News that the Loro Parque Fundación has released two Lear’s macaws (
Anodorhynchus leari) into their natural habitat in Brazil has had Rakewell squawking with pleasure. These Brazilian parrots were first described in the 1850s but would not be defined as a distinct species until 1978, when an ornithologist discovered their wild population. At that point, they were named after Edward Lear, the painter-poet whose first publication, in 1832, was a volume of lithographic reproductions of his drawings of parrots made in the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park.
The young Lear took to birds like, well, a duck to water. In December 1830, in a verse note to a friend, Harry Hinde, he wrote that ‘ever since breakfast / I’ve had one bun merely’, so ensconced was he in drawing his feathered friends: ‘For all day I’ve been a- / way at the West End, / Painting the best end / Of some vast Parrots / As red as new carrots […]’. Although some of his sketches were of stuffed birds,