A pair of Suffolk contractors had their feathers ruffled when they stumbled across an exotic blue and gold macaw in a field of winter wheat last week.

Mark Wells and Andrew Barber were busy combining at Chevington Hall Farm, just outside Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, when they spotted the brightly-coloured bird in the crop.

The contractors from GEO E Gittus & Sons caught the macaw – a type of long-tailed parrot – and put him in the cab, hoping they might be able to reunite the bird with its owners when they returned home.

Macaws are native to forests and woodlands in Central and South America, but this one seemed right at home on English arable soils, clamping his beak around the steering wheel to help out with the harvest.

“He appeared to be a natural operator,” said Mark’s wife Georgie, who looked after the bird for the weekend.

“We believe he had got lost and had flown quite a distance and therefore was feeding off the crop,” she added.

A trip to the vets on Monday revealed that the bird – unofficially named “Rio” by Mark and Georgie’s children – wasn’t microchipped, so he was passed on to a parrot rehoming service. As far as the family know, the bird has now been successfully rehomed.

And if that wasn’t the happy ending you were hoping for, you might be interested to know that the crop was Crusoe winter wheat, and it yielded a very respectable 10.5t/ha.