CARACAS, Venezuela — Each evening as the light fades, a group of blue-and-gold macaws arrives at Karem Guevara’s apartment. The birds land on her windowsill, squawk and stretch, while Guevara offers sunflower seeds and banana slices.
“These birds are like part of my family,” said Guevara, a small business owner who has fed macaws from her living room for five years. She says the birds sometimes bring their chicks, a sign of trust. “It fills my heart with joy.”
Though not native to Caracas, blue-and-gold macaws have become a common sight over the past two decades. Hundreds now fly across the capital, their bright plumage and loud calls familiar to residents. Many people leave food on balconies and in gardens, and the birds have come to symbolize the city for some.
That relationship is at risk as city authorities remove old palm trees the macaws rely on to breed. Maria Lourdes Gonzalez, a biologist at Simon Bolivar University who studies the macaws, warns the population could fall sharply if breeding sites disappear.
“If they don’t find a place where they can breed, there will be no new generation of macaws,” Gonzalez said. She explained the birds nest only in the chaguaramo, or royal palm, and specifically select palms that have lost their leaves and whose trunks are decaying and partly hollowed out by insects.
City crews have been cutting down such aging palms in parks and public spaces to beautify areas and reduce the risk of falling trunks — a sensible policy from a public-safety standpoint, Gonzalez acknowledged. But it also removes the specific cavities macaws need. “These are not birds that make nests out of branches or twigs,” she said. “They occupy holes inside old tree trunks, and in Caracas, they only use the chaguaramo trees.”
Gonzalez added that fewer macaws would not upset local ecosystems because the species was introduced; they are native to the Amazon and likely arrived in Caracas in the 1970s when pet owners let them go. Over time many owners released their birds as they proved noisy and difficult to keep indoors. The mild Caracas climate and surrounding tree-covered hills, which supply fruit and seeds, helped the birds survive and reproduce. The introduced royal palms provided nesting sites, and the absence of predators such as harpy eagles or monkeys made breeding easier.
A decade ago Gonzalez conducted a census and estimated about 400 blue-and-gold macaws in the city. She would like to repeat that count to assess the effects of tree removal but lacks funding. With a public university salary of about $160 a month, she cannot afford the gasoline to travel the city on her motorbike. This time she plans to rely on volunteers to survey macaws across Caracas. “The methodology is different from the first census, but I believe it can work,” she said.
Photographer Mabel Cornago, who has fed macaws for 15 years, said it would be “terrible” if their numbers fell because the birds have become “a symbol” of the capital. Cornago said she has taken more than 40,000 photos of macaws in the city and sells dozens of prints each month to gift shops catering to Venezuelans abroad who want reminders of home. “For me these birds are like angels,” she said. “Who came to us as our country was going through very difficult times.”