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The first evening we
took a hike through one of the jungle trails where we began to see a variety
of Scarlet Macaws and we were witness to an entire troop of squirrel monkeys.
The squirrel monkeys are very small and fast and difficult to photograph,
but they all followed one another over the same limb, so we were able to
set up the video camera and capture the procession. The next mornning we
were up hours before dawn to get ready to head down river to a macaw lick.
There is a floating blind that is anchored in the river about a half a
kilometer north of some clay banks where parrots and macaws come to lick
the clay for the minerals it contains. Once the birds are satisfied there
is no danger, the boatsmen let out rope allowing the blind to be carried
down river by the current. We are able to get within about 30 meters of
the feeding birds.
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We were safely in the
blind before the sun rose. First the parrots, who mate for life, would
begin circling in pairs. Then they would land in the treetops above the
lick until they were satified that everything was safe. Then they
would descend on the lick. Several sentinels would remain in the trees
to sound an alarm if anything appeared threatening. When we first began
to float down stream the birds got spooked and retreated. but the guides
quickly hauled the blind back up, and luckily after a while the birds returned.
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Three species of parrot
as well as one of the smaller species of macaws feed first. Generally there
feeding is over by 7:30 or 8:00, and the blind is hauled back up to wait
for the larger macaws which come down around 10:00 or 10:30. The macaws
repeat roughly the same process as the parrots.
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Like the parrots, some
birds remain in the trees while others feed.
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Karen got this great
shot by pushing the lens of our little point-and-shoot camera into the
eyecup of a Nikon spotting scope that was mounted on a tripod in the blind.
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