Blue-throated Macaw: Blue Beard

This YouTube video was produced by the American Bird Conservancy.

For many years, the beautiful Blue-throated Macaw (Ara glaucogularis) was known to those outside the Beni savanna only through captive specimens, and was thought by some to be extinct in the wild, a victim of the illegal wild bird trade and habitat loss. Local people in the area knew the bird persisted, however, and in 1992, a population of approximately 50 macaws was documented in northeastern Bolivia. The macaws had held out in the “islands” of palm trees that rise above the Beni savanna’s vast, seasonally flooded plains.

The species’

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Protecting Shorebirds and Horseshoe Crabs

This YouTube video was produced by the American Bird Conservancy.

Every Spring, thousands of Red Knots travel 9,000 miles from South America’s Tierra del Fuego to the Canadian Arctic for their breeding season. With such a long migration, this shorebird must make stops along the way to eat and rest. The Delaware Bay is the perfect pitstop, where the horseshoe crab eggs provide nourishment for the exhausted Red Knots and other migratory shorebirds.

But this essential food source is under threat. Unsustainable harvesting of horseshoe crabs in the Atlantic Coast led to the loss of two thirds of its population

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Tracking the Rusty Blackbird: A Motus Project

This YouTube video was produced by the American Bird Conservancy.

The Motus Wildlife Tracking Network has revolutionized scientific knowledge about animal migration since 2014, using automated radio telemetry to track movements across more than 2,270 receiving stations around the globe. One such station is located in Virginia, where the fast-declining Rusty Blackbird is known to spend the nonbreeding season. Watch this video to learn more about the species and the role that Motus plays in its conservation.

Birds Canada oversees the global Motus network, while American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is guiding the expansion of Motus efforts in the U.S. Since

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