Military Macaws at El Mirador del Aguila

Upon first arriving at El Mirador del Aguila/Eagle Lookout the first thing that you see and hear is the relentless din of trucks and other vehicles as they pass by on the highway. Then approaching the low, broken stone safety wall you see immediately below a very, unfortunately, typical Mexican scene, an ever-growing makeshift “basureo”/garbage dump-bienvenidos a Mexico! Yet, if you are there for the same reason that I went there for, soon you will be able to gloriously overlook all of that human auditory and visually undesirable assault on your senses. You see, you are fortunate enough to be at one of the best places left in Mexico to view military macaws.

The mirador is a vehicular pullout approximately 30 miles from San Blas, Nayarit, where for the last four days I had spent birdwatching. At an elevation of 550 meters it provides a spectacular view of a forested canyon off in the distance. While waiting for the appearance of our “target” birds, the macaws, we, my professional bird guide and three other clients of his, were entertained by numerous distinctive, brash, and magnificent black-throated magpie jays, and by black and turkey vultures as they circled above.

Prior to that day, my only experience with military macaws had been those held in captivity at the aviary in Guadalajara’s Parque Agua Azul and in the aviary at the Guadalajara zoo. What I had the pleasure of seeing were medium-sized members of the macaw family who are mostly green with hues ranging from olive to emerald that have a patch of bright red just above their black beaks with lemon yellow underwings and displaying long and tapered tails that go from burgundy to sky blue to an almost luminescent turquoise with streaks of green. While observing them, these captive macaws which are one of only two species of macaws that occur in Mexico, the other being scarlet macaws, could be described in this manner: intelligent (they are the headlining “show birds” at the zoo); sociable, playful, inquisitive, boisterous, active, and charming in a beguiling sort of way. I was definitely impressed by these macaws whose numbers have been diminished in the wild to less than 10,000- they are also found in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Argentina- and are listed, due to habitat destruction and the illegal pet trade, as being vulnerable/endangered.

However delightful it may have been seeing them at such close proximity in the aviaries, what I would soon experience at a tremendous distance (and at a cost of around $40 per person for the guide) at the mirador was vastly superior and exceedingly more rewarding. After a wait of approximately 20 minutes as the sun was beginning to set, amazingly, as the noise of the traffic was persistently loud, we heard the raucous cries of the macaws well before they came into view flying through the gap in the canyon far below. Since leaving in the morning to fly elsewhere in the forest to perhaps feed on fruit, berries, nuts, and seeds, these members of the parrot family were returning to roost for the night.

In pairs, as they typically do, they spectacularly appeared. For the next few minutes, with shallow, graceful wing beats-at times gliding- with their long tails elegantly and gracefully flowing behind they, oh so far away, made their presence felt, not only then but also forever in my memory. As lovely and enchanting as they were when I saw them in the aviaries, their colors as they appeared while in flight, particularly the blue of the tail, were even more strikingly beautiful. When they settled in and perched on branches many hundreds of meters below, our guide set up his powerful scope; not visible to the naked eye, although the minuscule images of the macaws as seen through that magnifying device were a fraction of their actual size they were substantially much more impressive than the ones of the captive macaws that had been just a few feet away from me.

Almost apologetically, our skillful guide with over 30 years of birding experience commented that it was a “slow day” for the macaws as we had “only” seen fourteen rather than the 50-75 that could be seen four months hence in the spring. Nonetheless, I was absolutely thrilled by what I had seen and experienced on that much anticipated early evening in that exceedingly incongruous garbage strewn and noise polluted setting. More significantly, I realized that no matter what positive characteristics and traits that the macaws displayed in captivity, their true grandeur and essence could only be seen and appreciated in nature. Only in their wild state can they be viewed and described as they naturally are, majestic!