Ara macao
Drawn from open occurrence records in and around Monteverde, aggregated onto a 10 km grid. A cell is matched by its centre, which can sit up to 16 km outside the boundary, so this covers the surrounding country too.
Occurrence records measure where people looked and found something, which is not the same as where the animal is. This is a relative likelihood, not a probability.
Records exist for January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December, with the widest coverage in October. A quiet month can mean the animal was absent, or that nobody was looking.
A grid cell is a square of the map, not a sighting: 9 squares of 10 km carry records for Scarlet Macaw in and around Monteverde, and the 318 records behind them were collected by other people and published openly. Nothing here counts animals, and a place with more records is not always a place with more animals.
A meter of parrot in primary colors, flying in committed pairs down the Pacific coast: the scarlet macaw is Costa Rica's most visible conservation comeback. Shot and trapped almost out of the country by the 1990s, protected populations around Carara and the Osa Peninsula have rebuilt into the thousands, and today the daily commute between mangrove roosts and beach almond trees is practically scheduled traffic. Macaws pair for what passes for life among birds that can live half a century, and the pair flies wingtip to wingtip, screeching conversationally, visible from a kilometer away. Their harsh voices are the price of the plumage; nobody has ever accused a macaw of subtlety.
Never buy caged macaws or feathers, and give nest trees a wide berth in breeding season; a flushed pair can lose the cavity to competitors.