Blue-Winged Macaw – Looks, Diet, Breeding, and Behavior

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Last Updated on December 15, 2021

Among the core species of macaws apart from the Asian ring-necked and African grey macaws; Blue-winged macaws are an increasingly desired and popular bird pet species. Blue-winged Macaws are comparatively medium size and less expensive.

They’re pretty much beautiful, extraordinarily friendly, and would love to live as family members in captivity. However, they’re equally demanding as large macaws. Their increasing desire for people to keep them as pets is causing their numbers to decrease day by day in many parts of the world.

Well! As a blue-winged owner, I have gotten many questions about macaws, and you guys wanted a macaw care guide. I have designed a complete guideline providing you every single piece of information related to blue-winged macaws.

Blue-Winged Macaw

They are magnificent macaws due to their vibrant colors. Blue-winged is also known as yellow and blue macaws and is famously known for affectionate companionship with humans. Blue-winged macaws are beautifully green, containing blue splashes on the wings and head.

These macaws are highly social, and you can’t leave them alone for more extended periods. They also take their time to bond with the owner but will eventually adapt to a supportive and natural environment.

These macaws are medium-sized parrots that can grow up to 18 inches, starting from the edge of their beak to the end of their tails. These macaws are very loud, and some of their vocals or calls are similar to screaming and can be heard from miles away.

Whether you are a beginner or a person with experience with pet birds, they are suitable pets. But whoever pets them with all the care and attention for them makes excellent companion pets.

Scientific Name of Blue Winged Macaw.

Blue-winged macaws are mainly native to central and southern American forests. It is also known as Illiger’s macaw, Illigers Miniature macaw, and Mini macaw.

The second name Illiger’s Macaw, is named after the German ornithologist “Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger ” who contributed to transforming and preserving this endangered species of Blue-winged Macaws.

Blue-winged macaws belong to the Ara genus and Psittacidae family. Its scientific name is Ara Maracana.

How Does a Blue-Winged Macaw Look?

This talk is going to be all about Blue-winged macaws looks. They have a long pointed tails, and they have bare skin on their face. White fur and those beautiful turquoise feathers on their face and now the feathers on their face, you would think they’re just little stripes, but there are teeny tiny little feathers, and every single bird has a different one. Bluewing macaws are the only macaws where the bare facial skin is yellowish, but this often fades to white in captivity.

The Blue-winged macaw can be readily distinguished by a bright red belly patch, the upper wing covered with green feathers and bluish underside wings. It is indicated by its bluish head and underside wing color. Blue-winged macaws are primarily green but can occasionally sport a few yellow feathers above the band of green as opposed to primarily yellow or a potent mix of red.

Blue-winged macaws have characteristic yellow/red lines around the eyes formed by rows of tiny feathers on the otherwise bare white skin patch. If seen together, the blue-winged macaw is smaller than the green-winged macaw in terms of length.

They have that curved beak perfectly adapted for opening seeds and nuts. They have the most predominantly visor out of all the birds. They even can break walnuts and coconut shells.

They have exceptional feet; macaws have two toes facing backward and two toes facing forward, called zygodactyl. These help them climb all-around a tree, but the food into beak standing onto another foot.

Here I briefly describe how male and female blue-winged macaws look and how distinguishably identify them.

How Does a Male Blue-winged Macaw Look?

They have a yellowish-white face, green forehead, and barely seen bluish crown. Male blue macaws have a red belly and somewhat yellow tail feathers. Males tend to have flatter heads than females. Males are more prominent, and the tail feathers of males are also longer than females.

They are the guardians of the nest, defenders of the territory, and compete with other males for rights to the females. Usually, the male is more prominent and much more mischievous than the female. On average, it seems pretty that a sizeable male parrot of any species will be more of a handful. Males can be identified through a lump in the pelvic area. They are more prone to constant noise.

How Does a Female Blue-Winged Macaw Look?

Females are said to have narrower beaks. Female macaws are more bitter like a love bug. She has a strong large bill; the upper mandible of the bill is whitish with a black tip and base, and the lower mandible is black.

Females can have territorial and nesting behaviors of maturity, but the males are more territorial conscious in general. They are the nurturers of the young, the source of the next generation, decorators of the nest. They’re not as big or strong.

After sexual maturity, females tend to be more docile and remain cuddlier, and that males are a little more touchy malicious, and annoying.

The blue-winged macaw hen would be sitting still on the nest cuddling with her babies, and seems more relaxed and calmer in both.

How does a baby Blue-Winged Macaw Look?

Red forehead paler; red on abdomen and back tinged with yellow; tail shorter. Eye brown. Juveniles and adults are similar in appearance but can be distinguished by juveniles having a shorter tail and dark grey-brown eyes rather than yellow eyes.

Juvenile Blue macaws have legs and feet that are grayish. This changes over time as they reach adulthood and the feet turn black. They can grow to a length of 12 to 18 inches from beat to tail and weigh between 2 to 5 pounds.

