, I discovered to my surprise that it corresponded closely to several different hybrid forms - in particular, the harlequin macaw and the Catalina macaw, even though these are derived from different pairs of progenitor species (the harlequin macaw is a blue-and-yellow macaw Ara ararauna x red-and-green macaw aka green-winged macaw Ara chloroptera hybrid, whereas the Catalina macaw is a blue-and-yellow macaw Ara ararauna x scarlet macw Ara macao hybrid).

Close-up of the Mandalay Bay Hotel hybrid macaw (© Dr Karl Shuker)

So now, 10 years later, I still have no conclusive identity for it, and once again therefore would greatly welcome any opinions offered here.

Harlequin macaw (left) and Catalina macaw (right) (© Nancy Forrester's Secret Garden, click here)

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE PURPLE MACAW?

John G. Keulemans's painting of the purple macaw in Lord Walter Rothschild's Extinct Birds (1907)

Famed for their gaudy plumage, macaws come in many colours, but purple has never been one of them – or has it?

The genus Anodorhynchus – the so-called blue macaws - contains three present-day species (though one of them, the glaucous macaw, may have lately become extinct). Interestingly, in terms of plumage colouration, this genus's trio can be arranged in a very neat gradation, beginning with, as its name indicates, the intense hyacinth-blue shade of the hyacinth (or hyacinthine) macaw A. hyacinthinus, then moving subtly into the slightly more turquoise-blue hues of Lear's macaw A. leari, which then transforms further, yielding a paler, turquoise-green shade, in the aptly-named glaucous macaw A. glaucus.

Brazilian postage stamp portraying all three species of recognised Anodorhynchus macaw - hyacinth (left), glaucous (centre), Lear's (right)

But what if this colour gradation were also extrapolated in the opposite direction? That is, in addition to the hyacinth macaw's striking blue hue faintly greening into turquoise and thence even more so into a glaucus tone, how about deepening it, to yield a macaw whose plumage was a darker, predominantly violet or purple shade? If this quartet of macaws were then arranged in a continuous linear spectrum of transforming colour, running from purple into blue into turquoise-blue into pale turquoise-green, the line-up would be: purple macaw, hyacinth macaw, Lear's macaw, and glaucous macaw. Of course, the purple macaw is purely hypothetical – isn't it?

In reality, such a bird may indeed have existed. Based upon certain centuries-old eyewitness accounts, in 1905 no less an ornithological authority than Lord Walter Rothschild - founder of the famous ornithological museum at Tring in Hertfordshire (now part of London's Natural History Museum but still based at Tring) - formally described a mysterious long-extinct macaw-like bird from Guadeloupe, which he christened Anodorhynchus purpurascens, the purple macaw (also referred to by some authorities as the violet macaw, and sometimes accorded the incorrect specific name purpurescens). His description of it was published in volume 16 of the British Ornithologists Club's Bulletin.

A pair of photoshopped purple macaws (original source unknown to me)

Rothschild also included this species in his book Extinct Birds (1907), together with the specially-prepared colour plate included here in this ShukerNature post of mine. His original source of information was a brief account penned by a 'Don de Navarette', entitled 'Le gros Perroquet de la Guadaloupe [sic]', which appeared in Rel. Quat. Voy. Christ. (1838). This writer was actually none other than Martin Fernández de Navarrete y Ximénez de Tejada (1765-1844) - a Spanish sailor-historian who rediscovered an abstract by Spanish reformer-bishop Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566) of the log made by Christopher Columbus during his first voyage to the West Indies.

This account stated that according to Columbus, who visited the island in November 1493 during his second New World voyage, there lived on Guadeloupe a very large type of macaw that was entirely of a deep, intense violet/purple colour, and which the native Carib people referred to as the oné couli. No such bird lives there today, however, and neither a single preserved specimen nor even an illustration prepared directly by an eyewitness exists of this enigmatic purple macaw.

Conversely, until the early 18th Century, a second species of parrot with violet feathers definitely did live there. This was the Guadeloupe amazon parrot Amazona violacea, which was formally described and named by German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1789, around which time it became extinct, due to hunting for food and wholesale clearance of the forests in which it thrived.

John G. Keulemans's painting of the Guadeloupe amazon parrot in Lord Walter Rothschild's Extinct Birds (1907)

Although, just like the purple macaw, there is no known preserved specimen of the Guadeloupe amazon in existence, unlike the purple macaw this showy parrot is nonetheless known from good, consistent descriptions of it given by several naturalists (such as Jean-Baptiste Labat, and French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson) and travellers (notably French missionary Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre). Consequently, in his authoritative book Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World (2nd revised edit., 1967), ornithologist James C. Greenway Jr from the American Museum of Natural History suggested that Navarrete's description of the violet-plumed oné couli may in fact have been nothing more than "a careless description of A. violacea".

In my view, however, it would need to have been an exceptionally careless description in order to confuse a long-tailed parrot the size of a macaw with a much smaller, short-tailed amazon. Moreover, whereas the purple macaw was said to be entirely violet/purple, in the Guadeloupe amazon this particular colour was confined predominantly to its head and neck (and even there it was a slaty black-violet rather than an intense purple). In stark contrast, this amazon's back, tail, and much of its wings and underparts were deep green, with portions of its wings additionally sporting bright yellow, red, and jet-black feathers. Not only with regard to its size and shape, therefore, but also in relation to its multicoloured plumage, I fail to see how this species could in any way be mistaken for a wholly purple macaw.

Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World (2nd revised edit., 1967) by James C. Greenway Jr

A second suggestion offered by Greenway, and one that is also supported by various other ornithological scholars, is that Guadeloupe's purple macaws may simply have been hyacinth or even Lear's macaws imported by trading natives into Guadeloupe from the South American mainland. Again, however, it is difficult to see how the unequivocally blue plumage of the former species or even the slightly more turquoise tones of the latter one could come to be described as deep violet or purple.

So here, leaving it lingering perpetually in a shadowy ornithological limbo as a avian of tantalising ambiguity unless any additional information concerning it should one day become available, is where we must take our leave of Guadeloupe's very perplexing purple macaw – a bird that may, or may not, have existed, but which, if it truly did, and was indeed a macaw, must surely have been one of the most beautiful creatures ever seen by the eyes of its extremely fortunate beholders.

UPDATE - DON'T FORGET ABOUT THE BLACK MACAW EITHER!

On 16 May 2012, I received a much-anticipated newly-published book – Extinct Birds, by Julian P. Hume and Michael Walters. Unquestionably the most detailed book ever prepared on the subject, it documents many extraordinarily obscure species and subspecies that, despite my longstanding interest in such birds, were new to me.

One of these was the black macaw Anodorhynchus ater, a truly cryptic species in every sense. It was first documented by De Laet in 1630, and then described by British naturalist Dr John Latham in 1781 (who dubbed it the black macaw), followed by German naturalist Johann F. Gmelin in 1788 (basing his description upon Latham's and christening it Psittacus ater – its first taxonomic name). According to these accounts, the black macaw was native to Guyana, but Hume & Walters consider it to be an invalid taxon based upon inadequate descriptions. I have yet to see the three accounts noted above, but if I can locate any of them, I will expand this section accordingly at a later date.

Incidentally, this mysterious macaw should not be confused with the very familiar hyacinth macaw A. hyacinthinus, which is occasionally dubbed the black macaw, due to its local Tupi Indian name, 'arara una', which translates literally as 'dark macaw' or 'black macaw' (even though its plumage is blue!).

A fake online photograph of a purple-plumaged macaw, resulting from computer modification by person(s) unknown of an online photograph of a hyacinth macaw (source unknown to me)