A Gift for Don Alvaro

When we arrived, Don Alvaro had just hosted a school group that morning. The macaws were already full of peanuts! He hosts as many as four groups per week now. He said there had been a sudden jump in requests for visits, and he's not sure why. (Could it be the magic that pervades his farm?)

I became worried that my blogposts might have been part of the reason for the uptick in attention. I'm not sure it is, but this is exposure of a kind he hasn't had before. I asked him if it was becoming too much for him. He said it wasn't a problem (yet).  But his first thought is what is best for the macaws. The modest fees he takes for hosting school and other groups go to making nest boxes, and a bigger jaguar enclosure, coming soon. He's making a road now, and a pond in a low pasture for wild birds. Beyond that flows the river where the sunbittern sings. All this, and a sunbittern hopping from rock to rock just below the finca...the magic never stops.

So thanks to your generous response to my appeal, we had a very nice gift ($1,000) for Don Alvaro, and I'd written him a letter, which Mario read and translated as he went. We all gathered in the yard while the macaws dangled and played and the great curassow hen chased Jimmy our bus driver all over the place behind us while the "ceremony" was going on. I couldn't see that happening, but my group was all stifling laughter even as they tried to be respectful and solemn. The joy kept bursting out.

 These photos by Bonnie Bowen

 Jimmy wasn't wild about having a turkey-sized bird pecking at his calves. Who would be?

 Go chase somebody else, you durn bird!

But it's YOU I want. I like your shoes.

Mario translates my letter to Don Alvaro. Goofy scarlet macaw twirls and shows off.

Dear Don Alvaro:

  It is a great pleasure to see you again this year. Our group’s visit to your  beautiful sanctuary was the highlight of my trip last year. When I got home, I posted photos and a story on my blog about your work with macaws. It captured the imagination of my readers, and several of them asked if they might make a gift to you, so that you may continue to rescue macaws and return them to the sky. 

  So in January I posted some more photos of you with your macaws. And I offered to bring you a gift when I returned in February 2015. I was overwhelmed by the response from readers. You have touched their hearts.

  For 23 years, I had a macaw, named Charlie. She was a chestnut-fronted macaw, Ara severa. Although she was captive-bred and we loved each other, she was always wild at heart. I spent as much time with her as I could, but it wasn’t enough. She plucked her feathers, more every year. As the years went by I realized how wrong it is to cage a macaw. We built a special glass room for her, so she wouldn’t have to live in a cage. But that wasn’t enough, either. In my travels, whenever I would see wild parrots and macaws, it made me cry to see how happy they were in a flock, flying free. When Charlie died in 2010, I knew I would never again be able to own a parrot.

This is the only way to keep macaws: free. To take them from solitary confinement and return them to the society of other macaws, to set them free, is to give a gift to them and to the world. It is a lot of work to keep one macaw happy. I can’t imagine having 19 (and now 30!) to satisfy. Thank you for all you do to help these birds. Please accept this gift as a token of our respect and gratitude.

And the letter is signed with the names of everyone who so generously donated to Don Alvaro, that he may continue to show people how these magnificent birds were meant to live: free, in pairs and flocks, tussling and fighting and laughing and mating and --most of all-- flying.

On the evening after these photos were taken, Don Alvaro came to Selva Verde, where we were staying, to thank me personally for your gift. Because he is a self-effacing and humble man, he did not look in the envelope I handed him. When he finally did, he got in his truck and drove over. He said nobody had ever done anything like that for him. He was very grateful. He talked for a long time, in incredibly rapid-fire Spanish, and Mario interpreted for me. I scribbled down what he was saying as fast as I could, but I know I missed a lot.

Back to our visit that day...Don Alvaro had  a surprise for me, too. When we pulled up, the water buffalo I'd admired so last year was tied up to a tree, wearing a saddle. 

I became a little suspicious...

Here, he said. You ride him!

Aaaack! OK! Here we go! I'll do anything once.

 My soas muscles will never be the same.

As you could see in the video above, Don Alvaro has more than a little showman in him. When he vaulted up behind me I about died  and fell off the buffalo from laughing. I still hoot every time I see these photos. Oh Lord. I can't unsee that.

But this...this I want to see in my mind's eye forever.

A special thank you to reader and great soul Jeff Ferguson, who planted the idea for this litte fundraiser in my head after my Don Alvaro posts in 2014. With a book deadline that started in April and stretched through mid-July, it's taken me far too long to catch up and gather all the photos and information I needed to write these posts, and I thank you all for your patience and your generosity. 

Don Alvaro was truly moved, and so were we all. And yes, he smiled!

Macaw Rescue: Don Alvaro's Story

 We were here on a mission of sorts. Before I left for Costa Rica in the third week of February, 2015, I put out an appeal to you, my dear and faithful readers, for donations to help Don Alvaro and his work with macaws (and people). Having kept just one small macaw for 23 years, in the manner to which she'd become accustomed, I know how expensive it is.

A lucky pair: yellow-naped and red-lored Amazons enjoying a peanut snack.

A pair of scarlet macaws fooling around. WRRRAAAAWWWK!! AAAWWWK!!

 I have been intensely curious about how Don Alvaro came to have all these macaws, and I finally had a chance to speak with him at length, with Mario as interpreter. What I'm about to tell you is from that conversation.

