Each week, Simon Barnes hears what the last seven days have been like for a member of the animal kingdom
Face it, I’m gorgeous. I doubt if there’s anything living more gorgeous than me: a full metre of glorious blue from beak to tail. But that’s not as great as it sounds. When humans see something as gorgeous as me, they want it for themselves. They catch us for pets, they kill us for feathers. I’d be better off ugly.
Monday
There’s one creature more gorgeous than me in this fine bit of wooded savannah in the Pantanal. Reader, I married her. We macaws don’t have mates, we have lifelong partners.
Tuesday
I’m unhappy when I can’t see her. And vice versa. So we fly in tandem – and what a great sight that must be for the envious creatures living their monochrome lives on the dull ground. We dine together and roost together. When circumstances part us even briefly, we holler. You can hear us from a kilometre off. I’m not so much a bird as half a pair.
Wednesday
Great feeding today. Acuri nuts. Give a human a hammer and an acuri nut and it’ll take half an hour to get anything to eat. It takes us maybe a minute. When we bite, we bite. Poor captive birds have been known to bend and break the iron bars of a cage. We have colossal strength but we also use our brains. And with them, tools. Take a leaf and wrap a nut in it: that stops it slipping when I bite.
Toucans steal and murder our chicks. Bastards. And yet we can’t live without them
Thursday
It’s that time of year again. Time to nest. Time to make more gorgeous hyacinth macaws. Naturally we choose a manduvi tree: what else? But today we’re in one of those artificial nest boxes set up by the nice humans at the Instituto Arara Azul, or Hyacinth Macaw Project.
Friday
It’s a good spot. But it’s a rum old business. We need these manduvi trees, and their seeds are spread by toucans; they eat the fruits and dump the seeds. So we also need toucans. But toucans steal and murder our chicks. Bastards. And yet we can’t live without them and their bastard yellow bloody beaks.
Saturday
Choosing a nest box means we’ll have Maria Eduarda paying us regular visits to weigh the chicks and check them for parasites – but we’ve got used to her and her people. We know they’re all right really. The chicks always come back unharmed, if a little bewildered. And we’re doing OK. All of us, I mean: in these rambling soggy wetlands we’ve got plenty of neighbours – noisy neighbours, I would say, but we’re all noisy. It’s the only way to be. So I’ll be doing the tending and she’ll be doing the incubating. And when I hear her call across the savannah as I return to our nest box, I sometimes get the strangest feeling. All’s right with the world.
Hyacinth macaw CV
Lifespan 30 years or more in the wild, 70 in captivity
Eating habits Nuts. The harder the better
Hobbies Biting, flaunting
Sexual preferences She’s even more gorgeous than me
Photograph by Getty
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