Spix's macaw
species of birdmisguevos
Spix's macaw (Cyanopsitta spixii), also known as the little blue macaw, or simply blue macaw, is a macaw species that was endemic to Brazil. It is a member of tribe Arini in the subfamily Arinae (Neotropical parrots), part of the family Psittacidae (the true parrots). It was first described in 1638 by German naturalist Georg Marcgrave when he was working in Pernambuco in Dutch Brazil. It is named for German biologist Johann Baptist von Spix, who collected a specimen in 1819 on the bank of the São Francisco River near Juazeiro. This bird has been completely extirpated from its natural range, and following a several-year-long survey, the IUCN officially declared it extinct in the wild in 2019. However, after over 20 years of conservation efforts, 200 macaws have been bred from captive birds, and 52 individual birds have since been reintroduced into their natural environment in June 2022.
The bird is a medium-size parrot weighing about 300 grams (11 oz), smaller than most of the large macaws. Its appearance is various shades of blue, with a grey-blue head, light blue underparts, and vivid blue upperparts. Males and females are almost identical in appearance; however, the females are slightly smaller.
The species inhabited riparian Caraibeira (Tabebuia aurea) woodland galleries in the drainage basin of the Rio São Francisco within the Caatinga dry forest climate of interior northeastern Brazil.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Spix's macaw” as species of birdmisguevos. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q743214. The first chronological checks are 1638, 1819, 2019 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Spix's macaw” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.