PS; These are some visual identification of male and female blue-winged macaws, but I also recommend a DNA test that will be more authentic and reliable.

Voice of Blue-Winged Macaw

Blue-winged macaws or Illiger’s macaws are often talkative and noisy. When they’re grudging or screeching, they emit “graaaa” kind of crow sounds. However, they’re friendly and fast learners; Illiger memorizes your speeches and mimics them. They can learn several words as my Blue coco has memorized over 200 vocabs.

Macaws are recognized as clown-like and often give weird responses to owners. They also sing different tunes in the morning and evening for attention.

Size of a Blue-Winged Macaw

Blue-winged macaws belong to small types of macaws and are comparatively most miniature to Hyacinth macaws.

Average blue-winged adult males are about 14 – 18 inches long from the head to the edge of the tail, whereas an adult female size ranges between 11 inches to 15inches.

Weight of a Blue-Winged Macaw

When blue-winged macaw juveniles reach adulthood, an average male weighs around 2lbs to 5lbs, and female weight ranges between 2 to 4 pounds.

Though a balanced diet and routine exercises are crucial for blue-winged macaws, either an over-maintained diet or a poor diet can cause various diseases.

A gram scale can be beneficial so that you can see subtle changes in macaw’s weight. It’s the fastest hack that you are going to pick up on illness with parrots. Get in the habit of weighing your bird; if you can do it every morning before your bird has been served breakfast, that is ideal.

Where Do Blue-Winged Macaws Live?

The Blue-winged macaw is the smallest of the ara genus widespread in the forests and woodlands of northern and central South America. Blue-winged is also found in Brazil, Paraguay, northeastern Argentina, and Bolivia. However, in common with other macaws in recent years, there has been a marked decline in its numbers due to habitat loss and illegal capture for the parrot trade.

In the wild, they love waterways, evergreen, thick forests, and savannas. They feed seeds, flowers, and fresh fruits, fly high at over 1000m altitude, and breed in December. Blue-winged natively core forests are degraded, and some fragmented landscapes remain where this species is endangered. Sadly, this species is declining due to the deforestation of their native habitat. Blue-winged macaws need a spacious and robust cage. They’re pretty intelligent and can open every type of cage door. Blue-winged macaws are kind of notorious for being little Houdini and troublemakers. If your end goal is to have aviaries, you should keep them in spacious and comfortable cages instead of regular bird cages.

They want to have a lot of space so that their enclosure could be as enriching as possible. Ensure sunlight reaches their cages because the sunlight makes their feathers so beautiful.

What Do Blue-Winged Macaws Eat?

In the wild, they mainly feed on seeds of Cnidoscolus Phyllanthus, Jatropha, Guazuma ulmifolia, and the non-native Melia azedarach. They also eat fresh fruits and nuts. They can fly at the speed of 35mph and almost fly 15mi daily to find food.

In captivity, they need quite a balanced diet and exercise as well. They like fresh fruits, veggies, nuts, pulses, and formulated pellets. If they’re getting excessive feed or an inadequate diet, they may fall into several diseases like hypervitaminosis, obesity, mineral deficiencies, fatty liver disease, etc.

Well! Here I’m quickly overviewing a balanced diet that will be handy for you.

Generally, their diet shouldn’t have only seeds and pellets. They like fresh fruits, nuts, vegetables, almonds, walnuts, salmon, and boiled eggs. According to Illiger, a well-balanced diet for blue-wingers is up to 50gram seed and pellets, and 100 grams mix salad for a day.

In the morning, I give my parrots some celery, chopped fruit, and boiled egg. I think fruits and vegetables go together. Since I’ve learned a lot, now their evening meal is an organic pellet. These fulfill their mineral needs, making them happy and healthy. You’re probably wondering, macaws need a higher fat; therefore, seeds, pulses, and nuts are very crucial for them. I reserved nuts and seeds for training.

Though nuts and seeds retain high value, you should provide them high engagement, toys, exercise, and spacious room to fly. Because this excessive amount of energy comes across randomly aggressive and in hyper or territorial or possessive or whatever you want to call it, and people don’t realize that they’re giving too much fat and no source of no way to relieve any of that energy sort of like get it out. Did you figure it out?

Breeding Behavior of Blue-Winged Macaw

These are smaller in appearance, and in most cases, people adopt them considering less maintaining breed. However, they end up knowing blue-winged macaws are equally attention-demanding like other species.

They have the friendliest personality, are fond of humans, love family members, and mimic speeches and repetitive sounds. If you give them adequate attention, time, and engagement, they show unmatched bonding for life.

As they love engagement and human interaction, they love to spend several hours out of the cage a day, looking forward to seeing the owner as long as possible.

They are intelligent and friendly; they’ve emotions and mood swings the same as humans and can be easily stressed upon being neglected. As a result, they fall into health issues, can pluck feathers, or you may experience a nasty bite.

