Scarlet Macaw

Brilliantly coloured in scarlet, yellow, and blue, with a large white bare facial patch, the Scarlet Macaw is one of the most vividly marked parrots of the American tropics. It feeds on fruits, nuts, seeds, and flowers from rainforest canopy trees and visits clay licks, apparently to neutralize compounds in unripe fruit. Humid lowland rainforests, gallery forests, and forest edges with large mature cavity-bearing trees provide both food and nest sites, from southern Mexico through Central America into Amazonian South America. Clutches of one to four eggs are incubated for 24 to 28 days, and the slow-growing young fledge between 98 and 140 days. Loud and raucous, it screams throughout the day and, in captivity, can mimic human speech. It is assessed as Least Concern.