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Generally the living is good in Campo Grande; the city is free of most natural predators, and a bounty of fruit and nuts grow in numerous parks and green spaces.
In fact, the survival rate of newborn blue-and-gold macaws in Campo Grande is higher than in the wild, according to Guedes, who is also a professor at the University for the Development of the State and Region of the Pantanal.
An urban refuge?
It is a precarious balance, however.
Macaws face urban dangers, such as getting entangled in power lines or electrified fences, as well as getting hit by cars. From 2011 to 2019, 38 blue-and-gold macaws have died of electrocution in Campo Grande, about four per year, according to Guedes.
And though smuggling of live birds and eggs seems to be declining in Mato Grosso do Sul, it’s still a serious concern, she says. Over the last four years, the state’s government has intercepted six baby macaws that poachers had snatched from Campo Grande.
Her institute works in cooperation with local police and federal agencies in Brazil and neighboring countries Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina to fight such poachers, who sell the birds to buyers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, where they’re coveted as pets. (Read how parrots, popular pet birds, are threatened by illegal trade.)
And as the city expands, construction sites are taking the place of empty lots and gardens where palms once stood. The state governor, Reinaldo Azambuja, has made a controversial proposal to convert a large portion of the central Parque dos Poderes—Park of the Powers—into a parking lot and government buildings. The governor’s office declined to comment for this story.
The proposal doesn’t sit well with some locals, such as Simone Mamede, a biologist and owner of an ecotourism agency, Mamede Institute.
The park, a designated conservation area, is “crucial for sustaining the biodiversity corridor we have here in the city,” Mamede says. “It is one of the last vestiges of the indigenous cerrado vegetation in Campo Grande.”
“This is important not only to macaws, but to the more than 400 bird species we have here,” she adds.
Parrot surprises
Those species include red-and-green macaws, which also started appearing in the city as far back as 1999. The parrots flock to Campo Grande during the first months of the year and return to the wild in the beginning of their mating season, around July.
The presence of both species in the city inspired Guedes to create the Urban Birds Project in 2011, and since then, research has revealed some intriguing insights into the behavior and diet of urban parrots.
For instance, Tinoco has observed blue-and-gold macaws mating with red-and-green ones—previously unheard of outside captivity. Also surprising was the discovery these hybrids are fertile.
The scientists have also observed blue-and-gold macaws eating 31 different kinds of fruits and nuts—including mangos, guavas, caj s, and the fruits of the buriti and maca ba palms—a diet much more diverse than thought.
City birds
One morning in the Park of the Powers, I took an early bike ride, hoping to see more of the birds. The sprawling, tree-filled 600-acre park is surrounded by large avenues and government buildings, where Brazilian wildlife such as coatis and capybaras roam amid commuters hurrying to work or locals catching some weekend sun.
I soon came upon a nest in a palm tree, near where joggers and cyclists zoomed past. A pair of blue-and-gold macaws sat quietly at the top of the trunk as people stopped to film and shoot photographs.
“I bet they look at people taking their picture and ask themselves, What weird animals are these?” mused Donisete Alves, a merchant selling coconut water and Brazilian nuts at a stand just opposite the nest. Just two weeks ago, Alves told me, a person was caught trying to still eggs from this very nest.
As we chatted, a large truck roared by, leaving behind a trail of thick black smoke. The macaws kept standing on the trunk, seemingly undisturbed, looking at once majestic and fragile in the midst of the cloud.
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