In the depths of Peru’s Amazon rainforest, scientists are attempting an unusual conservation strategy to save one of the world’s most striking tropical birds: rescuing scarlet macaw chicks that would otherwise be left to die by their own parents.
Scarlet macaws are famous for their brilliant red, blue and yellow feathers and their loud calls that echo through tropical forests. But despite their striking appearance, some populations of the species face serious threats from habitat loss, logging and illegal poaching.
Scientists are now confronting another challenge that begins inside the birds’ own nests. Research has found that scarlet macaw parents frequently neglect their youngest chicks, leaving them without enough food to survive.
Peruvian scientist Gabriela Vigo-Trauco, who has studied scarlet macaws for more than two decades, discovered that the youngest chicks in nests with several eggs are particularly vulnerable. According to her research, almost all third- and fourth-born chicks in multi-egg nests fail to survive, while about one-quarter of second-born chicks also die.
One of those vulnerable chicks was found in November 2018 in Peru’s Tambopata National Reserve. Named Parker, the featherless chick was the youngest of four siblings and was already extremely weak and underweight when Vigo-Trauco removed him from the nest.
The rescue was part of a conservation experiment that began in 2017. Rather than simply raising abandoned chicks in captivity, Vigo-Trauco and her colleagues wanted to find out whether wild scarlet macaw pairs could adopt and raise chicks that had been rejected or neglected by their biological parents.
The idea represents a different approach to wildlife conservation. Instead of replacing natural parenting completely, scientists are attempting to use other wild macaws as foster parents, potentially giving vulnerable chicks the opportunity to grow up in a more natural environment.
The behaviour scientists are trying to overcome may sound unusually harsh, but researchers believe it may have developed as a survival strategy. A female scarlet macaw can lay as many as four eggs during a breeding season, although normally only one or two chicks survive to leave the nest.
Scarlet macaw chicks hatch at different times, and even a gap of four or five days can create major differences between siblings. Older chicks may be significantly larger and stronger, while newly hatched chicks require different amounts of food and different temperatures.
Vigo-Trauco believes parents may struggle to care for chicks at such different stages of development. Attempting to feed every chick adequately could potentially reduce the chances of survival for the entire brood. As a result, parents appear to concentrate their limited resources on the older and stronger offspring.
Researchers studying the birds with nest cameras first documented the behaviour in detail after cameras were installed in 2007. Observations suggested that the youngest chicks were not simply victims of competition from their siblings. Instead, parents themselves played a major role in preventing the youngest birds from receiving sufficient food.
In some cases, the youngest chick can remain cold and hungry while the parents concentrate on feeding the mother and older chicks.
Scientists also found that the behaviour was not simply explained by shortages of food in the surrounding forest. This suggested that the problem was connected to the challenges of raising chicks of significantly different ages rather than a straightforward lack of resources.
For a species already facing pressure from human activity, however, the loss of so many young birds can have important consequences.
Scarlet macaws depend on large tropical forests for nesting and feeding. Logging and habitat destruction can reduce the number of suitable nesting sites, while illegal capture and trade can further threaten wild populations. In parts of Mexico and Central America, one scarlet macaw subspecies has been pushed close to extinction.
That makes every surviving chick potentially important for the future of wild populations.
The foster-parent experiment is therefore aimed at addressing a specific biological obstacle that conventional conservation efforts may not solve on their own. If wild adult macaws can successfully raise rescued chicks, scientists could potentially increase the number of young birds that survive without relying entirely on hand-rearing.
The approach also gives researchers an opportunity to learn more about the social and reproductive behaviour of scarlet macaws. Successfully placing a vulnerable chick with a foster family could allow the bird to develop within the environment and social structure it would experience in the wild.
Parker’s rescue in 2018 became part of this broader effort. His story illustrates both the difficulties and possibilities involved in protecting species whose survival depends not only on preserving habitat but also on understanding their natural behaviour.
Conservationists emphasize that protecting scarlet macaws requires addressing the larger threats facing them, particularly deforestation, habitat destruction and poaching. But understanding why so many young chicks naturally fail to survive could provide another tool for conservationists trying to reverse population declines.
The work in Peru highlights an important lesson in wildlife conservation: sometimes saving a species means intervening in nature in carefully targeted ways. Scientists are not simply trying to increase the number of birds in captivity. They are investigating whether vulnerable chicks can be given a second chance while remaining connected to the wild populations they are intended to strengthen.
For scarlet macaws, that second chance could begin with the chicks that nature has traditionally left behind.
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