Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.

Because of their popularity in the pet trade, many people associate scarlet macaws with enclosures and animal entertainment acts, but my clearest macaw memory involves the ocean’s edge, where jungle meets beach on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. I made regular, one-mile beach walks from the budding eco-lodge where I worked one summer to Carate, the closest airstrip, to load visitors’ bags into a donkey-drawn cart before hustling back to camp. During one return trip, as I jogged along the water’s edge, a large flock of scarlet macaws flew over the palms that lined the upper edge of the beach, seemingly matching my pace. The breeze, the sound and smell of the Pacific, the sand underfoot, the large parrots above – awe and gratitude washed over me in a special joie de vivre moment.

Despite being a bird that really turns up the volume – both with respect to its visual flair and grating squawk vocalizations – the scarlet macaw remains a species about which we humans know relatively little. We know they’re long lived – 40-50 years in the wild, and up to 90 in captivity – and monogamous, forming lifelong pair bonds. They are usually seen solo or with their mate, but they’ll come together in larger flocks like those I encountered on the Osa Peninsula. Though their range reaches from southern Mexico into Peru and Brazil, they are found almost exclusively in tropical forests, a habitat type threatened by ongoing deforestation. The subspecies featured on this color column, Ara macao cyanoptera, is the northern or Central American subspecies. Due to habitat fragmentation, it’s now considered an endangered species by the United States Fish & Wildlife Service; the agency estimates that only 2,000–3,000 individuals of this subspecies remain in the wild. Their chief vulnerability is the loss of intact forest ecosystems, but illegal pet trade trapping takes a toll, too.

Where they thrive, the birds feed on fruits, nuts, flowers, leaves, insects, and snails. Curiously, because macaws also eat large amounts of clay, they are able to eat fruits that are toxic to many other bird species; the clay is thought to bind to and neutralize the toxins in the bird crops, allowing the poison to pass harmlessly through their digestive system. Macaws tend to consume more protein – meaning more insects and snails – during their breeding season. The female typically lays one or two eggs inside natural cavities (broken tree limbs or holes excavated by woodpeckers), but macaws will sometimes create their own nests if they find very soft wood. Young macaws don’t reach maturity until they’re 3–5 years of age, but they generally only stay with their parents until their parents nest again in 1–2 years.

Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).

Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.