SPIX MACAW UPDATE.

11-05-2007

Boof- its like I said in a previous post, I think the days of secretive owners and breeders are finally past. The Al Wabra research station has managed to accumulate many(nearly all in fact) of the birds previously owned by the private breeders in both Switzerland and the Phillipines- so those mentioned in the Spix book actually no longer have the birds anymore and those chapters are now completely out of date...

I'll agree that the majority of the birds ARE still in private ownership, but I think Al Wabra and the other owner/breeders are now breeding the birds with the express puropse of reintroducing them, when in sufficient numbers, into the wild. They may well be able to achieve what the 'Spix Macaw Recovery Project' was never able to do, viz- get everyone working together.

11-05-2007

imagine that, trampled to death by a herd of macaws!!

11-05-2007

Would that there were enough of them that you could be trampled to death!

Seriously, I guess perhaps the Al Wabra Centre will eventually do for Spix Macaw what Phoenix zoo did for the Arabian Oryx, or the Dukes of Bedford did for Pere David's Deer at Woburn- be majorly responsible for saving the species, that is.

13-05-2007

IMAGINE THAT on the tombstone. trampleed to death by macaws lol

21-06-2007

Grant, the days of secretive breeding and ownership is not over. Recently some news of Lears macaws with a swiss breeder surficed.

About the spix's, one thing I would like to know more about is how they are going to handle the problem with the limited gene pool? All the birds at Al Wabra come from de Dios, and I believe these brids all come from one pair. A pair that themselvs are siblings. I could be misstaken though.

22-06-2007

Okay, perhaps those days aren't entirely over but I do think things have improved a lot. (I have to admit I don't know if there are any Spix remaining in Switzerland now or how many were moved to Germany.) The situation with Lears is similar but perhaps more obscure still? Loro Parc bred a Lear's recently, it as hatched and raised by a pair of Greenwings. Its the first publisiced breeding for a long ime.

Regarding inbreeding of Spix- they certainly come from a very limited gene pool but it remains to be seen if this proves harmful or not. All the birds which de Dios bred I think came from two pairs; first pair from Brazil(probably related in some way) and second pair which were their offspring(full siblings)
So yes, the Al Wabra birds are all extremely closely related.

22-06-2007

The Amazons stolen from Chester were Lilacine (Ecuadorian) Amazons. They were in an offshow area close to the bridal path. Nothing is kept there any more.

Perhaps Chester Zoo doesn't want any Spix Macaws. They have just begun a breeding programme for Blue-headed Macaws, two young males arrived last year from Antwerp. There is a limit to the number of birds the parrot section can house. The house only cost £250,000, and they had to argue to get that much. By contrast the new Tsavo Cafeteria cost £2,000,000.

22-06-2007

That's a bit ironic, isn't it?

Spix are so rare, and to certain people, so valuable I don't think a zoo like Chester could exhibit them publicly at present. Loro Parc in Tenerife does not have theirs on show to the public- I believe they are held in an offshow maximum security area. no doubt once they have a reasonable number they might risk placing a pair on public display.

22-06-2007

Actually, not all the Al Wabra birds come from de Dios. They have got ALL of the de Dios birds,that's true, but also they've had some from the Swiss breeder(was it Meisser?) who sold(?) all his birds. So Al Wabra now have birds from two different genetic sources. Again, I don't know just how unrelated the founders of these two groups really are, and whether they will try to pair up birds from the two different groups- I guess so.

22-06-2007

We can be fairly certain that Al Wabra will make the best of this difficult situation though. They do have some problems with deformed shells and chicks (beak deformalities) which are most likely a result from inbreeding. We'll see how it will develop in the future.