Spix’s Macaw: The Race to Save the World’s Rarest Bird. Tony Juniper

of the blue macaw was of a Hyacinth. Although he had the ‘wrong’ species, he did produce an excellent painting and the name stuck and remains with us today, alongside the bird’s other common English name: Indigo Macaw.

      But during the nineteenth century, Lear’s Macaw was even less well documented than its enigmatic cousin the Glaucous. A very few specimens were added to museum collections following the death of birds in zoos, but their natural origin was quite obscure. Although odd ones turned up in the USA and Europe in consignments of Hyacinth Macaws from Brazil, they were also rare in captivity. Scarcity and mystery added to their collectability; the rarity and obscurity made demand for them greater, not less.