From his front porch, Ted Tremain has a rare view of the brightly-colored parrots that went extinct decades ago from Nicoya Peninsula on Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast.
Ted lives and works at the Macaw Recovery Network’s breeding center in Punta Islita and manages the site where MRN breeds Scarlet Macaws and “teaches” them how to survive in the wild before releasing them to the forests to live on their own.
So far, at least 51 Scarlet Macaws are flying the skies over the peninsula again, flashing their red, blue and yellow colors. Some have started to breed and raise chicks of their own. This breeding season has been their most productive.
Among the wild nests monitored by the MRN team, four young macaws have left home and another two are expected to fly away soon. Until then, Ted and his team are keeping tabs on them and their nest in the cavity of a not-too-stable dead palm tree.
Macaws prefer large Guanacaste or Mountain Almond trees for nesting. But those trees are fewer and far between as agriculture and ranching interests have cleared the forests.
On a recent afternoon, Ted and field biologist Olivia Smith hop on a motorbike, drive about 15 minutes, then hike another 15 to get to the nest they call Peaches. Using a Go Pro camera on a bamboo pole to “look” into the cavity, they watch the two chicks “trying to climb out of the hole and see the world,” Ted recalls. The three parents (instead of the usual two) are busy preening each other. Everyone looks happy and well.
Wearing the telltale bands from the breeding center, the parents are making it in the wild so far and have successfully raised a new generation. On another trip to monitor the nest, it’s raining. Ted says the three macaws positioned themselves around the chicks and spread their wings over the young ones to keep them from getting wet.
With each cycle, from nest to sky, the macaws born in captivity are signaling whether MRN’s practices are working to rebuild their numbers in the wild. They spur new questions for the MRN team to consider in its conservation mission.
Did the three macaws team up to raise a family together because they are new to the wild and haven’t yet mastered all the behaviors of wild Scarlet Macaws? Will their offspring and the next generations be better suited for survival because they were born in the wild?
The MRN team uses practices carefully designed to give chicks born at the center a better chance of survival once they are released a year later to fend for themselves. (For more, see “A Closer Look at Conservation, Part 2” on this website.)
Fourteen young Scarlet Macaws are now in the pre-release program, going through flight drills, human and predator aversion training, behavioral observation, and “foraging” wild fruit off tree branches. (For more, see “Getting Ready for the Wild.”) They will undergo veterinary screenings and be banded for tracking in their native habitat.
Ted says they are fit and ready for release this summer. After giving Costa Rica assurances that “we’re not just throwing birds out in the wild,” he is waiting for the government permits to set the young macaws free.
Peggy Harris
Volunteer Writer