The clay lick – a meeting place?

The orange glow in the clouds on the horizon promised a beautiful view from the tower at Posada. As the clouds slowly turned from grey to orange, tinged to red, the colours in turn reflected from the low lying mist through which emerged the crowns of the trees below. A single “kah” alerted me to the first pair of Mealy parrots heading in from the east towards the clay lick to the north-west. As the glowing embers of the clouds started to fade, more pairs of Mealy parrots and groups of Blue-headed parrots announced their arrival to the area of the clay lick, greeting each other like long lost friends.

The fantastic colours of a party of Scarlet macaws were made all the brighter by the early morning sun, now a glowing ball on the horizon. In the distance, rasping and raucous calls heralded the advance of eight Blue-and-yellow macaws spread out across the horizon, buoyed on lightly beating wings that gave the impression they were skipping and dancing through the air, and I couldn’t help smiling in regret as they passed within meters from me that my camera had no batteries.

Still, more time for me to focus on the comings and goings of the birds around me. A group of four Black-capped parakeets called only once to announce their arrival at a Cecropia tree next to the tower, whose young fruits were just emerging. Their cautious antics amusing, as the hung upside down from the fruit and occasionally peered up at me in the tower to make sure I really wasn’t a Harpy Eagle.

A subtle flurry of beating wings distracted me from the feeding parakeets. A lone Mealy parrot was flying towards me from the direction of the sunrise. Instead of flying on, in the direction of the clay licks, it perched in a nearby tree on some open branches. He eyed me cautiously for a moment, before relaxing and waddling over to an exposed branch. There he bit off what seemed to me a dry and unpalatable twig. Over the course of a minute or so chewed it to bits – he must have needed some fibre. All the while he seemed to be watching the other pairs of parrots streaming towards the clay lick. Unlike other pairs and groups of parrots perched further off, he was silent.

On the horizon to the east, a distant growling drew my attention to a line of parrots stretched out as far as I could see. A flock of over a hundred Mealy parrots were heading towards us. Surely the lone parrot would join this multitude on the way to the clay lick? I watched in awe as parrots streamed past me on steady wing beats, the closely bonded pairs distinguishable even amongst such a great number of parrots. No, my companion stood firm, head slightly inclined to one side, as though watching for something.

As the flock of parrot disappeared in the trees in the distance close to the clay lick, I hardly noticed another Mealy parrot call from the symphony of sound going on around me. But my alert companion was attentive, and suddenly took flight to the south, his sudden departure away from the clay lick taking me by surprise. Then I noticed his flight path was taking him to intersect with a straggling group of three parrots, a pair followed by a single parrot a few meters behind. The lead pair had been calling, and I watched them fly up and perch in a giant emergent Umbrella tree. My companion perched too, and I noticed now that he was not silhouetted against the bright early morning sun that he was extremely handsome, with a range of greens from yellow to a polished racing car green, and all feathers impeccably in order. It was then I realised his game as the straggler caught up with the perched birds, who continued to call. This bachelor parrot was looking for a more suitable companion than a birdwatcher on a tower.

What I presumed to be the parents took off in the direction of the clay lick, but what I can only imagine to be their flustered daughter did not stick around for long and after a few awkward moments took off after them. The bachelor did not follow. After a minute or two the parents with their daughter flew past again, as if to lead their daughter back to the handsome bachelor. I noticed that the daughter had some feathers on her wing missing and a few ruffled feathers. Maybe not the catch of the season and perhaps the reason the bachelor had not followed? Even parrots have their standards.

As the morning moved slowly on, the bachelor remained at his new post, but no more single parrots flew within view of his lookout. Eventually the pairs of parrots finished feeding at the clay lick and started to stream back past on their way to roosts or favoured feeding grounds. I had to leave my post, but by this time the bachelor had drifted off to some trees further away and was out of sight, perhaps also seeking shelter from the increasing heat of the Amazon sun.

On my next visit to the tower a few days later I was not joined by the bachelor. But as I watched the early morning traffic of parrots to the clay lick, eventually I did see a pair that flew very close to the tower, consisting of one extremely handsome parrot with a cute partner flying at his wingtips. They continued on their way, murmuring lovingly to each other on the way to the clay lick and all the other happy couples.

Although I have only been back in the forest for 2 weeks, I have been rewarded with some fantastic sightings, despite spending a lot of time with project administration, training and volunteer orientation. On one of the first transects I did at Refugio Amazonas, with an early start of 03:00am, a blonde Tamandua crossed my path on its way through the forest in search of termites. On the way back along the transect, at one point I was trying to spot Black-capped parakeets in a tree, when I heard a rustling noise and spotted something black moving along a fallen tree trunk. As it got closer I made out the blonde head and weasel shape of a Tayra, moving through the dead branches towards me as agile as a Spider monkey through the tree tops. Only when it got to within about 5 meters of me did it realise I was in its way, at which stage it did a handbreak turn to move off in a different direction, looking over its shoulder occasionally to see if I was in pursuit.

The next day I awoke relatively late - around 6:00am. The researcher hut where I was staying has no running water ablutions, so as I was enjoying the golden early morning sunlight in the bushes nearby, I could hear what sounded like large cecropia leaves falling repeatedly through the trees. Wondering what was going on, I started moving towards the source of the sound. Instead of leaves falling, I could see sand being hurled up in an arc and falling onto the dry Cecropia leaves. A Giant Armadillo was busy attacking an underground termite nest. I carefully retreated to get my camera, and was able to get really close, so close I could see the Tabanid flies sucking blood from its exposed back. As I waited patiently for it to come out, a guide started walking towards me, and cracked some leaves, at which stage the Armadillo withdrew from the hole it had made and sniffed the air to see who was disturbing his breakfast. They really are massive creatures, and seeing how exposed he had been, it is not hard to figure our why they are now classified as endangered…. This being only the second individual I have ever seen. Eventually he lumbered off into the forest in search for a more peaceful meal.

