The Story
I photographed this Blue-and-yellow Macaw (Ara ararauna) near El Doncello, Caquetá, Colombia, in February 2021. The word ararauna was already in use in 1648, when the German naturalist Georg Marcgrave wrote it in his Historia Naturalis Brasiliae. The species lives in forest, woodland and savanna of tropical South America and in Panama and Trinidad. It can live 30 to 35 years in the wild. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I made this frame with a Canon R5 and the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender, at 1/1000 sec, f/16, ISO 3200, −1 EV. Like other colonization areas of the Amazon foothills, El Doncello has lost forest to clearing and indiscriminate logging, which the municipality links to extensive cattle ranching.
©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