Spix's macaw / Cyanopsitta spixii

This bird is now extinct in the wild. In 1990 I was lucky to observe the very last one of its kind in its home range in Curaçá, northern Bahia, near Rio São Francisco. It inhabited gallery forests of caraibeira trees (Tabebuia caraíba), on which it fed, and nested in cavities in the old trees. Unfortunately, there were no young trees coming on as all the seedlings had been eaten by goats.  In its loneliness, this bird had paired with a Blue-winged macaw and was desperately trying to get its mate to enter a tree cavity. Today cage-bred birds are being released into the wild and will hopefully survive and breed in the semi-arid Caatinga.