Macaws in the Neighborhood Ciruelos

Alberto arrived at the release site that morning carrying fresh fruit and sunflower seeds: papaya, lemon, cucumber, bell pepper. The wooden feeding platforms filled quickly with color — the electric blue and blazing yellow of the blue-and-yellow macaws (Ara ararauna), and the vivid scarlet of the scarlet macaws (Ara macao) — as powerful beaks tore into the fruit pieces with that impatient familiarity macaws have always had with food. But the most important moment of the day didn't happen at the feeders. Alberto noticed that several of the birds had ventured out on their own to forage in the fruit trees surrounding the reserve. The ciruelos (Spondias purpurea) are heavy with fruit these days, and the macaws know it. Watching them move through the branches on their own terms — choosing their fruit without waiting for a prepared tray — is one of those quiet signals the team has learned to read: the birds are finding their way. This fruiting season of the ciruelos also allows the Fundación to track the natural cycles of the surrounding vegetation — a detail that will only grow more valuable as the macaws come to depend more and more on that landscape, and less and less on the feeders.