Blue-throated macaws (Ara glaucogularis) PhotoBy David Friel – originally posted to Flickr as More Blue-throated Macaws Ara glaucogularis, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6641684

Dear Readers, you might have read that two Blue-throated Macaws named Margot and Lily have gone AWOL from London Zoo during one of their regular flights. They have been out and about since Monday, which is really quite a long time for a pair of tropical birds to be away from their heated quarters (and their parents, Popeye and Olly). I am very surprised that they haven’t been sighted – after all, they’re about three feet tall and turquoise and yellow, so they won’t be easily mistaken for anything else.

The macaws are flown daily, to give them a chance to stretch their wings and to give them a glimpse of the world outside their cage. In the past they’ve sometimes headed for the trees and stayed there for a couple of hours, but today their journey has clearly taken them off on an adventure.

Blue-throated macaws are vanishingly rare in the wild, with possibly only 300 birds left. Fortunately they breed well in captivity, but as with so many animals, the question becomes ‘where is safe for them to be released, even if they could be rehabilitated?’ The forests of Bolivia, where they live, are being encroached on from all directions. They are reliant on the tall palm trees of the region for both food and nest sites, and these too are often cut down. Fortunately there are conservation measures now in place in Bolivia, with the support of local people, vital to the success of these programmes – nest sites are monitored for predators, both animal and human, and the health and well-being of individual birds and chicks is noted. Whether this will work remains to be seen with such a small wild population, but it always warms my heart to know that people are trying to protect a species after such a history of doing it harm.

Blue-throated macaw (Ara glaucogularis) in flight – Photo By Carsten Steger – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107017523

A few other birds have ‘wandered off’ from London Zoo in the past few years – a Barn Owl went ‘flyabout’ during another routine flying exercise, but was brought back within a few hours. More excitingly, a Waldrapp Ibis escaped from the Snowden Aviary in 2022 after lifting some slack wire and making its escape. It was later recaptured in Camden, after quite a lot of excitement. Waldrapp Ibises are also critically endangered, and in one conservation exercise, were taught to migrate by conservationists using hang gliders.

Waldrapp Ibis (Geronticus_eremita) PHotoBy Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77678707

And there were incidents involving the Crested Caracara, a Mexican bird of prey, in 2018, 2019 and 2022. One bird, Jester, gave keepers quite the runaround in 2022 – she was spotted in Regent’s Park but then headed south and west, and was seen in Barnes and on Streatham Common before being recaptured after a week.

Crested Caracars (Photo By Andreas Trepte – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43914003)

In 2019 and 2018 Louie, a Striated Caracara from the Falkland Islands, also made a bid for freedom, again after a free-flying event. The keepers attempted to lure it back with a dead rat on a stick. Louie was quite the character. I hand you over to the South Atlantic News Agency for the full story. I suspect that somebody has paid in full for their dramatic licence. First up, the reaction of a parent who was in Regent’s Park and witnessed the keepers’ attempts at recapture.

“Parent Illy Montefiore, who was in the park, said: “This was particularly disgusting for people having picnics and had not wished to see this spectacle. Imagine if you were walking your dog, and someone came along swinging around a bit of carcass? You’d this was really out of order.”

She added that other park birds had been “flocking in mass and responding loudly” to Louie’s arrival on the tree, adding: “It was like Alfred Hitchcock. It was surrounded by crows in the tree. There wasn’t a pigeon in sight. We spoke to a zookeeper and they said it had been spooked from what had happened in a show. It didn’t seem at all interested in coming down. Then it just flew off, prehistorically.”

The bird eventually flew back into the zoo on Tuesday morning after two days as a fugitive.

In January 2018, Louie spent ten days on the run after fleeing a similar exercise. It was later seen swooping for scraps from a butchers on the Kilburn High Road before tucking into a whole cooked chicken in Grange Park. It was caught by rangers while sitting on a tree in the park later that day.”

So, Lily and Margot the macaws are not the first birds to leave the comfort of their quarters at London Zoo and head for the hills. But the nights are drawing in, and the temperatures are dropping, so I hope they find their way home soon. It’s one thing being a fugitive in the summer when you’re a species that is adapted to life in the UK, it’s quite another when you’re a tropical macaw.

Striated Caracara (Photo By The joy of all things – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149611693)