Tonight as I was coming back from a transect I reached an intersection. " Which trail should I choose?" I thought to myself, " The quicker path more travelled or the longer path less travelled?" I chose the longer path, a great decision. After watching 4 night monkeys crossing the trail overheard, I started heading quickly back to camp, worried that my torch would not last the distance. As I came around one of the many twists in the trail, I halted at the sight of a large body in the trail in front of me. The Jaguar hunkered down like a scared cat, peering over its shoulder at me trying to make out the shape behind the bright light. In the two heartbeats that followed I wondered if I would need my machete to defend myself, but the large cat decided to simply keep moving down the path in front of me and away into the forest. By the time I reached the next curve, it was not to be seen.

Am I just lucky? Is it the time of year? Or is ecotourism really having a positive impact on wildlife recovery along the Tambopata? You might forget on a jungle visit with the comforts of warm food and soft bar music that you are in a truly wild part of the world. But beyond the glow of the kerosene lamps is another world that moves parallel to ours, and our paths only occasionally cross. Remember that from the comforts of our comfortable bed next time you visit!

In July I was in Peru with a group of students from my University helping my supervisor with a field course on Neotropical ecology and monitoring techniques. It was a great time with various projects doing all sorts of things from transects to count butterflies, quadrats to count frogs, monitoring of the macaw clay licks and counting palms and trees. It was the first time that most of the students had been to South America, let alone a rainforest, and of course there was a fair amount of nervousness regarding the environment we would be spending the next two weeks in.

Our introductory walk set the tone of excitement for the weeks to come. Only 4 or 5 hundred meters from the lodge, while explaining features of the nutrient poor terra firme forests that we were walking through, I heard the characteristic low rumbling of a herd of white-lipped peccaries moving through the forest, the low toned individual grunts they make to stay in contact with each other becoming a joined chorus with a backbeat cracking from the crunching of hard palm nuts between their fearsome teeth. The noise raises the hair on the back of the necks of even the most experienced woodsmen. Knowing that the herd was moving in our direction, and caught between the feelings of responsibility I felt for the group of students and at the same time feeling a strong desire to share a sighting of one of the forests most iconic animals, I wondered what to do. The classic advice given to people with how to deal with a herd of peccaries is to climb about a meter off the ground, above the head height of the larger males that could potentially deliver a nasty bite. How to get all 8 people a view of the peccaries before the clapping alarm of hundreds of teeth was given to set hundreds of feet running in panic from whence they had come snuffling through the undergrowth?

I caught a glimpse of a fallen tree about 25 meters off the path in the direction that I could hear the herd approaching from. Quickly indicating that we should move off the path towards it we dodged between low branches, ropelike lianas, and spiny palm leaves to the fallen tree and lined up behind it. Expressions ranged from wide eyed excitement to tight-lipped nervousness. Stifled whispers where exchanged as we balanced on our heels, the task made more difficult as we were unable to use the fallen tree as support due to a column of army ants marching along the top. Slowly the grunts became more distinguishable from the background chorus. We could locate the sound of individuals cracking nuts but they were still hidden beyond the interwoven mantle of the small, green palmiche palms and other plants of the undergrowth. Then we caught sight of some of the palm tops jerking, violently - not from gusts of wind, but from squat bodies of the pigs pushing their way through the vegetation. From the broken shadows we caught our first glimpses of darker forms: a hoofed leg or a pale-bearded jaw tossing dead leaves aside in search of beetles, eggs or palm nuts that could be hidden beneath.

Not more than 30m from us one of the animals stopped and raised its snout in the air, a whiff of our insect-repelling presence carried faintly in the air. Like an invisible laser beam to a burglar alarm had been broken a sharp clacking of sharp teeth turned the herd’s grunting into a louder, almost communally pulsing growl. An individual crashed through the bushes, setting off an avalanche of bodies charging – but only for a short while as the source of the disturbance was not obviously clear to most of the herd. One peccary trotted more clearly into the open in front of us. The unnatural form of 8 heads then caught even his poor eyesight and as he stared straight at us the hair on his back raised, almost like a scared cat, but with little of the accompanying grace. His fast clacking of teeth, like a pole run rapidly along a wood pole fence, set the avalanche of bodies moving again to the sound of thundering hooves, the panicked barking from adults, and vomiting squeals from the youngsters.

A feeling of relief swept over me that another encounter with these potentially fearsome creatures had ended without me dangling from a trees, sharp teeth snapping at my heels. It still took my heart some time to resume its regular beat, the experience beats a rollercoaster ride anyday.

The excitement was not over yet.... we still had the bushmasters to deal with!

Encounters with Margays

Photo story by Alan Lee

A few weeks ago I was coming back from a late afternoon transect and decided to stop at the small clay lick close to Posada Amazonas to see if there was any activity. I waited there until after dark, but it was one of the quiet periods with nothing happening. Taking out my maglite, I proceeded to head back to the lodge. Shortly thereafter I picked up some brilliant yellow eyeshine from the undergrowth. Focusing the beam of my light, I made out the shape of a small spotted cat. I started to move closer, choosing each step very carefully to avoid the crunching of leaves and snapping of twigs. The cat knew that something was up, but of course could not make out my shape behind the brilliant beam of the light. It continued to sit just like a majestic domestic house cat, seated upright on its back legs with tail wrapped neatly around the front legs. A tail that long meant I was looking at a Margay, as the other option, the Ocelot, is larger with a shorter tail. The cat continued to lean from side to side, to spot what was behind the beam, until I was within four meters. I had never expected to get that close, and was cursing myself that my camera was packed away in my bag. I had to try. I placed the bag in front of me, and managed to unzip it – but know the cat was looking around, clearly nervous. As I reached in to get my camera, it turned and slunk off into the impenetrable vegetation, as rain started to beat a drum beat against the leaves overhead. A special moment.

