Red-headed macaw

Red-headed macaw
Hypothetical illustration, John Gerrard Keulemans, 1907
Conservation status
Extinct  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Psittaciformes
Family:	Psittacidae
Genus:	Ara
Species:	A. erythrocephala
Binomial name
Ara erythrocephala Gosse, 1847
Location of Jamaica

The red-headed macaw or Jamaican green-and-yellow macaw (Ara erythrocephala) may have been a species of parrot in the family Psittacidae that lived in Jamaica, but its existence is hypothetical. Rothschild based it on a description which a Mr. Hill had sent to Philip Henry Gosse:

Head red; neck, shoulders, and underparts of a light and lively green; the greater wing coverts and quills, blue; and the tail scarlet and blue on the upper surface, with the under plumage, both of wings and tail, a mass of intense orange yellow. The specimen here described was procured in the mountains of

Trelawny and St. Anne's by Mr. White, proprietor of the Oxford estate.^[2]

Information

The macaw is extinct,^[3] and it is conjectured to have been hunted to extinction in the early 19th century.^[4] It was a close relative of the Cuban and Dominican macaws.^[4] Its existence is considered dubious today.^[5]

Habitat

The Ara erythrocephala could have been found in the mountains of Trelawney and St. Anne’s parishes, Jamaica.^[6] It was described to have been found in the mountains, and presumably in forest as well.^[3]

References