Photographing Blue Macaws in The Pantanal

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The Pantanal is one of the biggest tropical wetlands in the world. It is so big that whilst mainly being in Brazil it also spreads over into part of Paraguay and Bolivia. Yesterday I wrote about the hillarious guinea pig like Capybara.

Today I want to talk about the Blue Macaw.

These Macaws eat the green nuts from the local palm trees. We helped them out by cutting some down ourselves.

We built a feeder and sat and watched the birds. The Macaws are incredible - they are huge (can be over 3 ft long head to tail) and you can hear them screech from miles away in the distance. The noise echoes around the Pantnal.

The Macaws are incredibly smart - despite having a very strong beak that can even break into coconuts they would rather not spend their time trying to crack open nuts. The Pantanal is home to lots of cattle that also enjoy eating the nuts. When they have digested and extreted the nuts they become much softer.

The Macaws come to the ground and waddle around with the cattle picking up the soft nuts. They aren't designed to walk around but have adapted to do this.

I was in the hide with a friend as well as a very successful photographer called Sue Flood. She was one of the main photographers on the incredible BBC Blue Planet series with David Attenborough. She has set up her own freelance photography company and runs safaris all around the world. She is an absolute legend of wildlife photography but still very humble. Her latest book is called Cold Places.


She showed us her photos and had the whole room completely fixated in awe of her work.

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