SOS Northern Scarlet Macaw (Ara macao cyanopterus) in nature

One of my wife's Norwegian colleagues, Henriette Jevnesveen, took an extended trip with her boyfriend to Central and South America in the summer of 2012. At the end of 2012, the tour also passed the world-famous Copán ruins. Copán, located in a valley, was one of the most important city-states back in the Maya era. Today, the Mayan ruins outside the small village of Copán Ruinas in western Honduras are one of the most important and largest excavations from the age of the Mayan culture. The site has the status of world cultural heritage and is therefore included in UNESCO's list of the world's most significant man-made structures.

Henriette Jevnesveen has told that at the time they visited the ruins there were no people, but instead there were brightly coloured parrots. The photo series below was taken by Henriette Jevnesveen on December 22th, 2012 and shows that, most surprisingly, it is the subspecies of the Scarlet Macaw (Ara macao), namely the Northern Scarlet Macaw (Ara macao cyanopterus). In various scientific records, one can otherwise read that this subspecies is almost completely extinct in Honduras, except for a small population in the northeastern part of Honduras.

However, Copán Ruinas is located in the western part of Honduras towards the border with Guatemala, where according to several records, they would have been extinct several years ago, so it is extremely positive that there is now photographic documentation that this beautiful bird is still found in this part of Honduras. According to Henriette Jevnesveen, there is thus an ongoing nature conservation project, which aims to re-establish a population of this beautiful bird in this particular area of Honduras, and in fact it turned out that an actual breeding center has been established right next to the Copán ruins.

A very big thank you to Henriette Jevnesveen for making these photos, which are allowed to speak for themselves, available to www.birdkeeper.dk.

Jorgen Petersen

Conceived/Updated: 01.02.2013 / 10.01.2024

IT IS NOT ALLOWED TO COPY PHOTOS OR TEXT FROM THIS SITE WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN ACCEPTANCE!