A few days ago I was on an early morning walk to count parrots. I had just recorded some perched Yellow-crowned parrots and Mealy parrots, my mind was on other things as I wondered down the trail. I reached an open section of forest and the path stretched before me through the tall trees. It had rained the day before and the normally dry and cracking leaves surrendered quietly to the tread of my boots.

Suddenly, a dark form scampered up a tree while another darted off the path. Coatis - was my first impression as I was sure I had seen a banded tail, but as I stared at the frozen form silhouetted against the tree trunk I realised it didn't have a long nose. Tayras also climb trees and are found in pairs, but even as the thought crossed my mind the form that had shot off the path emerged again from the low lying ferns. A small spotted cat with golden skin and dark streaks. A Margay.

I too stayed frozen where I was, not daring to move as the golden eyes stared at me, body tensed and ready to run. I realised, as I watched the other cat climb further into the thin tree, that the cat on the trail was the mother and she had come back for her almost full grown cub. She continued to stare at me, I continued to resist the need to wave away mosquitoes that buzzed loudly in my ear. After at least two full minutes she finally put her head down to sniff the ground and I used the opportunity to lift my binoculars to fully admire the beautiful streaks on the mother cat, the cub by this stage was hidden in the leaves about five meters from the ground. The mother looked up again, and I felt like I was melting into her huge dark eyes.

She relaxed again and started moving up the path away from me to the tree the cub was in. I used the opportunity to drop to the ground and swing my bag off my back – my camera was in there and it had been a long time since I had taken a photo of a Margay. Of course I had attracted the attention of the mother again, whose head I could just see above the ferns. I unzipped my bag, flinching at the noise, and the subsequent fumbling of my efforts to extract my camera from my dry bag. At last the camera was free and on and I had muffled the popping of the flash. I slowly stood up, expecting the cat to flee at any second. She remained still, looking over her back towards me, and I lit up the twilight of the subcanopy with the flash of my first shot. She didn't move. The cub was now visible on a branch over the trail, also staring at me from between the leaves. At this stage the mother started to move off the trail. I moved slowly forward, choosing each step carefully, slowly. Expecting the mother to run off, I focused on the cub, until I realised that she was sitting in the vegetation less than ten meters from me. Again, she did not react as I took more photos, trying to get a view between the vegetation.

After a while, she gave a soft and gentle mew, calling her cub, who was now perched on an open branch in the tree less than four meters from me. I sat down on the path and watched and waited. The mother continued to call from time to time, and eventually, after feelings its way around the branch the cub started to come headfirst down the tree, stopping to look at me to make sure I was still no threat. She jumped the final meter onto the path and trotted away a few meters. The mother started to move towards her, and I braced for a mother and cub reunited shot, but it was not to be. Obscured by the vegetation, the mother turned away and the cub, with a final look over her shoulder at me jumped like a kitten into the vegetation, and together they made there way slowly off into the forest leaving me with a buzzing feeling – as though I had just had a deep and profound conversation with someone I was really in love with.

By Alice Chang and Kathy Schroer

The colpa is the greatest, I just have to say
I almost don´t want to leave at the end of a hot day.

Nest observation can sometimes be a bore,
But Hugo I and Hugo II will soon be out the door.

Richard, Jhin, and Fino take us walking through the forest,
They point out all the animals, for us who are the tourists.

Jhin found the ocelot, Fino found the potoo,
And Richard found the toad and the spider, too.

Our heroes are the climbing volunteers,
Amazon women who have no fears.

Adrian is their leader, who also has no fear,
Now it is also true that he has no beard.

Sally is the beauty who keeps it all together,
Rain or shine, shine or rain, whatever is the weather.

Maximo, Maximo, Maximo, you´re so cute,
You do this, you do that, you do it all to boot.

Pachanga is our server, the kitchen is superfine,
The food couldn´t be better, even with no wine.

Alan tried to teach us, he tried with all his might,
We hope that we have learned it, we hope we did it right.

Despite the boot sucking mud, rain, and roaches, we made it through, so,
The whole wonderful experience was ricissississimo!

Of Percy Nunez and tropical botany

The last few days I have been honoured to have been in the company of one of Peru’s most sought after botanists, Percy Nunez. Percy’s love of plants started early but was nurtured under the eye of Alwyn Gentry, who wrote the most comprehensive account of the flora of the Neotropics to date. Percy has also worked with most of the big names from the region, including doing one of the first macaw and parrot diet studies under the tutelage of Charlie Munn in Manu. The results were published in a one off publication of Charlie’s the Parrot Newsletter, and was one of the first major insights to the breadth of parrot diet across the region. Since then Percy has collaborated with John Terborgh in Cocha Cashu in various botanical studies, and more recently with Nigel Pitman of the Amazonian Conservation Association on the Rio Los Amigos.

