The Martinique macaw or orange-bellied macaw (Ara martinica) is a hypothetical extinct species of macaw which may have lived on the Lesser Antillean island of Martinique, in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It was scientifically described by Walter Rothschild in 1905, based on a 1630s description of blue and orange-yellow macaws by Jacques Bouton. No other evidence of its existence is known, but it may have been depicted in a 1626 painting. Some writers have suggested that the birds observed were actually blue-and-yellow macaws (Ara ararauna). The red-tailed blue-and-yellow macaw (Ara erythrura), another species named by Rothschild in 1907 based on a 1658 account, may be identical to the Martinique macaw, if either ever existed. The Martinique macaw is one of 13 extinct macaw species that have been proposed to have lived in the Caribbean islands. Many of these species are now considered dubious; only three are known from physical remains, and there are no extant endemic macaws on the islands today. Macaws were frequently transported between the Caribbean islands and the South American mainland in both prehistoric and historic times, and it is therefore difficult to establish whether contemporaneous reports refer to imported or native species.
Taxonomy The Martinique macaw was scientifically described by the British zoologist Walter Rothschild in 1905, as a new species in the macaw genus Anodorhynchus: A. martinicus. The species was solely based on a 1630s account by the French priest Jacques Bouton of blue and orange-yellow macaws from the Lesser Antillean island of Martinique. Rothschild reclassified the species as Ara martinicus in his 1907 book, Extinct Birds, which also contained a restoration of the bird by the Dutch artist John Gerrard Keulemans. The Martinique amazon (Amazona martinicana) of the same island was also based solely on a contemporary description, and many supposedly extinct parrot species from the Caribbean islands were named based on such scant evidence. What Bouton described is likely to remain a mystery, but various theories have been proposed. In 1906, the Italian zoologist Tommaso Salvadori noted that the Martinique macaw seemed similar to the blue-and-yellow macaw (Ara ararauna) of mainland South America, and may have been the same bird. In 1936, the Cuban scientist Mario Sánchez Roig claimed to have found a stuffed Martinique macaw specimen, which was supposed to have been collected in 1845. After examination the same year, the American ornithologist John T. Zimmer showed it to be a hoax, combining a burrowing parakeet (Cyanoliseus patagonus) with the tail of a dove.
The American ornithologist James Greenway used the emended spelling Ara martinica in 1958 and suggested that Bouton's description could have been based on a captive bird, noting that there were no other reports of similar macaws from the island. Yet he pointed out that Edwards' Dodo, a 1626 painting by the Dutch artist Roelant Savery, shows several birds including a blue and yellow macaw, which is different from the mainland bird in having yellow undertail covert feathers instead of blue, but the origin of this macaw is unknown. Another macaw in the painting may be the also extinct Lesser Antillean macaw (Ara guadeloupensis). In 1987, the American ornithologist Noel F. R. Snyder and his colleagues also thought the Martinique macaw probably represented mainland blue-and-yellow macaws, but speculated that a poorly known macaw that was never named may have lived on the island, based on the French pastor Charles de Rochefort descriptions of macaws of unknown provenance with plumage that does not match other species from the region (one pale yellow with a red tail and one red, white, blue, green, and black). Rothschild's 1907 reassignment of Anodorhynchus martinicus to the genus Ara led to confusion as late as 2001, when the American ornithologists Matthew Williams and David Steadman assumed the two names referred to separate birds. The Martinique macaw has also been referred to by the common name orange-bellied macaw. The bird conservation organisation Birdlife International does not have an entry for the Martinique macaw, but it was mentioned in that of the Lesser Antillean macaw (which was itself considered Not Recognized). The International Union for Conservation of Nature considered the two possibly identical in their entry for the Lesser Antillean macaw.
In the 1905 article that named the Martinique macaw, Rothschild also named an Anodorhynchus coeruleus, supposedly from Jamaica. The specific name coeruleus is Latin for "azure-blue". Salvadori also questioned this species in 1906, as he was unsure what Rothschild was referring to. In his 1907 Extinct Birds, Rothschild responded to Salvadori and clarified that his first description was erroneous, as he had misread an old description. He renamed the macaw Ara erythrura, based on a 1658 description by de Rochefort that described satiny blue and yellow parrots with red tails, and conceded that its provenance was unknown. He also included a Keulemans illustration of this parrot. Rothschild furthermore claimed that two large and supposedly blue and yellow macaws seen on Jamaica by a Reverend Comard in 1842 must have been this species. The specific name erythrura is Greek for "red-tailed". This species subsequently received common names such as red-tailed blue-and-yellow macaw and satin macaw. Greenway suggested Rochefort's description was dubious, as he had never visited Jamaica, and appeared to have based his account on one by the French friar Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre. If anything, he considered the name a synonym of A. martinica. The British ornithologists Julian P. Hume and Michael Walters agreed in 2012 that if either bird ever existed, Ara erythrura is likely to have been identical to the Martinique macaw, and they found the contemporary accounts of both birds inadequate. The ornithologists James W. Wiley and Guy M. Kirwan suggested in 2013 that if any macaw species existed on Martinique, the name Ara martinica was most adequate to use, as no Anodorhynchus macaws occur anywhere near the West Indies, whereas Ara macaws occur on the adjacent South American mainland. Other similar blue and yellow macaws, such as the "great macaw" (Psittacus maximus cyanocroceus) were also reported from Jamaica.
Extinct Caribbean relatives
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