It all started 25 years ago with four macaws his father had owned, and four more given to him from confiscations by the Ministry of Environment.

Lucky macaws, to land here, where they would be allowed to fly free through appropriate habitat and even breed! Forty macaws have fledged from his nest boxes in that period, of which 30 now fly free around his farm. He has eight nest boxes, barrels that he mounts high in the trees and fills with balsa wood for them to "excavate." Macaws like to nest high in mountain almond trees with broken branch stubs that make enormous cavities. Those huge trees stand alone, like sentinels, and there are not nearly enough of them to serve as nest trees now.

Don Alvaro "keeps" two species at his finca, the scarlet and the great green macaw.

Both are native to Costa Rica, but severely endangered by loss of habitat. Most of his birds are paired with species-appropriate mates, and they're duly producing purebred offspring.

He has one pair consisting of a scarlet male and great green female. And there's a story in that. The scarlet was mated for years to a very fertile scarlet hen, who produced a number of broods, but sadly, she died when she hit a powerline. Her widowed mate now sneaks matings with a fertile female great green, who has been paired for years with an infertile male great green. This hen laid infertile eggs for years until she started consorting in secret with the widowed male scarlet. (She still goes everywhere with her infertile great green mate, but come nesting time she kicks him out, mates with the scarlet widower, and finally gets to raise babies.) This great green hen now produces hybrid young, and there's not much Don Alvaro can do about it, because love amongst free-flying macaws is a complicated thing.

Three hybrid babies with their great green mama (second from right) and their scarlet daddy (far right). They're so pretty, but we hope and trust they're sterile!

A hybrid scarlet x great green macaw in flight:

Don Alvaro is pretty sure the hybrids are sterile, and won't compromise the gene pool of the purebred birds.

A great green macaw, with scarlets behind.

When people come to see the macaws, he calls them in with peanuts. Lapa lapa lapa lapa lapa! he calls.

He knows how to set up a photo op, watching the light and telling us where to stand for the best angle. In this video, you can get a feel for the energy and presence of this remarkable man. He is so utterly in tune with animals and birds, and the evidence of that harmony is all around.

Next, we present the gift.

Macaws in Flight

Costa Rica's two native species of macaws are the scarlet (Ara macao) and great green (Ara ambigua). They are rapidly disappearing, the scarlet being restricted to Guanacaste and the extreme NW Caribbean slope. A few more persist in Carara and the Corcovado basin.

The great green macaw was once widespread, but is now restricted to the Caribbean lowlands. They are tied to the huge leguminous tree Dipteryx panamensis, or mountain almond, on whose fruit they feed, and they fly long distances to find the giant isolated specimens remaining. I'm thankful that there is a ban on any more cutting of mountain almond, as they are essential to the survival of great green  macaws.

Whether either of these macaw species can find enough appropriate habitat in the vicinity of Don Alvaro's finca to support them and their families is an open question, one that bothered me even as I watched them sport in the garden. La Selva Biological Reserve is within striking distance, but who knows how much acreage it takes to support a breeding population of scarlet or great green macaws?

I pondered this as I watched these happy macaws, "kept" at liberty in Don Alvaro's magical gardens. Each bird that took off unleashed a rainbow of unexpected color, leaving me breathless and laughing.

Macaws fly with their heads well below their wing level, so they're hard to photograph in flight. They look headless! The stunning cerulean rump of the scarlet and great green, and that incredible shading on the great greens' tails of tomato-red to sea blue, just knocked me out. Somehow, until they take flight, the entirety of their raiment is hidden.

We had planned to come here to sketch and perhaps paint. It was a little like trying to sketch in the middle of Ringling's circus. My head was whipping back and forth, my camera following it...hopeless. All I could do was survive the aesthetic barrage of color, ear-splitting sound and unbridled psittacine joy. Their joy was mine. I felt I was coming full circle. It was an exorcism of years of guilt I'd felt at keeping Charlie in my studio, when I knew in my heart that she was meant to be flying free somewhere in Peru.

I got a peanut! I got a peanut!

Look at my peanut!! (and my cerulean panties!)

An entirely different bird from the rear--all that cobalt! How is it that a blue feather has a red reverse?? Who thought that up? How does it work? Structural color, prisms, not pigments, set to catch the light, that's how. But knowing a little something about feather color still left me unprepared for the beauty of these birds.

In fact, I can't look at these huge birds without wondering why. Why are they so colorful, why so large, why so loud, why so intelligent, gregarious, amazing?

And why can't we let them be what and who they are?

Why do we even try to cage them?

Because a macaw in a cage is simply not a macaw, any more than a caged hummingbird is a hummingbird, a caged swift a swift.

A macaw was never meant to be a decoration, a status symbol, a prisoner, an inmate.

This--this is what a macaw is. It is flight, crazy color, motion, sound.

 Society.

Freedom.

Don Alvaro's finca is a place of succor and comfort for twenty macaws, some of whom have had rough starts in life. There is another project in Costa Rica that is captive raising great green and scarlet macaws for release, and release only. It's called Project Ara. I heard about it from my crane conservation compatriot Cyndi Routledge. Here's a link to a pdf about the first release of two great green macaws. As a bird rehabilitator, I could completely empathize. Well worth the read. 

Wishing Don Alvaro and Project Ara, and the precious packages of genetic material they're releasing, all the luck in the world. They'll need it.