And surprisingly enough, Percy’s role in the current study along the Tambopata is yet again to identify trees and plants. The focus of my studies for this year are to determine foraging patterns of parrots across the seasons. For the past several years we have been monitoring hundreds of marked trees every month to see what patterns of fruit and food availability has been in the region. But we had little information as to what those species were due to the limited literature on Peru’s trees. Thanks to Percy’s help that has been sponsored by the Chester Zoo, UK, we are now well on our way to establishing a baseline of trees and plants that are available for macaws and parrots to choose from. In addition, we have also been able to identify 30 odd species that have been recorded as parrot food for this month. That out of a possible 18 000 plant species in Peru. Percy’s estimate is that there are at least 1200 species of trees at our study site, an intimidating number and one that really brings home the lesson of how diverse this special part of the planet is.

With most of the trees we have marked being over 20 meters tall and with their leaves hidden amongst the canopy of adjacent trees and shrouded in tangling lianas, species identification in the tropics is of course a very tricky job. I was under the impression that a quick glance at the bark and the canopy would reveal a species secrets, but such is not the case. Many families have deceptively similar leaves, and the bark is hidden by moss and lichen. One of the clues that we have to use is provided by make an incision into the tree to see if there is sap. Many several families have distinctive sap – “café con leche” (coffee with milk) or bright yellow, and a range of trees have sticky white sap. Surprisingly, smell can also be a great help in narrowing down the options available – the Annonaceae (custard apple family) smells sweetly almost of pineapple, and some smell of incense. Sometimes that can be the clue that is needed where all that is then needed is confirmation from amongst the fallen leaves in the leaf litter. However, sometimes only a fresh leaf will do, and most of the time those are well out of reach. But Percy has learnt a clever trick from working with the Machiguenga Indians of Manu. With a simple sling shot and a fell well aimed pebbles into the canopy, a leaf or branch can be dislodged and then used for the final identification. .

As of yet we have not yet managed to find Percy a species he has not been able to get to at least genus level. I am waiting for the day when we find one that has escaped the lists he has compiled for several of the lodges across the region – a new tick for this expert will be a rare event indeed. So next time you are on a forest trail, bear in mind that the seemingly indistinguishable walls of green foliage around hold more than 10 times the number of species of tree compared to the number of birds in the region, and potentially some of those species holds the cure to some of our most challenging diseases of today. Plants are special organisms indeed and a world of wonder unto themselves.

It has been a long time since I have spent Christmas in the capital of Madre-de-Dios, Puerto Maldonado. The last time would have been in 2003 when I was helping set up Project Fauna Forever run by Chris Kirkby of the Tambopata Reserve Society. At the time I stayed in a house owned by Conservation International on the outside of town, and on the day hosted friends from town and then went to bed early to the sound of night monkeys jumping in the trees and the far away backbeat from Cabana Tropical. So, I was unaware of how festivities are actually celebrated in the town itself. Well, firstly, Christmas decorations are becoming a big thing here. The flashing lights are not yet quite on the scale of those that will be seen on many US or UK houses, but the main plaza de armas definitely rivals them. And nativity scenes are a big thing. They are in most establishments from the hotel, to the hospital, to small shops and my wife and I even stumbled across a very elaborate one on the edge of town overlooking the confluence of the Madre-de-Dios river and Tambopata River. Christmas carols don’t seem to be a big thing – except for the musical Christmas lights, which I have to say are unbearable as they tonelessly beat out the same melody over and over and over again. Sometimes when several light sets have been set up each one will be rivaling the other with its own tune, a screeching riot. That aside, they can be turned off – and we set about doing it to everyone we came across. No-one seemed to notice, we weren’t too sure if people just didn’t realize that there was an off function for the lights, or if there is just so much ambient noise in this town that one less source simply goes unnoticed.

So, back to the good things about Christmas here. Personally, I love Paneton, that soft Italian fruit cake. I could eat kilograms of the fluffy, colourful cake – one just has to be sure one is allowed to ingest all the E chemicals that come with it. Turkey and hot chocolate are traditional, we had a truck load of turkeys pass us as we came into town after a trip out down the road to spot birds, and then watched people forming long queues at some of the shops selling them. My wife and I spent a quiet evening together, and had just finished watching Forrest Gump and turned in when all of a sudden we were exposed to a slightly more surprising element to the Christmas festivities as celebrated in Peru. Well, it sounded like we were under attack from Bolivia – at the stroke of midnight there was an incredibly well synchronized setting off of fireworks. Realising that sleep would be impossible, we ascended to the roof of our hotel to enjoy the spectacle. Unfortunately, in Peru the big colourful fireworks are the the fashion – rather emphasis seems to be on the noisier versions. Thunderflashes were going off with great abandon, and the town was full with smoke. We realized then that the crackers we had been hearing all day were not simply kids using up their supply for New Year, but were instead practicing for midnight of Christmas Eve. Thankfully, the call of hot chocolate and turkey means that the noise does not go on all night. And the following day we had our secret friend gifts delivered to us from the fellow project members who had celebrated the occasion upriver.

Well, that was just one of many things the volunteers had to worry about, more attention going to more topical tropical diseases like malaria, and the project’s own emphasis on the flesh eating disease Leishmaniasis, that occurs at TRC, and which maybe one in 10 longterm volunteers end up with.

