This doesn't come as too much of a surprise. I'm speaking here as a guy who works at petco in the summertime. Big bird sales suck, and they suck bad. That might be because we were a really good store (relative to other petcos in the nation) and actually did a good job of communicating the needs of these animals. Anyway, we frequently lost money on macaws and african greys, simpley because they sat in the store for a long time and didn't get sold. Often, they wound up bonding to one of the specialists. When that happened, there was nothing to do but for the specialist to buy it for herself. At a discount.
No, the real money in the pet business is in supplies. We don't sell dogs and cats, we sell supplies. Thats one of the reasons we do adoption days. We don't get any of the bad karma from selling mill bred dogs, and we get all the money of "oh, you just adopted a puppy? well here, you need to buy a bowl and premium food and a dozen odd toys and . . . "
I hope this doesn't mean they stopped selling conures though. Those birds are just as loud and needy as the macaws, but in my experience had more personality and manners. Of course, nothing beats a cockatoo for looks and love to give, but they're so expensive. At $500, I might actually get a conure one day.