Lesser Antillean Macaw - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The Lesser Antillean Macaw is well-documented, in spite of the lack of any existing specimens, since it was mentioned and described by several contemporary writers. Red parrots thought to be the Lesser Antillean Macaw were first mentioned by the Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés in 1553, referring to a 1496 account by Ferdinand Columbus, who mentioned parrots as big as chickens on Guadeloupe, which were called "Guacamayas" by the Caribs. In 1774, Comte de Buffon also stated that Christopher Columbus himself had found macaws on Guadeloupe. The first detailed description was by Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre in 1654 and 1676, who also illustrated the bird alongside other animals on Guadeloupe, and later in 1742 by Jean Baptiste Labat.

Austin Hobart Clark gave the Lesser Antillean Macaw its scientific name, Ara guadeloupensis, in 1905, based on the contemporary accounts, but also cited a 1765 colour plate as perhaps showing this species. He noted that it was different from the superficially similar Scarlet Macaw (Ara macao) in several features, as well as from the Green-winged Macaw (Ara chloropterus) and the Cuban Macaw (Ara tricolor). The ornithologist James Greenway suggested the macaws reported from Guadeloupe could have been imported to the island from elsewhere by the natives, but this is impossible to prove. According to the palaeontologist Julian Hume, its similarity to the Scarlet Macaw indicates that they are close relatives, and possibly that the Guadeloupe species was descended from the mainland macaw.

A small parrot ulna found in the Folle Anse archaeological site on the adjacent island of Marie-Galante was assigned to the Lesser Antillean Macaw by the ornithologists Matthew Williams and David Steadman in 2001. The ornithologists Storrs Olson and Edgar Maíz have doubted this identification, and believe it belongs to the extant Imperial Amazon (Amazona imperialis) instead. Its size and robustness was similar to ulnae of that species, and though it was worn, they identified what appeared to be a notch which is also present on ulnae of the Amazona genus, but not in Ara. In the same paper, they doubted the validity of another hypothetical extinct, sympatric parrot, the Guadeloupe Amazon (Amazona violacea), arguing it was also probably identical to the Imperial Amazon.