We survived the field work, rain and intense heat, and the project was drawing to its final days, when Earthwatch volunteer Bill from Kentucky said he needed a minute to discuss something serious. I jokingly asked if he would be wanting back the desserts he had kindly been passing me at the end of each dinner, but he cut through my casual tone by saying that there appeared to be an injured bat in his room. Earlier on in the evening members of staff had been trying to frighten off a colony of brown fruit bats that had established the apex of the palmiche roof as an evening roost from which they would drop left over palm seeds and dung. The method employed is use of a sling shot that can in the right hands cause a bat severe damage. Concerned by Bill’s news, I quickly got up from the table and headed to room 2, where Bill had said he had kicked the bat while entering the room. Sure enough, on entering the curtained entrance, the bat was on the lower section of a small night stand, puffing, mouth open. Knowing that I should try and find a leather glove, but also wanting to get the bat out of the room as quickly as possible, I settled instead for a pillow slip in my room that I had removed a few nights previously for a nightwalk in the hope of bagging an interesting snake to bring back to the lodge. With the pillow slip carefully folded up I quickly enfolded the bat, which eagerly starting gnawing on a loose fold of the slip, but my hand was safely over its body and wings. Followed by Anja I headed down the lodge stairs to the path that lead into the forest. My plan was to release it onto a branch in a tree and then evaluate the bat’s status without the distraction of many onlookers. As I slowly loosened my grip on the bat with its head towards a branch, it slipped free of my grasp and sank its needle sharp teeth deep into finger and then took off into the night.

In the confusing torchlight of the night, I was unable to assess the damage done. I was not sure if the skin had been punctured, and held my finger tight until we reached the kerosene glow of the lodge. A dark red stain was spreading across the pillow slip. Squeezing my finger, blood gushed out of two very narrow slits in my finger. With no desire to stem the flow of blood, I squeezed harder, trying to cleanse the wound and push out anything that the bat may have injected into me. I then soaked my finger in alcohol, took an antibiotic and wondered nervously what the outcome would be. For some reason I was under the impression that the impacts of rabies would come on fast – probably from Hollywood stories, so when I awoke in the morning with no infection around the puncture marks and with no ill effects, I breathed a premature sigh of relief. Anja was not so sure and suggested I go to a doctor when we headed back to town, to which I uttered the necessary appeasements.

3 days later in town, with the volunteers safely on their way back home, I decided to look up Rabies on the internet. The very lengthy script on the subject on Wikipedia made for very unsettling reading. First of all, incubation period is anything from 2 weeks to 2 years. Second of all, once symptoms strike – including confusion, anxiety and initially an almost unquenchable thirst, death is almost 100% guaranteed as the rabies virus attacks the nervous system and there is no known cure. Also, one of the biggest carriers of the disease in the Neotropics are bats – and fruit bats were noted particularly as vectors. My throat was suddenly very dry and I felt light headed. Sudden fear wrapped its suffocating cloak around me – I feld anxious and disorientated, and thirsty. Was it the heat or something worse?

Anja and I decided that a trip to the hospital was very necessary. We arrived at the local Puerto Maldonado Hospital Santa Rosa, where Sunday admission seemed to be restricted, but we were let through after saying it was an “Emergencia” and headed for the sign carrying that name. A man in a blue intern-type uniform was sitting outside, and asked if he could help. “I’ve been bitten by bat….” I was cut off from saying I was worried about rabies by his explicative “Ah su madre”. We were led quickly to a consulting room, past people in wheelchairs, and seated down on a creaky white bed. Within minutes an entourage of people had accumulated, prodding, poking, asking questions, shoving thermometers into my armpits, taping my chest, measuring blood pressure and checking my pupil response. Were they going to slip me into a straight jacket immediately and lead me to a padded room? Instead, Anja and I had to navigate the confusing paper trail that gets issued in order to procure medication, which involves several rooms, doors, money exchanges and waiting in queues to be served by surly women in dark rooms. Were they deliberately trying to make me paranoid or was this just one of the symptoms I was beginning to experience?

Somewhere along the line I ended up on a stretcher, a needle making a direct hit into a vein in my left arm that resulted in Anja grimacing as blood spurted out before a saline drip was effectively connected, and I was being whisked away in a wheel chair down a passage way. I felt like a character from the madhouse in the movie 12 Monkeys. I was wheeled into a dark room with strange machines, and a grinning lady in a white cloak approached with a distinct limp. A blood sample was taken from my right arm and again we were off down a corridor and then another into a hall where a reassuring “Tropical medicine” sign hung over a doorway. I was wheeled past a small room where four bare-chested men lay passed out, into a room where a doctor and several nurses where attending a skeletal woman.

For the first time on the uncomfortable hospital bed the sounds could be heard beyond the hospital windows, which were wide open to attempt circulation of the air through the stifling corridors. The reassuring chizzing sound of a Grassquit and the droning of motorcycles now soothed my troubled mind. The entourage had been lost along the way. After a lengthy period of consultation, the old lady was left to rest and attention was turned to the new occupant of the room. The balding doctor with a short moustache and air of needing to look confident flipped through the chart that had been created along the way, before cursing the handwriting of the interns, and then realizing I was both awake and able to speak Spanish asked me for a summary of events. In a semi-authorative manner he then outlined the series of incrementally painful injections I would now have to receive into my stomach. More notes were made and the tropical disease specialist was summoned who lengthened my sentence to 2 injections into my buttocks, and 14 injections that would need to be administered once per day into my abdomen. This would only be done after the urine tests, more blood samples and sensitivity tests. Surely rabies was easier?

So it was I became a pincushion, after the drip, 2 blood samples, 2 injections in my ass and another in my stomach. However, there is no need to fear leaking to death as long as one eats the hospital lunch provided, which is basically just glue. Cold glue, with a vague chicken flavour. In all honesty, it was impressive that I had reached this state in less than an hour after walking through the hospital doors. But I now had to survive 6 hours of monitoring to make sure there were no adverse reactions to the serum I had received. In the uncomfortable bed, with the smell of urine wafting through the room from time to time and the incessant sound of musical Christmas lights stuck on a tinny version of “Santa claus is coming to town”, the threat of madness returned. Anja saved me later in the day by unplugging the Christmas lights, no-one seemed to notice. After the six hours were up the nurse did a round of the wards for the first time since admission. We thought we would finally be able to leave, but apparently getting out of a hospital is a lot harder work than getting in. We begged and pleaded, and were even given permission to go by an old matriarch going over piles of patient’s records – only problem was I was still attached by various tubes to the saline drip and we were a bit scared of just pulling the tube out in case the vein that had been punctured would spray blood everywhere. Needless to say that is almost what happened when the grouchy nurse decided that she had had enough of Anja’s sighing and my forlorn fiddling with the unfamiliar plumbing works that I had accumulated. But, finally we were free. Now it is just a matter of surviving town for 14 days and that series of painful injections.

