Blu

Blu is the main protagonist of Rio. He is the last male blue macaw to ever exist since Marcel and the smugglers he leads made the rest of them go extinct. For this, he was raised by a girl named Linda in Moose Lake, Minnesota, for fifteen years. While he is able to do stunts as transportation (as revealed on a set of rings and on a hut in the jungle), drink from a cup, dunk things, read, use a pencil, and has the intelligence of a human, he cannot fly. It isn't until the end that he is actually a hero, nor is it until then that he has gained his flight.

Plot
Blu is first shown as a newborn chick, dancing along to the first half of "Real in Rio". He then begins trying to fly as the other birds are being smuggled, but then falls from the tree. He eventually gets captured on a plane too. As a truck in snowy Minnesota is being driven with them, the door to the back of the truck opens and the crate with the blue macaw chick inside it falls out. He is then found by a juvenile Linda Gunderson who raises him and names him Blu (full name: Tyler Blu Gunderson). She threw him birthday parties of his own, took him to a spelling bee, and even to her high school promenade. He then begins their daily routine at Linda's home and business place, Blu Macaw Book Store. He gets out a box of cereal and helps her make toast. He is then tricked into taking his vitamins, which he knows is good for him (as Linda uses the cereal box to get him to open his mouth). He then takes a toy police car and slides down the banister onto Linda's shoulder. He then opens the book store. Linda gives him some hot chocolate with marshmallows and chocolate chip cookies (Factual error: Chocolate is toxic for macaws). He is then ridiculed by two Canda Geese named Alice and Chloe who are both then scared off by an ornothologist named Tulio Monteiro. Tulio tells Linda that Blu is special; in fact, he is the last male of his kind. Tulio invites Linda and Blu to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to meet with a recently-discovered female named Jewel. Tulio tells her that it could be their last chance and that if they don't do it, his whole species will go extinct. Linda comforts Blu, as even she doesn't want to be doing this, but she wanted the species to be saved.

On the way to Tulio's aviary, Blu is met by a red-crested cardinal named Pedro and a yellow canary named Nico, one of whom mistakes sunscreen (that Linda had put on Blu's beak) for pigeon doo-doo. They give him advice on how to interact with a girl. Blu then meets a "sick" Cockatoo named Nigel and tells him to get well soon, only to be glanced at sinisterly. He is then put in a cage where a Portuguese-speaking Jewel is. She attacks him and then realizes he is an "American". When Jewel asks him if he is ready (to escape), he thinks she meant to ask if he was ready to kiss, so he tries, much to her dismay. Tulio then turns on Lionel Richie's Academy-Award winning song "Say You, Say Me" (from "White Nights"), but Jewel attacks him, and Tulio and Linda leave them alone, assuming it worked on getting them to mate. Moments later, after Nigel attacks Sylvio, he lets an impoverished orphan named Fernando in the aviary to capture Blu and Jewel. As they are being carried to a trio of poachers, the two birds play dead. As soon as Marcel, the head smuggler, finds out the birds are "dead", Jewel bites him and flies, but is later angry that Blu didn't follow him and doesn't know why. Blu and Jewel then get their feet chained up together by Marcel. They are then locked up with other captive birds. Much later, as Jewel is trying to get out, Blu unlocks it. It embarrasses him and Jewel for her to find out he can't fly. They then run away from Nigel and the poachers until they enter the jungle, much to Blu's dismay. He dislikes it because of the food chain, such as when a firefly is eaten by a frog, which is eaten by a snake, which Jewel says is the reason birds stay in the trees, and not on the ground. Blu picks a man-made hut, which he uses tricks to "drag her butt up". He denies the need for flying, but then is told that flying is freedom and not having to rely on anyone else. He then gets some sleep.

