Stellar's Sea Eagle? I've still only ever seen one at the Woodland Park Zoo. I have seen quite a few Southern Ground Hornbills, but very few Abyssinian Ground Hornbills.
Yesterday I was together with Devilfish at Antwerp Zoo and here we discovered yet another species completly unknown 30 years ago and now kept and bred at quite a number of zoos and birdparks, the Blue-headed or Mountain macaw. It's distribution was sometime ago in the hands of militants and drugs barons and no-one entered the area. Later the area was cleaned by the military and soon after the first animal-catchers and dealers entered the area and the Blue-headed macaw started to appear on ( at least ) the European market. Because they are quite easy to breed, they now are kept at quite a number of collections !
Banded palm civet. There is only a male at Cincy now that the female at Cols died a few years back. Tiger quoll. This species is entirely gone from North American zoos after thw two died at Cols.
There is a breeding group here in the UK at RSCC, last I heard - so they are not entirely gone from captive collections. Of course, their close cousin the Owston's Civet is doing rather better
They have indeed.They used to be common as you describe, but not any more. Quite a rarity these days.
Just for the record, most of the range of the blue-headed macaw has never been in regions dominated by militants or drugs barons. However, much of its range is very remote and difficult to access. The only places that have been fairly easy to access for a long time are near Tingo María and the Manú/Tambopata/Madidi region. The former was indeed in a region with militants and drugs barons (two British birdwatchers were murdered there in 1990), but the latter are strictly protected reserves. More recently, a larger part of its range has become accessible. A fairly large number of often illegally smuggled blue-headed left the region some years ago and several were confiscated by the authorities. At least some of the blue-headed in zoos are confiscated or offspring of confiscated. This coincided with the realization that the species actually was fairly rare in the wild (though it now appears to be less rare than initially believed), prompting zoos to focus on this species. Hadn't heard the name "mountain macaw" before; the vast majority of its range is in the Amazonian lowlands. Although it does occur in foothills, it can hardly be called a mountain bird -- the military macaw is the only where this name really would be fitting. Regardless, a very handsome small macaw.
Bongo- only that I believe Cleveland was the Zoo that in the 1960's held the only pair of Bongo in a zoo anywhere-worldwide. ( I think it was Cleveland....)
I believe that Cyanopsitta is sister to a clade comprising Primolius and Orthopsittaca. There is a fair bit of debate as to whether Ara is outside the clade formed by these three genera, or whether said genus is nested alongside Primolius and Orthopsittaca with Cyanopsitta as an outlier.
The rise of blue-headed macaw population in Europe is connected with its (illegal?) import done by a single Czech group of parrot breeders/traders. There was a a gap of a few years, between Czechoslovakia regained democracy in 1989 and later accepted CITES and even later started to implement it vehemently (in 1997). In these few years in first half of 1990s, it was legal (according to local Czechoslovakian/Czech law) to import almost anything from abroad, including these macaws. But because there was never issued a CITES export permit from any range country in S.Amerika that could prove it was obtained legally according to CITES, most european countries later deemed offspring of these macaw illegal. This original imported group was pretty small, maybe one or two dozen birds. But because they proved to be very easy to breed, they were spreading among Czech private breeders quickly and soon were sold also abroad. Czech name of this species is ara horský (=mountain macaw), thus it could be a potential origin of the commonly used synonyme.
50+ based on the 2002 CITES report (page 4). In Germany alone, about 30 were seized by German authorities. Although not mentioned in Tobias and Brightsmith 2007, smaller numbers were also seized elsewhere (e.g. six in the UK in 1998). If interested in this species, it is worth reading their review.
It may be that more were imported to Europe later. I´ve based my comment on birds that started the Czech breeding population (in 1992, I think). In 1996, several local breeders were already producing young. With hand-rearing and repeated clutches, they are quite prolific. Edit: I´ll try to read the original article in Gefiederte Welt 11/96 by Vít. Edit2: It seems blue-headed macaws are not really popular in the Czech rep. Only 119 kept according to register.
Just realised this is the same species I've known for a long while as Coulon's Macaw(from the Latin name).