Merry Christmas!

On the boat trip up to the lodge I had been told by the manager that the previous group had found a Bushmaster curled up not far from the lodge and that it been there for over a week. It had still been there when she had come down to town to meet us and organise our trip 5 days previously. I shivered with the idea of meeting another of the jungle’s most legendary denizens, even though I did not hold out much hope that it could still be around. That magical magnetism that makes me seek these out I cannot explain, but I could not wait to get to the lodge and see if I would be lucky enough to see the massive snake I have seen on so few occasions before. An ironic smile will cross my face sometimes when I think of the entertaining stories I have heard, the myths of the forest: pursuit by angry hissing animals, reminiscent of scenes from B-grade horror movies like Anaconda, that play on the ignorance of people and the innate fear that is bred into all of us from when we are old enough to hear stories. I once heard a guide say that if you encountered a Bushmaster that you should throw down a items of clothing to distract it from your trail. We don’t have dragons to fear anymore so we need something to replace them.

Heading back to the lodge after the exciting encounter with the peccaries, we came to the area where the manager had told me to be on the lookout – it had been 2m from the trail beneath some leaves. I briefed the 7 students with me on what to look for and we proceeded slowly forward along the path, one after the other. I slowly scanned each mound of leaves, looking for a patch of keeled skin, a jagged line of a pale diamond on a golden background. Suddenly from behind me one of the students in the middle of the group stammered “I – uh – is that a snake?”
I backtracked to where he was pointing to a depression surrounded by small plants, and sure enough, curled up and flattened was the deadly reptile we had been looking for. 4 of us had walked within a meter and a half of the snake without seeing it, despite our looking for it. It had not moved. Instead it lay, head low, relying on its camouflage to protect it from detection.
And so it remained, as we edged slowly closer, eventually surrounding it like a scene from the “Meerkat Manor” where the troop of Kalahari meerkats surround a Cape Cobra.
And still the Bushmaster did not move, so eventually we were brave enough to even clean away some of the dead leaves and vegetation from around it so that we could get better photos.

Curled up tightly, the pile of snake could not have measured more than 50cm across. The large head, maybe 8cm across, gave an indication that its total length was probably a lot longer. But, for a Bushmaster, it did not seem so big. Speculations that it could possibly be on eggs were dispelled when the next day we returned only to find the depression, where it had stayed so resolutely for 2 extended photo sessions by the 17 or so of us, deserted. No trace could be found in the vicinity – and would not have taken its eggs with it.

Almost 10 days later, towards the end of the trip, the students were busy with individual projects, measuring everything from flight patterns to ants nests. It was nearly time for dinner and I had been involved in idle conversation with someone about some of the highlights of the trip. 2 students came into the communal area and asked if we had heard some shouting. I wondered if they were joking as we had been discussing the mythological Chua-chakis a night or two before and swapping scary stories of ghosts that had been heard in the forest. But they were serious. I walked to the area to get my boots, and then heard suddenly and clearly my name being called in unison by a group of students. I slipped on my sandals and started running towards the shouting.
“Stop! There’s a snake!” screamed a voice from the darkness, but it was unnecessary – my torch light played over one of the biggest snakes I had ever seen that lay between me and the group of stranded students on the other side. Stretched diagonally to its fullest across the main trail, which at that point was at least 2 meters wide, was the massively thick body of a Bushmaster approaching 3 meters in length. It looked at me, as I moved slowly forward, approaching the tail end. The long, red tongue slid slowly from the closed mouth and fingered the air between us. More footsteps and beams of light from behind me heralded the approach of the rest of the students and the lodge manager. While I wondered best how to deal with the massive snake, the manager gave instructions to the stranded group on how best to navigate through the forest to the side of the path to safety. I decided that it was better to err on the side of caution, not willing to tempt fate so far from anywhere where assistance for a snakebite could be forthcoming. As expected, without being prodded or poked the giant slid little by little off the path and coiled up defensively under a pile of broken branches, body protected beneath the massive head with the flicking tongue. I decided a snake that size could only be a fully grown female. She would switch sides nervously as she tried to detect where danger lay. After a few photos we returned to the lodge for dinner, and about an hour later we went back to check if she was still there and I was not surprised to see that the defensive position she had occupied had been abandoned as she continued on her journey into the darkness, headed to some unknown destination in the vast expanses of forest that surrounded us.

Again, I felt really lucky to have had these two encounters with one of the big 5 of the jungle. The snakes at no time displayed any aggression, but at all times relied on their camouflage to avoid conflict with us. I also think that each time it was the snakes who were more scared by the experience, but like most things in the jungle, they just wanted to be left alone to get on with their lives, as they have been doing for millions of years, and I pray will continue to do so into the future.

Alan Lee

“Friiiooo, Friiioooo, Friiioooo” came the whistle of the hidden bird in the tangled vegetation beyond the canopy tower upon which I was standing. I peered up at the wispy clouds in the sky, remembering the story Jose Duran had told me two years before about how one always new a friaje, or cold front, was coming by the voices of certain birds that called just before.

