Military Macaw (Ara militaris)

I got my second opportunity to see such brightly feathered birds in one day - the same day that I saw the Hyacinth Macaws.  Loud and raucous like their blue cousins, I found the pair too busy stripping the tree of its bark and not really paying much attention to each other.  So much so that I couldn't get a shot of them together despite my hanging around them for a while in the hopes they'd oblige me.

They appeared to be very curious birds by nature and really intent on what they were doing.  I'm not sure whether they were actually eating the bark or just pecking at them in an attempt to gather nutrients.

Again, as with the Hyacinth Macaws, I had a great challenge photographing these birds in extremely low light.  A long and heavy lens just didn't help and you will notice the slightly soft focus in some of the images.  This happened for mainly two reasons, though - one of course was the low shutter speed, causing the pictures to be on the softer side, and the other one is the extreme application of noise reduction in post that softened out the details a little bit as well.  However, I only got a handful of shots and these were some  of them.

Hyacinth Macaws

I visited the Montreal Biodome over the weekend and was fascinated by this pair of Hyacinth Macaws.  I heard their screams from afar, but thought that it was the pair of Military Macaws creating the ruckus.  But upon approaching the pair of Military Macaws, I realized that they weren't the only ones guilty of the loud squawks and later turned around and found this pair courting.

I had the worst light possible, being in the Rainforest region in the Biodome.  The tropical vegetation was dense and therefore, the light was scarce.  I shot these images at ISO 3200 and had to remove quite a bit of noise in Lightroom.  The angles could have been better if I didn't have to shoot in between the bobbing heads of the visitors and being careful not to bump my lens into their heads either.  Everyone seemed enthralled by this pair. Beautiful birds!  I'm definitely going back to see them again.