Imagine these 3 foot long birds flying around in the rafters, trying to steal your food, and making a racket so loud you can't hear yourself think! These are the Scarlet Macaw's, one of the real stars of the Tambopata Research Center. The subject of a very extensive project, this "chico" or chick now 12 years old was hand fed by scientists and now comes around all the time. Breeding with the native population, this bird and several other's like it now bring their offspring around.
They are beautiful, and of the several that came around, had distinct personalities.
This one was very tame, and to keep it out of our lunch, (they would literally swoop down the table), the staff would feed it something like this banana to keep it occupied.
While Rudy looks like he is at least tolerating the visit at this time, later he was pretty frustruated when he found that one had eaten the binding off his new Peru bird guide. As our guide, you can imagine that his field guide is like a bible to the pastor!
We spent a lot of time at Tambopata in the dense understory. Often on these narrow trails with our guides calling in small skulkers. Many of these small understory birds are marked in such a way as to make them extremely hard to see. That coupled with not much light makes for few good pictures.
These trees are incredibly big and the root systems are gigantic. Here is one with our local guide Rudolpho standing next to it. It probably soars to 150 feet or so.
One of the hardest things about birding the Amazon basin is the fact that you can't sit down, or lean up against anything. Mostly this is because of all the insects (including spider, ants, beetles etc.), but as you can see in this picture, even the trunks of the trees themselves sometimes have their own protection. Once I leaned up against a tree for just a few seconds, and had hundreds of ant bites to show for it!
The vines are also incredible. Some are very large such as this one that curved around me and continued on into the forest. The cartoons of monkeys (and probably people) swinging on these things has it's roots in truth. We saw a lot of monkeys swinging through the trees!
One of the fun things is the colorful beetles. Rudy knew enough to tell us which of these we could safely pick up and which ones to shy away from. This one was in a nest in the ground with several others and made the mistake of poking it's head out as I came by.
At night it was much easier to find the spiders, as we could see the eyeshine with our flashlights. We also saw cat and monkey eyes, but they would usually be gone by the time we got a flashlight on them.
Among the creatures that we were very careful not to touch, rile up or allow to follow us are the scorpions.
Once in a while we got lucky and got a bird in good enough light to get pictures. This Yellow Rumped Cacique (about 11 inches) builds a huge basket nest which you will often see grouped with dozens of others in high in the trees.
The butterflies are really pretty, and sometimes very hard to see. If this one had not landed on Ned's arm, it would have been nearly invisible against the leaves of the forest floor. Caligo idomeneus. (That is the scientific name, cool huh!)
I have already mentioned the sound of the Howler Monkeys, but to see them is really a trip. This male definitely thought he was something, and led his troop across in front of us only after making sure that we were not threating. There were probably about 20 of them.
Check out this video on youtube of a Howler.
It was especially fun to watch the momma's carry their babies across the branches. Sometimes they were eating as they rode. I love the girl talking to them!
One of the sounds they make is a kind of barking sound. In this youtube video is a good example of what we were hearing.
We also saw a bunch of snakes. Many were small, but some were huge and while not inclined to move fast definitely to be respected.
The poison dart frogs came in a bunch of colors.
Finally in this post I wanted to put in one of my own video's. One morning we were hearing the Screaming Piha all morning. Several individuals were calling to each other over and over. I finally got one in my camera (hard since this one is a skulker), but I only got it to do one scream for me. Looks like he winds up from his toes! Little Brown Job about 10 inches.
3 comments:
I really like the compositions of the second photo of the scarlet mackaw and the photo of the snake.
These are some fun ones. I think I would be pretty upset too if a bird ate my bird book.
wowzers, these are great pictures, I shouldn't sound surprised, but wowzers. I think you should tone down on touching dangerous bugs, though. just a thought.
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