Vol. XXIIT Clark, The Greater Antillean Macaws. 345 



1905 



THE GREATER ANTILLEAN MACAWS. 



BY AUSTIN H. CLARK. 



The following continental species of Macaws have been errone- 

 ously credited to the Greater Antilles by the earlier writers. The 

 mistakes apparently arose from the birds having been brought from 

 the Mosquito Coast (or some other part of Central or South 

 America), by ships trading locally, to Jamaica, and then, after a 

 residence in that island, being reshipped to England or to Europe 

 as natives there. The interior of Jamaica was then much less 

 known than was the interior of Cuba or Haiti ; thus species which 

 would have been at once recognized as foreign to those islands 

 passed as resident on Jamaica. Moreover, what appear to have 

 been escaped birds were occasionally killed in the woods {vide 

 Browne, Civil and Nat. Hist. Jamaica, p. 472, 1789, under " The 

 Bine Mackaw of Edwards"), which tended to confirm people in 

 their ideas that the birds were natives, they believing that they 

 were stragglers from their inaccessible mountain homes. 



Now Macaws, like Parrots, although birds of powerful flight 

 and spending much time on the wing, seldom pass over any great 

 extent of water. Although larger and stronger than parrots, they 

 appear to be even more attached to the mainland than are they ; 

 whereas species of the genus Amazona are found on Cozumel, 

 Tres Marias, Tigre and Ruatan (in the Bay of Honduras), Aruba, 

 Curacao, Margarita, Trinidad, Tobago, and other islands off the 

 northern South American coast (I do not consider in this con- 

 nection the species peculiar to, and occurring on, the West Indies) . 

 Macaws have only been reported from Trinidad, and no specimens 

 appear ever to have have obtained there (Ara makawuanna 

 Le'otaud, Ois. de 1' ile de la Trinidad, app. p. 557, 1866 ; Chapm. 

 Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. VI, p. 66. 1894). 1 It appears, therefore, 

 very unlikely that any continental species could ever have strayed 



1 Count Salvadori (Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. XX, p. 168, 1891) gives Trinidad 

 in the range of A. hahni, and mentions an unsexed skin (purchased) from 

 that island. Possibly L^otaud's species was in reality A. hahni. Some spe- 

 cies of green macaw certainly does occur there. 



