Cuban macaw

Extinct species of macaw native to Cuba

The Cuban macaw or Cuban red macaw (Ara tricolor) is an extinct species of macaw native to the main island of Cuba and the nearby Isla de la Juventud. It became extinct in the late 19th century. Its relationship with other macaws in its genus was long uncertain, but it was thought to have been closely related to the scarlet macaw, which has some similarities in appearance. It may also have been closely related, or identical, to the hypothetical Jamaican red macaw. A 2018 DNA study found that it was the sister species of two red and two green species of extant macaws. At about long, the Cuban macaw was one of the smallest macaws. It had a red, orange, yellow, and white head, and a red, orange, green, brown, and blue body. Little is known of its behaviour, but it is reported to have nested in hollow trees, lived in pairs or families, and fed on seeds and fruits. The species' original distribution on Cuba is unknown, but it may have been restricted to the central and western parts of the island. It was mainly reported from the vast Zapata Swamp, where it inhabited open terrain with scattered trees. The Cuban macaw was traded and hunted by Native Americans, and by Europeans after their arrival in the 15th century. Many individuals were brought to Europe as cagebirds, and 19 museum skins exist today. No modern skeletons are known, but a few subfossil remains have been found on Cuba. It had become rare by the mid 19th century due to pressure from hunting, trade, and habitat destruction. Hurricanes may also have contributed to its demise. The last reliable accounts of the species are from the 1850s on Cuba and 1864 on Isla de la Juventud, but it may have persisted until 1885.

Early explorers of Cuba, such as Christopher Columbus and Diego Álvarez Chanca, mentioned macaws there in 15th and 16th century writings. Cuban macaws were described and illustrated in several early accounts about the island. In 1811, the German naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein scientifically named the species Psittacus tricolor. Bechstein's description was based on the bird's entry in the French naturalist François Le Vaillant's 1801 book Histoire Naturelle des Perroquets. Le Vaillant's account was itself partially based on the late 18th century work Planches Enuminées by the French naturalists Comte de Buffon and Edme Louis Daubenton, as well as a specimen in Paris; as it is unknown which specimen this was, the species has no holotype. The French illustrator Jacques Barraband's original watercolour painting, which was the basis of the plate in Le Vaillant's book, differs from the final illustration in showing bright red lesser wing covert feathers ("shoulder" area), but the significance of this is unclear. Today, 19 skins of the Cuban macaw exist in 15 collections worldwide (two each in Natural History Museum at Tring, Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris, the Swedish Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian Museum), but many are of unclear provenance. Several were provided by the Cuban naturalist Juan Gundlach, who collected some of the last individuals that regularly fed near the Zapata Swamp in 1849–50. Some of the preserved specimens are known to have lived in captivity in zoos (such as Jardin des Plantes de Paris, Berlin Zoo, and Amsterdam Zoo) or as cagebirds. The single specimen at World Museum, National Museums Liverpool died in Edward Smith Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby's aviaries at Knowsley Hall in 1846. Several more skins are known to have existed, but have been lost. No modern skeletal remains of this macaw are known, but three subfossil specimens have been discovered: half a carpometacarpus from a possibly Pleistocene spring deposit in Ciego Montero, identified by extrapolating from the size of Cuban macaw skins and bones of extant macaws (reported in 1928), a rostrum from a Quaternary cave deposit in Caimito (reported in 1984), and a worn skull from Sagua La Grande, which was deposited in a waterfilled sinkhole possibly during the Quaternary and associated with various extinct birds and ground sloths (reported in 2008). Macaws are known to have been transported between the Caribbean islands and from mainland South America to the Caribbean both in historic times by Europeans and natives, and in prehistoric times by Paleoamericans. Historical records of macaws on these islands, therefore, may not have represented distinct, endemic species; it is also possible that they were escaped or feral foreign macaws that had been transported to the islands. All the endemic Caribbean macaws were likely driven to extinction by humans in historic and prehistoric times. The identity of these macaws is likely to be further resolved only through fossil finds and examination of contemporary reports and artwork. Rothschild's 1907 book Extinct Birds included a depiction of a specimen in the Liverpool Museum which was presented as a Cuban macaw. In a 1908 review of the book published in The Auk, the American ornithologist Charles Wallace Richmond claimed that the picture looked sufficiently dissimilar from known Cuban macaws that the specimen may actually be of one of the largely unknown species of macaw, such as a species from Haiti. This suggestion has not been accepted. The idea that the name Ara tricolor applied to a Hispaniolan species had gained acceptance by 1989, but in 1995, the British ornithologist Michael Walters pointed out that birds had indeed been described from Cuba prior to 1822, that the supposed differences in colouration were of no importance, and that the basis of Wetherbee's argument was therefore invalid. There is no clear evidence for a species of macaw on Hispaniola. The Cuban macaw was smaller than the related extant species, and one of the smallest Ara species, which suggests smaller size may have been the ancestral state of the group, though it may also have become smaller after becoming established in the Antilles. Johansson and colleagues estimated that the Cuban macaw had diverged from its mainland relatives around 4 million years ago, during the early Pliocene. Since this is after the land bridge that is thought to have connected the Greater Antilles with South America ceased to exist, the ancestors of the Cuban macaw must have dispersed to the Antilles over open water. Therefore, the Cuban macaw was not a recent offshoot of the scarlet macaw, having a long independent history on Cuba. Johansson and colleagues therefore noted that though many of the extinct species of Caribbean macaws that had been described in the past are probably dubious, there would have been ample time for a radiation of macaws there, based on how long the Cuban species had been separated from the mainland species.

The Cuban macaw had a red forehead fading to orange and then to yellow at the nape of the neck. It had white unfeathered areas around the eyes, and yellow irises. The face, chin, chest, abdomen and thighs were orange. The upper back was brownish red with feathers scalloped with green. The rump, undertail feathers, and lower back were blue. The wing feathers were brown, red and purplish blue. The upper surface of the tail was dark red fading to blue at the tip, and the under surface of the tail was brownish red. The sexes were identical in external appearance, as with other macaws. The Cuban macaw was physically distinct from the scarlet macaw in its lack of a yellow shoulder patch, its all black beak, and its smaller size. The American zoologist Austin Hobart Clark reported that juvenile Cuban macaws were green, though he did not provide any source for this claim. It is unclear whether green birds spotted on the island were in fact juvenile Cuban macaws or if they were instead feral military macaws.

Little is known about the behaviour of the Cuban macaw and its extinct Caribbean relatives. Gundlach reported that it vocalised loudly like its Central American relatives and that it lived in pairs or families. Its speech imitation abilities were reportedly inferior to those of other parrots. Nothing is known about its breeding habits or its eggs, but one reported nest was a hollow in a palm. It is thought to have been unique to this species, and is therefore an example of coextinction. Early writers also claimed it lived on Haiti and Jamaica, but this is no longer accepted. According to the British writer Errol Fuller, aviculturalists are rumoured to have bred birds similar in appearance to the Cuban macaw. These birds, however, are reportedly larger in size than the Cuban macaw, having been bred from larger macaw species.