The great green macaw (Ara ambiguus), also known as Buffon's macaw or the great military macaw, is a critically endangered Central and South America parrot found in Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador. Two allopatric subspecies are recognized; the nominate subspecies, Ara ambiguus ssp. ambiguus, occurs from Honduras to Colombia, while Ara ambiguus ssp. guayaquilensis appears to be endemic to remnants of dry forests on the southern Pacific coast of Ecuador. The nominate subspecies lives in the canopy of wet tropical forests and in Costa Rica is usually associated with the almendro tree, Dipteryx oleifera.
The great green macaw belongs to the genus Ara, which includes other large parrots, such as the scarlet macaw, the military macaw, and the blue-and-yellow macaw.
The great green macaw lives in tropical forests in the Atlantic wet lowlands of Central America from Honduras to Panama and Colombia, and in South America in the Pacific coastal lowlands in Panama, Colombia and western Ecuador, where they also occur in deciduous (seasonal), dry tropical forests. In Colombia, where both species occur, it prefers more humid woodlands than the closely related military macaw. The habitat where it breeds in Costa Rica is practically non-seasonal, evergreen rainforest, with rain some ten months of the year, a precipitation of 1,500 to 3,500 mm a year, and an average temperature of 27 °C throughout the year.[24] In Costa Rica the habitats where great green macaws occur during breeding season is dominated by the almendro (Dipteryx oleifera) and Pentaclethra macroloba, with secondarily raffia palms (Raphia spp.) dominated wetlands. It is usually observed below 600 m above sea level in Costa Rica during the breeding season, but disperses to higher elevations to 1000 m after breeding, and can be seen as high as 1500 m in southern Panama.