The next morning, Blu and Jewel both attempt to break the chain using a pulley, a rope and a boulder, but it doesn't work. They are then attacked by juvenile toucans, and then meet their father Rafael. It isn't until after his mate, Eva, allows him to take them to his friend Luiz, that Blu reveals that he cannot fly. On their way, Rafael tries to teach him to fly, by hinting out that flying is what you feel in your heart. They attempt, only to have a fall, but fortunately, they land on a hang glider. As Blu attempts to fly (but doesn't feel the rhythm in his heart), he and Jewel fall, only to land on another glider, and for Blu to accidentally get his beak through another. They then keep falling and have accidents on the beach. They then catch a truck full of guavas.

On the way, the two birds go to a samba club, where they party (as a distraction while waiting for the next trolley to Luiz's garage, as Luiz himself had already taken the previous one), only to be interrupted by marmosets, who are trying to get Blu and Jewel to come with them under Nigel's orders. They fight with the other birds on their side against the monkeys. The Roseate spoon-bill bird, Kipo (though his name isn't revealed in any dialogue or the captions, except as "Bird" in the latter), gives the two a lift and puts them onto a trolley when they find it (though a chain of the monkeys stops them, and Nico has to use his bottle-cap hat as a boomerang to hit the one monkey grabbing the macaws), with Rafael, Nico and Pedro following.

Later, riding on the trolley, when Rafael tells him to tell Jewel she has beautiful eyes, simply because he didn't know that the "You have beautiful eyes" was just a quote he should tell Jewel, he tells her that he (Blu) has beautiful eyes. This doesn't work well on Jewel. When Rafael tells him what he meant, Blu attempts to say it. Then he attempts to tell her how he feels (as Rafael told him), only to choke on a blossom petal and spoil the moment.

Later, after Blu and Jewel are in Luiz's garage (after finding out he is a drooly bulldog, something Jewel has against dogs), he attempts to cut the chain using a buzz saw, only for things to go wrong. However, when Luiz catches the chain in his mouth, drool lubricates over the macaws' feet, unchaining them. Blu is thrilled, but is upset that they are now parting. When Rafael tells the macaws to be completely honest with each other, Blu gets into an argument, and even claims to hate samba, much to the others' dismay (especially the sorrow of Nico). He gets angry and leaves.

As Jewel is leaving in tears, Blu gets upset when Rafael "follows him" (Because he isn't taking the direction to the biggest of all parties in the world known as Carnival). Blu finds out that although Rafael does love carnival, he is going home instead because he loves his family more, a choice he made not in his head, but in his heart. Nico and Pedro then warn Blu of Nigel abducting Jewel and taking her to the parade. The male heroes set off to rescue Jewel at Carnival, only to get captured themselves (by Nigel).

Still in the smugglers' plane, Blu hooks a bungie cord to the top of the cage he is in with one end, and hooks the other end to a fire extinguisher. He bumps the cage until it opens. He then frees Jewel, and they free the other birds, and he opens the shaft. Hesitant, he doesn't fly with Jewel, who then encourages him that they'll figure it out together. Nigel then catches Blu by the throat, much to Jewel's anger. After Nigel causes a cage to fall on Jewel's wing (taking away her ability to fly), Blu angrily puts his pain and fears aside and hooks the fire extinguisher to Nigel's leg and blasts him out, causing him to then get his feathers plucked off. Blu attempts to save Jewel, but first, he has to jump off because he couldn't keep her from falling. As he is jumping off the plane, he remembers why he feared flying: he fell out of his tree when he was a chick. He catches Jewel, who tells him he is crazy. He tells her he won't let her go and reminds her that they are "chained-to-each-other birds" (though their chain is not on anymore). Jewel then kisses him, awakening the rhythm of his heart and gaining his ability to fly, much to the joy of Jewel, and at last, of Linda (once Fernando, having been a double agent, points it out). He tells Linda and Tulio that Jewel's wing is injured. Once Tulio offers to let him see her wing, he then encourages her to trust him to heal her.

And Tulio did heal her wing, and he, Linda and Fernando organize a sanctuary to protect the jungle from smugglers. Finally, now both macaws are able to fly, and they both raise three chicks of their own, celebrating with their bird friends, and all five blue macaws fly with Nico, Pedro, Linda and Tulio (the latter two are hang-gliding), and (unawaredly) Luiz.