“Hay uno que siempre dice “Friioo”” (“There is one that always says “Cold””) Jose had pointed out to me as I tried spotting the Rufous-capped Nunlet calling close to the lodge. And indeed, the inflection of the thin whistling call was perfect. A few days later the voices of the birds had dried up from the jungle and the incessant shrill of cicadas that make their songs 24 hours a day had stopped as the trees swayed to the echoes of an Antarctic winter pushed up along the Andes into the heart of the jungle.

This journey I had arrived this time to Piedras on the coat tails of a friaje 2 weeks before and the weather had been crisp and dry ever since, gradually growing warmer with each passing day. Being the middle of July, the middle of the southern hemisphere winter, I new we were due a cold front and mentally checked the warm clothes that still lay packed up at the bottom of my rucksack. That evening when I arrived back to the hammocks of swinging students, I mentioned to my supervisor: “A cold front is coming, I heard the Rufous-capped Nunlet calling today.”
“Nonsense!” said Stuart, who despite many field trips to Brazil, had yet to experience the full effects of a friaje and had become cynical as to their existence.

That night after dinner I lay on the wooden walkway leading from the communal rest area to our bungalows. I could make out the sinuous form of Scorpio through feathers of thin clouds, the pincers of the formation strangely punctuated by some brilliant, unknown planet. Every now and again the formation would fade as the sky lit up as the humidity of the Amazon sky carried the pulses of lightning from distant storms whose clouds we could not see and thunder we could not hear.

The calls of the macaws heading to the clay lick the next morning heralded a clear day, no signs of a cold front in the vicinity. Or was that a tone of urgency in their calls? Did they know something we did not as we set out for our last morning of data collection for the students’ individual projects? Last chance for a bite of clay before the grey rains prevented the jungle denizens from leaving the refuge of their roosts? Us humans continued with alacrity, counting ants, palms, moths and butterflies, our sense of what tomorrow’s weather brings blunted by the general ease of access to weather.com.

In the evening the Cuba Libres flowed faster than the waters of the Tambopata river, as we toasted the successful field trip and revelled in our experiences and joyous company. Music and dancing heated the night and only while navigating the open walkway to the bathrooms by the faint kerosene lamplight did I glance up at the sky for a glimpse of the scorpion’s starry tail in the sky to realise that an endless blanket of cloud had put the galaxy to bed.

In the morning a cold breeze blew my un-tucked mosquito net over my face and I unwrapped myself from the depths of my sleeping bag. No calling birds greeted me this morning, no crickets or insects or howler monkeys. Racing grey clouds dragged sheets of misty rain beneath them that must have born the invisible command “Silence!” that only the wildlife could see.

“Isn’t this wonderful? I wish the weather could be like this all the time!” said Stuart, as I pulled my beanie tighter over my ears to warm them against the damp cold that made me believe the thermometer with saying 12 degrees Celsius was lying. It definitely felt colder. After hugged good-byes to those staying behind and by the time I had carried my rucksack and equipment the 10 minute walk to the boat, it almost felt warm again. But as the outboard motor on the boat roared and raced us to speeds of up to 30km/h, the chill wind bit through our jumpers and fleeces, causing even Stuart to abandon the helm where he was seated to seek the warmth of his sleeping bag at the back of the boat. Having to act as tripulante, or lookout, I was not able to follow. I wrapped myself up in my poncho to protect myself from the drizzle that cut in from the open front and sides. Soon my glasses were pooled with water and the wind was pushing its cold fingers through the unsealed gaps in my protection. I had only my shivering to keep me warm and was thankful that our boat driver, from the native community Montesalvado further upriver, knew the river so well as the wind and rain hid from me the telltale lines in the water that warned of sandbars below the surface.

Inevitably, we found ourselves cornered off in a section of the river by sandbars, and some of us had to strip off our trousers to enter the river to push the boat into deeper water. The water was surprisingly warm and the exercise invigorating. But the respite was brief, and after 3 more hours I was thankful to uncurl my stiff body for the short trip to the Hotel Cabana Quinta and the luxury of the warm showers that awaited. In the end the friaje was a short one, only 3 days of grey and cold so I was thankful that on my next boat trip upriver to Refugio that the degrees were once again accumulating on our thermometers.

Yes, it does get cold in the Peruvian Amazon, even Stuart agrees. Be prepared!

Alan Lee

I was deeply saddened to hear about the death of yet another Bushmaster recently, this time at Posada. However, I was not surprised since it is the third to meet its fate at the end of a machete in the last year due to the fear that people have of what is know here as the “Shushupe”. Yes, this is a potentially very dangerous snake but, I can’t help feeling that its status has been blown out of proportion – unless the Bushmasters of the Tambopata are a gentler breed. But their reputation will stand as long as we need something to be afraid of. Maybe we have an excuse as this is the description from an “eco” site shows the image that people like to associate with it…

“The Bushmaster, Lachesis muta muta is the largest Pit Viper in the world with a nasty reputation as a "cruel dude". The Bushmaster is a huge, thick-bodied and highly venomous snake with a triangularly shaped head, one of nature's warning signs that a snake is poisonous and potentially deadly. Bushmasters live in remote, heavily forested tropical jungle terrain. Isolated in their jungle environment, envenomation by a Bushmaster is very serious, sometimes fatal and particularly dangerous to humans. The Bushmaster has earned this fierce reputation, known to aggressively attack man but only few human attacks have been recorded due primarily to the Bushmaster's nocturnal nature. Even if they do attack only occasionally, the Bushmaster is greatly feared by people indigenous to their jungle habitat. Appropriately named in English, the name Bushmaster when translated from Latin means "Brings Silent Death". One of the largest and most dangerous snakes in South America, the Bushmaster is capable of multiple bite strikes, injecting large amount of venom and even the bite of a juvenile Bushmaster can be fatal.”

