The Story
I photographed this Blue-and-yellow Macaw (Ara ararauna) near El Doncello, Caquetá, Colombia, in February 2021. Linnaeus first placed it in the genus Psittacus with all the other parrots, and it is now one of eight living Ara macaws. It feeds on nuts, seeds, fruit, bark and leaves, using its beak to crack shells. In Trinidad it was nearly wiped out in the 1970s, and birds from Guyana were released in the Nariva Swamp between 1999 and 2003. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I used a Canon R5 with the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender for this one, at 1/350 sec, f/16, ISO 3200. El Doncello sits in the foothills of the Eastern Andes northeast of Florencia, and the town founded there in 1951 took its name from a local tree called el doncello.
©2021 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Blue-and-yellow Macaw (Ara ararauna) belongs to the family Psittacidae (New World and African Parrots) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2018), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List