Spix’s Macaw: The race to save the World’s Rarest Bird

Second-Hand Hardback | Published by: Fourth Estate 2002 | ISBN: 9781841156507. 1st edition. Book Condition – Good. Dust Jacket – Good. Age toned throughout. DJ a bit grubby but only lightly bumped. A few pencil marks to prelims. Spix’s Macaw tells the hearbreaking story of a unique band of brilliant blue birds – who talk, fall in love, and grieve – struggling against the forces of extinction and their own desirability. By the second half of the twentieth century the birds became gram for gram more valuable than heroin; so valuable that they drew up to $40,000 on the black markets. When, in 1990, only one was found to be living in the wild, an emergency international rescue operation was launched and an amnesty declared, allowing private collectors to come forward with their illegal birds, possible mates for the last wild Spix.