Blue-winged macaws are crazy, playful, and behave like a clown. They want to play most of the time and are looking for things to destroy. You can stimulate them by providing toys, eliminating stuff, perches, nuts, and other variety of items, including organic cubes, cards, branches, veggies.

Ideally, feeding your birds their pellets through the toys is a fantastic way to get them to quiet down in the evening through self-entertainment.

There are many different types of toys, so keep in mind to look for natural materials used. I get them to shower perches okay, so I have various sizes of shower perches in my shower. The cool thing is they lay this way, and then they swing out, and they’re sturdy.

The more space you can offer a bird, the more enrichment they’re going to get right. So if you can find an excellent indoor space or if you can provide an elegant indoor-outdoor space that’s safe and netted or something like that where you can fly your bird, it’s going to be phenomenal for your bird.

Blue-winged macaws are comparatively less noisy, though they love to talk, emit sounds, mimic speeches, screaming, and whistling. But if they’re going a bit noisy, try to figure out the reason; maybe they’re frightened, looking for attention, or have any illness.

What else about macaws? I think they’re fantastic with the most prominent body language and their feathers. They’re great and gonna be your best pet companion.

LifeSpan of Blue-Winged Macaw

In the wild, they had about 50-years of lifespan, although now the average lifespan of Blue-winged macaws is around 40 years. Shortening in the lifespan causes degradation of forests and is susceptible to many diseases such as dilatation disease, psittacine beak and feather disease, psittacosis, beak malocclusion, and aspergillosis.

In captivity, their average lifespan has increased to 60 years. Farmers and pet owners usually try to replicate native habitat, providing them a balanced diet, cleanliness, and care that significantly causes an increase in the blue-winged macaw’s lifespan.

Blue-Winged Macaw Population

This species is classified as Near Threatened because the population is moderately tiny and undergoing rapid declines due to extensive loss of habitat, trapping for the cagebird trade, and persecution as a crop pest.

The population is estimated to be in the band 2,500-9,999 individuals in total, equating to 1,667-6,666 mature individuals, rounded here to 1,500-7,000 individuals.

Threats to Blue-Winged Macaw

This species is native to Bolivia, and they are a critically endangered species. These are little ambassadors of this species in the wild, and they’re losing their homes due to deforestation.

Birds need trees to hang out, find their food, build their nests so they can have babies and reproduce and carry on their jeans. If they don’t have those trees to live in, they don’t have anywhere to live anymore. That’s the main reason these birds are going towards extinction.

Some associations for these macaws in the wild are planting artificial nest boxes in protected forests, so the birds have a protected area. Those trees aren’t at risk of being cut down, so they can use those nest boxes to have their nests and lay their eggs. So they can successfully raise their babies in protected forests.

Furthermore, they also pose a threat to cagebird traders, diseases, and persecution as a crop pest.

How Much Blue-Winged Macaw?

Since blue-winged macaws classify Near Threatened, US authorities ban the import of this bird. Though this species is declining, rare, and hard to find, you can get this online from bird breeders and adoption services. It will cost you around $1000 to $3000. But it’s challenging to identify if it is wild-caught or captive-bred.

Blue-Winged Macaw As A Pet

These macaws are the smallest. Therefore they are a perfect option for macaw lovers; any person who wants to keep a macaw but is not ready for a larger one can go for this macaw. They are brilliant socially and are easy to train with maximum effort and teaching.

Blue-winged macaws are very friendly, jolly, and interactive. They make secure connections with their owners when brought up as babies through hand-feeding; they become very fond of their owners.

These macaws will speak fluently; however, they are similar to their other macaw cousins in screaming hyacinth macaws. Furthermore, they are complicated to take care of as they have alluring personalities with a beautiful blue color. But they don’t readily agree with training and aren’t good pets for first-time owners who haven’t enough experience, patience, and compassion.

You have a macaw, and you should have a basic understanding of training. What do I mean by that mean you should understand what positive and negative reinforcement are?

This will help you understand your bird better and communicate more clearly with your bird in the long term, versus having a bird that someday bites you.

Blue-winged macaws are quiet learners and respond well to the training. They require a lot of time from you, like pets, and they like to stay engaged. They are very famous for their interactive and curious behaviors; they love to be with their owners and gladly become part of their human flock. Still, the rule for being passionate and enthusiastic is the same for all macaws. If you plan to have this macaw, you have to be very scheduled to give maximum time to these birds.

Other Similar Species

There are mainly two types of macaws, i.e., small macaws and large macaws; both have several sub-species named as

Small Macaws

Conclusion

Blue-winged macaws are gorgeous, intelligent, and can be exceptionally great companions upon giving them sufficient attention and time. They’re for everybody, and they’re not for most everybody. They need a huge commitment; if you can deal with noise, haven’t enough time to engage daily, this bird isn’t for you.

I’m sure this guide catered to all your questions regarding blue-winged macaws, and now I have a challenge for you guys. I want you to look into your cage at your macaw birds by hearing back from you in the comments about what you learned from this guide. 

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