Hundreds of wild parrots are thriving in this Brazilian city
Decades ago, blue-and-gold macaws fleeing drought and wildfire landed in Campo Grande—and now locals love them.
Campo Grande, BrazilParrot biologist Larissa Tinoco spends her days not in the deepest reaches of the rainforest, but contending with rush hour in Campo Grande, a bustling city in midwestern Brazil.
On a recent winter day in June, she drove along quiet, leafy suburbs, a vacant parking lot, a large vegetable garden, and then onto the busy Afonso Pena Avenue. Her route regularly takes her past 158 nests of blue-and-gold macaws, at least 700 of which are estimated to live here, the remote capital of Mato Grosso do Sul state.
But today, the nests on her rounds have been empty. Inching through heavy late-afternoon traffic, Tinoco, a researcher with the Urban Birds Project, suddenly shouts.
Ahead of us, the sun illuminates the intensely