The first time I heard of an innocent encounter with a Bushmaster and a tourist was shortly after I had arrived in Peru at Explorer’s Inn. Someone came back from a walk on the trails saying he had seen a snake and taken photos of it. As it had not been in a good position, hidden by leaves and bushes, he had poked and prodded it with a stick to get it into a better position. When the photo arrived, it was a Bushmaster… the inexperienced tourist had been prodding the most aggressive snake in the region and was not even hissed at! Then, a few months later my housemate, Stewart Long, whom I was sharing a place with on the outskirts of town told of how he had stumbled home late one night with beer in hand and by the starlight had seen something he thought was a 3m long branch lying across the path. Having his camera handy, he snapped a photo to see by the light of the flash that is was a gigantic snake. Realising this he went and called the local night watchman, who came along with a torch to announce the snake was an Anaconda. Calmed by the fact that he was dealing with a non-venomous snake, Stewart approached very close and took multiple photos from within 1m. The snake eventually moved off and hid in a thicket. When I saw the photos I was amazed! I had at this stage yet to encounter a Bushmaster myself in the wild and believed all the human chasing rumours I had heard, although by this time I had my doubts of course.

These snakes are by no means common in our part of the Amazon. During 2004 I participated in a year long project looking at the impact of tourism on wildlife. Part of the team were up to 5 herpetologists who went out every night looking for frogs and snakes. During the whole year 4 were seen, and only 1 was caught. This beautiful giant was brought back triumphantly by the team at the end of the year and for the first time I was able to see and handle this incredibly engineered, amazingly patterned beauty. She made not one aggressive lunge or attempt to strike during her 2 days of manhandling as her scales were counted and she was posed with the various research members for photos – even when during one such staging she fell out of control off the shoulders of the lead herpetologist, knocking a close by spectator who escaped with a mere extra surge of adrenalin. If ever there was an excuse for a snake to be angry and aggressive, that was it, but when posed for photos the only moves she would ever make were to try and slither away escape.

Last year I walked hundreds of kilometres looking for parrots and macaws, and would often have to leave the lodge between in the dark hours of the morning to get to observation points by sunrise – during the time when these snakes are meant to be most active. During all this time I encountered only one Bushmaster, coiled up on the side of the path where I could have passed within striking distance. All the snake did was stay coiled up, in a defensive position, waiting for me, the intruder into its world, to leave it in peace. I walked past that spot many times subsequently, and never saw the snake again. If they are territorial, its not to the same small area.

A few months after that encounter my girlfriend, Anja, was heading home rapidly at dusk after completing an evening survey near Posada, in a hurry as she had forgotten her torch at the lodge. Suddenly from in front of her a head reared up and hissed in the location of her next step. A Bushmaster sat coiled on the path looking at her, tasting the air with its tongue. After backing away and giving the snake space to go around and get back to the lodge, she asked me: “why was it so aggressive?”
“It was merely warning you that it was there”, I answered, “If it had really been a malignant animal it could easily have bitten you instead, but it didn’t. It was merely saying in its own way ‘Here I am! Watch out!’”. And Anja understood.

And now, some months later, several hundred meters from where that encounter took place, a Bushmaster has been killed. I suspect it was the same one Anja encountered and feel saddened that this peaceful animal, that was simply looking after itself, is with us no more. It will probably join the pickled Shushupe in the red dustbin that is dragged out from time to time as the morbid symbol of our irrational fears. Stop the snakism, they don’t deserve it – after all anyone in human society who had no arms and legs with which to get through the day would earn our respect and sympathy, not be an object of hatred.

Stillness is disturbed as the paddle dips so the sun ripples, and the surface smooth for its want of current joyously dances for the gentlest of moments.  Propelled forward or attracted by the invitation of the parting water, the canoe glides gracefully by the floating grass, and we enter the reflected forest where aguaje palms grow downwards so that leaves touch a deepened sky and mirrored trunks ascend to root.  I wonder if the oxbow lake is a gate way to meshi’dojo’, the underworld of the Ese-Eja.  Screeching blue and gold Macaws in tandem fly and beneath the boat they pass, paying homage to that other world of reflection, of mirrored illusion, of sacred stillness.  Breathing becomes shallow, as a calmness envelopes the mind with sheaths of silence, and I wait for that puncture, that moment when from the depths appears the wolf, piercing the surface, the sheen, with a twist of its body, diving into the murky underworld of sediment and silt, of leaf and tannin, of fish and caiman.  Once the Tambopata here it flowed, maybe as another river, the Bahuaja, but in the never ceasing pulse and burst of current it carves its true path and isolates itself in parts so that the oxbow, the stranded shields that mark the boundary of the rivers curves in a protective embrace remain like sentinels.  Each curving body awaits its fate, a dryness, an emptied hollow that grows anew the forest, each aguaje swamp signaling the intent of time. 

The supreme fisher, de lobo del rio, the wolf of the river, the giant river otter is reticent to appear today.  I am here for that purpose, to see the beautiful elongated two metre sleek body glide forward, its head resting on the surface as its webbed paws paddle.  There are fish aplenty, bighting the waters surface for the tasty morsel of fly and insect.  Ospreys circle, three I count, yet none diving.  Maybe they have taken their fill, maybe they are waiting for this observer to depart, I do not know, yet it is a delight to see them.  The green and white amazon kingfisher that was present has departed, its perch now occupied by a vermillion flycatcher, its startling striking scarlet holding the eye.  It darts and returns, darts and returns, and butterflies of various shades of earthy brown