Blue, Scratchy, and Gizmo are three of our beautiful macaws!
If you’ve visited the Zoo, you’ve likely met a lot of our more than 900 animal residents. Some animals are easy to spot, but others are often not as easy to see because of their habitat set up, their personalities or their sleep cycles among other things. We wanted to start a “Meet the Animals” section of our blog to introduce you to some of the residents that you may (or may not have) met yet!
When it comes to our feathered residents, some of our most colorful species are often the most overlooked. Of the 19 colorful species of macaws found around the globe, four are represented right outside our Lands of Change loop, but guests often walk right by this chatty flock. Today, we’re taking the li-bird-ty to introduce you to them!
Macaws are social animals, and these four spend a large part of their day interacting with one another. While members of this flock seem inseparable, each bird has their own personality. Blue is our aptly named blue-throated macaw, Pele is a blue-and-gold macaw, Scratchy is a military macaw and Gizmo is a scarlet macaw.
Gizmo is the oldest of the group, having hatched at the Zoo back in 1998! She’s also one of the most charismatic of the birds.
“Gizmo is very keeper-oriented. She’s very go-with-the-flow and is usually one of the first macaws new keepers work with,” said Wild Florida Area Supervisor Christen Carrilo.
While Gizmo is more laid-back, Scratchy prefers to be in the middle of all the action. She’s very intelligent and will be the first one to investigate enrichment items, said Christen.
Finally, when it comes to Pele and Blue, you’ll rarely see one without the other nearby. You can often spot them preening each other, tag teaming an enrichment item or just sitting side-by-side.
All four of these macaws are perched, and will continue to live in, an open-air habitat with no meshing, so you may wonder why they don’t fly off. We do not trim our macaw’s feathers, since this can be a stressful process. Rather these birds never learned to fly. Think of it as swimming: if you don’t learn to develop the skillset and proper muscles, you will never be able to swim! Since all the birds still have their flight feathers, our animal care team does check in on windy days to ensure a gust of wind doesn’t carry the birds off their habitat.
This quartet starts their day off behind-the-scenes in their overnight habitat. In the morning, they receive breakfast and are walked over to their habitat’s perching to begin their day. They spend their day interacting with enrichment and training with keepers!
Our goal with enrichment items is to encourage animal residents to exhibit their natural behaviors in a safe way. Since macaws naturally do a lot of chewing and shredding, we elicit this behavior by providing them with paper and other paper-like materials. Macaws are also foragers, so keepers put a variety of foraging devices and puzzle feeders along their perchings so they can snack during the day.
“Macaws have such big personalities and are very intelligent, so they are always funny to watch and challenge me to think of better and more creative enrichment,” said Christen.
Another important part of these birds’ day is training! Our macaws are trained using positive reinforcement, like all the animals in the Zoo! Training is not only important to create a bond between our animal residents and their care team, but it allows the animals to voluntarily participate in their own healthcare. Our keepers work with these birds to teach them to foot present, wing present, and syringe train. That means each macaw will voluntarily take medicine from a syringe or present a body part that needs closer inspection.
At the end of the day, the macaws are walked back to their behind-the-scenes spaces where they get dinner and some new enrichment to work on overnight. However, this soon will change!
We’re excited to announce they you’ll likely be seeing these four birds from brand new perspectives this fall. Our Lands of Change macaw habitat is expanding across the boardwalk and down into the current flamingo night house where the macaws will live permanently. This will allow them to have more choice of how they spend their day. They’ll have the option to have quieter surroundings in the night house or be in the middle of all the action near the boardwalk. This new space will also create more opportunities for the birds to live together as a flock more often and experience more of the elements, like rain and breeze, which is important for their wellbeing.
We can’t wait for you to see these feisty four from all-new heights.
Special thanks to Flammio Financial Group, Stifel-Garvin Wealth Management Group, Artemis IT, and Jim and Darleen Barfield. Their generosity makes our work possible!
Brevard Zoo is an independent, not-for-profit organization that receives no recurring government funding for our operating costs. Your generous support enables us to continue to serve our community and continue our vital animal wellness, education and conservation programs.