Long before Europeans arrived in the Americas there was a large bird which foraged in the grassy marshlands and meadows, near the forests of the Alagoas and Pernambuco states of Brazil. The bird was beautiful, about the size of a small turkey. It had bluish black feathers with a big thick red beak. The feathers on the top of it's head formed a crest which was shown at times of fear or nervousness. The crest made it the king of the birds in that restricted forest area above the San Francisco river.
It was called Mitu by the native people in Brazil, today, we call it the Alagoas Curassow. It's call was short and low, almost like a cough, which made it hard to be heard and located. The bird was described by the German naturalist Georg Marcgraf in his book Historia Naturalis Brasiliae, published in Latin in 1648, the first important scientific work in Brazil. Marcgraf was brought to Brazil by Prince Mauritz von Nassau (1604-1679) who was Governor-general of the Dutch colony in Pernambuco. After being described by Marcgraf the Mitu Mitu seems to have dropped out of sight for about 300 years, putting in doubt the identification made by the scientist. In fact, the bird was probably hiding, since it is one of the most timid birds in the Brazilian fauna. In 1951 a Brazilian ornithologist, Olivério Pinto, rediscovered Mitu Mitu hiding in the forests of Alagoas.
Its habitat was the region of the Atlantic forest just to the north of the San Francisco river, and the Atlantic forest was being destroyed from the time of the first European colonizers in 1500. They felled the Brazilwood trees (Caesalpinia echinata) and shipped them back to Europe to extract the red dye. In their place they started planting sugarcane, which was brought to the new world by Columbus. The sugarcane is still advancing and the Brazilwood, which is a very slow growing tree, is almost as rare as the Alagoas Curassow, which is officially extinct in the wild. The vast forests that were the kingdom of the Mitu mitu are also no longer to be found, except in small patches, surrounded by the sugar fields.
Mitu mitu used to forage in the grass and the humid meadows close to small brooks, eating the local fruit like the araça, which is a type of guava (Psidium araca Raddi) called Brazilian guava in California, Pitanga (Eugenia uniflora) called Suriname cherry, and mangaba the fruit of Hancornia speciosa. They had an abundance of fruits, insects, seeds, grasses, and herbs to feed themselves and their chicks, but then the sugarcane, an alien plant, was introduced and it occupied the place of the bushes and fruit trees that took millions of years to develop.
The Mitu mitu had a reclusive behavior; it hid during the hot hours of the day in the shade of the trees, usually sitting on a branch. In spite of being a big bird they could fly to the top of the trees for protection if they felt at risk. They went down to the ground to look for food, spending lots of time foraging during the first hours of the morning and later in the last hours until dark, times when they were unlikely to be spotted.
They cannot be heard easily unless one comes very close, their call is very low, making it difficult to locate them even though they spend a good deal of time on the ground.
The forest provided them with all they needed to survive, raise their chicks and be happy, along with so many other avian species which made the forest not just a place where it was spring all year long, since there are always trees in bloom, but also a place where one could hear bird songs and calls at all hours, a permanent nature show.
The forest nowadays is almost gone, and the Mitu mitu has disappeared, leaving some to be almost certain the big bird has become extinct. However, there are a few remaining patches of the forest, on the hill tops and in some small lowland areas, like small islands on a large green desert of sugarcane. In the small patches of forest of these two states, Alagoas and Pernambuco, where there are a large number of unique bird, mammal and plant species, the Alagoas curassow may still cling on. Against all odds I hope that somewhere in one of those small portions of the Atlantic forest they may be still there, hiding, until another Marcgraf or Silvério Pinto, in the name of all true lovers of nature, will find it again, hiding during the hot midday hours and coming into the open meadows in the last hours of the day.
