Laney Rickman updates us on the latest milestone reached at The Blues Conservatory in Texas, USA, where she keeps one of the largest viable breeding flocks of captive Blue-throated Macaws (Ara glaucogularis) in the world

I am delighted to report that 2011 was a good year for our Blue-throated Macaws, and the highlight was Buster and Joplin - a young pairing made up of two unrelated, homebred, parent-reared birds - producing and parent-rearing three chicks in the nest, at only their second breeding attempt! We are very proud and extremely happy! This was a huge leap forward for a pair which had raised just one chick previously.

We took the approach of unobtrusively assisting the parents in every way possible, in order that they could successfully rear and fledge the entire clutch. The future of the critically endangered Blue-throated Macaw hangs in the balance, and our most important mission at Bird Endowment is ‘Saving the Blues,’ and to that end we strive to produce as many parent-reared Blue-throated Macaws as possible.

Read more in the magazine…