BLUE ANE YELLOW MACAW. 
79 
The. Hon. and Rev. F. G. Dutton? s account of the Blue and 
Yellow Macaw (Ara ararauna). 
What Bechstein could have meant by saying that Blue and Yellow 
Macaws are not good talkers I do not know; I have had four, two 
cocks and two hens. The hens did not talk, hut the cocks did, and 
one had a talent for talking, such as I have never met with in any 
other Parrot. It not only picked up things it heard at once, hut 
always in the tone of the person who said it. It was impossible to 
doubt whom it was imitating; the only doubt, if it was not mimicking 
oneself, was, was it the Macaw or the persons themselves? I parted 
with it, however, first because I could not trust its temper, and secondly 
because it never would leave a bough it had flown to, if it could help 
it; what may have startled it in its several flights I know not, but 
had it been left alone, it would several times have starved to death 
sooner than take wing again. When therefore it had flown out of the 
garden, it did not, like the others, return when hungry, but always 
had to be fetched back, and as this gave considerable trouble when 
it settled high up in a large tree, I got rid of it. I do not think 
its temper would have been bad, but I put it in the cage with the 
Bed and Yellow, and it was marital jealousy that made it peck at one. 
Precisely the same thing happened with the other Blue and Yellow 
cock bird. He had the best of tempers, any one might do anything 
they liked with him; but after he was put in the cage with the Red 
and Yellow, he made efforts to drive people away. Curiously enough 
neither of the cock birds was a particularly good flyer, but the two 
hens were as strong on the wing as Hawks, a hurricane would have 
been nothing to them, and it was magnificent to see the dashes and 
turns they would make on the wing. They all four had very different 
characters: “Frank”, the good talker, had evidently left his heart for 
mankind in Brazil. He made distinctions, but he loved no one. Bob , 
the other cock, was, I think, a little “wanting”, anyone might do 
what they pleased with him, and he would come to a coal-scuttle as 
soon as to his master. “Harry”, as one hen was called, was timid and 
would only come to myself. I parted with her because she would 
always settle on just the very leaders of my firs, etc. But I always 
have regretted having done so. Her wing was cut when she made this 
her practice, and no doubt had I waited till it was quite grown, she 
would have returned home from her excursions in a more conve- 
nable” manner. As for “Jenny”, the other hen, she was a splendid 
specimen, as a bird, but she was the incarnation of greediness and 
