Buraco das Araras, A Macaw Safe Haven
- Briony Hemmings
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
Buraco das Araras, ‘the Macaw Hole’, is a Psittacidae hiding place for green-winged macaws. It is located in the municipality of Jardim, near Bonito, a centre of ecotourism in Brazil. The reserve is on the tourist circuit and sees visitors who have also visited the Pantanal wetlands, snorkelled in the clear forest rivers and horse ridden on dusty ranches.
Whilst Buraco das Araras sees hundreds of tourists each month, entrance to the site is heavily regulated and supervised by guides. The birds have found security in this abandoned quarry and retreat here to breed in the safety of the red sandstone rockface.
Visitors wanting to see masses of Green-winged Macaws, some Blue-and-Golds, and occasionally a Hyacinth, as well as Toucans and Vultures, are guided through thick forests to wooden viewing platforms built on either side of the cliff. All guides are also wildlife rangers and teach visitors about the wildlife in the habitat as well as the story of how this relatively young conservation site came to be.
Modesto Sampaio has owned Buraco das Araras since 1986 and has dedicated the latter years of his life to restoring South America’s largest sinkhole, which once had quite a different calibre of inhabitant.
I joined Mr Sampaio in the visitor centre. He’s dressed in the traditional Fazendeiro style clothing, wearing a black stringed Bolo tie fastened with a silver ornament fixed around the collar of a banana smoothie-coloured buttoned shirt. I learn from a guide that his cowboy hat is called a Gus cowboy hat. It’s cream with a sloped crown and a deep pinch at the front.
Mr Sampaio takes it off each time he starts a conversation. We are in the education gazebo that he has built next to the sinkhole’s entrance foyer, a mile’s walk away from the old quarry. The foyer has a registration desk where people going into the forest are paired with guides. There is a small gift shop selling hand-crafted memorabilia. The trinkets are mostly the same types that you can find in Bonito, but the faces are more detailed, and more thought has been put into the craftwork on these figurines and pencil toppers. The ticketing assistant tells me that local volunteers make these to help raise funds for the parrots.
Mr Sampaio is past retirement age but is still heavily involved with the conservation projects on his land. He grins at visitors as he makes conversation with them. As I browse the gift shop and eat my lunch before meeting my guide, I see him talk to three consecutive groups of curious tourists in under an hour. He approaches each round of questions with kindness and enthusiasm. Later, after my tour, I see him still on site. He blows the Berrante, a traditional cow-herding instrument made of ox horn, for a group of children who are watching with interest. He teaches them how it is used in farming and the importance of cattle in the locality.
I am fortunate to have met Mr Sampaio. I had planned to visit the quarry and learn about its birds from the rangers on site. My guide, Jean, explains that he wanders by now and again to check that everything is “running okay”. Jean introduces me eagerly and sits by my side, translating my questions to Portuguese and vice versa. Mr Sampaio points out that ‘the people around me are all good people’. He says that “everyone from the ticket staff to the taxi drivers in the area has a vested interest in looking after their animal neighbours”. He tells me that it wasn't always so; the sinkhole had once seen nothing but death and terror. I ask him why, he shakes his head, saying that “gangs used the site as an evidence disposal pit. They had no love for anything living and used to use the macaws for target practice”. Gruesomely, some in the area even think that the Caiman living at the bottom of the pit was put there deliberately, along with his now-deceased partner, to eat human bodies after victims were chased through the forest and off the cliff’s edges. Mr Sampaio says that this was a dark period in the land's history. The violence here scared all the birds away from the area. When Mr Sampaio took over the land, the only thing that soared through the sky were crows.
He passionately tells me that he was determined to restore it. He enlisted the help of local firefighters and military personnel to pull car remains, dead cows and even the skeletons of more than a dozen human bodies from the pit. After this, he released two rescued Green Wing Macaws and then more breeding pairs as the years went on. He watched nature take back its land as parrots began to flock back to the area, and with them came birds that hadn’t been seen at the sinkhole for decades. Now the only gang wars are between species. The Green-winged Macaws have only recently accepted the Blue and Golds (another of Mr Sampaio’s reintroductions) after years of territory battles. They have produced the first clutch of natural Harlequin macaw chicks in the area.
Both species, however, have bonded over a common enemy. Jean tells me that tour guides and bird watchers know to look out for Hyacinth macaws when all 30 parrots on the cliffs start screaming into the air, apparently in territorial rage.
I leave Mr Sampaio as he joins a small tour group that arrives from Bonito. Jean tells me that it’s important to Mr Sampaio that he educates as many people as possible about his work here so that it continues when he is gone. My time slot to visit the birds arrives, and Jean leads me to the forest trail. We walk past wild pineapple plants and undergrowth that is thick with a myriad of plant and animal species. Jean points out Taper's footprints, and we see a hairy armadillo snuffling past. We also see a young anaconda a metre away from the path, and I am reassured that it is sleeping. Jean tells me that it is “being lazy” and will do us no harm. He does, however, firmly encourage me to continue forward.
As we approach the first viewing platform, Jean tells me that the best time of day to see the birds is when the sun is low or behind the clouds. They don’t like the sun shining in their faces and seek cool shadows where possible. As he says this, I start to hear that all too familiar sound that I know and love. More yells join the first shouts, and as I walk out onto the wooden viewing platform, my ears and eyes are bombarded with colours and sounds. I am at the top of the canyon. At eye level is more of the forest than I have just come from, but down below are cliffs full of macaws fighting, feeding, playing and looking after their young. It is like a feathered pride rock. Birds skydive from the trees at the top of the formation down into their nests below. Some circle like the vultures perched in the trees around us. Through my binoculars, I see chicks, a copy of their parents but with a flatter posture and big black eyes. They rest on low flat rocks, yelling up at their parents above, who seem to be ignoring them and socialising with other adults. Jean tells me that in a few months, the cliffs will be quiet again. The Macaws live their lives in the trees in the forest, not on these rocks. They have recognised that they are safe here to raise young and use it as a breeding ground.
We stay here for an hour or so. As we walk back along the path, Jean tells me stories of individual parrot pairs that he knows on the cliffs. He says that he loves his job and has been working with the sanctuary since he was a young teenager.
As we approach the car park, I pass a family of birdwatchers with young teenagers. The boy and the girl are wearing parrot t-shirts, and each has binoculars strapped around their necks. They chatter in Portuguese as birds fly over their heads and into the forest. Mr Sampaio encourages the family to come and talk to him. They approach him with enthusiasm, and I hear his eager voice sharing wisdom as I find my bus to depart.
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