Travel note 4: Tired, ragged, and a harpy eagle chick just when we needed it

Tambopata Parrots Field Guide

A student reviews the field guide to parrots on the Tambopata River.

We have spent the last four days at two ecolodges on the Tambopata River, Posadas Amazonas and Refugio Amazonas. This part of the class intends to do three things: provide a continuation of our rainforest experience; give us opportunities to sample yet another wetland type; and provide us with two more striking models of ecotourism. The research station (Los Amigos) that was the start of the rainforest experience was on the Madre de Dios River, which oddly enough had the tension of illegal gold mining adjacent to an extremely large tract of forest and Manu National Park. The Tambopata River, by contrast, has little gold mining, and but has felt more of the impact of increasing pressure from Puerto Maldonado, and also is home to a series of ecotourism lodges.

The Tambopata is best known, however, for the world’s largest avian (bird) clay lick, by virtue of size, number of birds, and diversity of species, which is on the property of the Tambopata Research Center (TRC). This area is the center of geophagy (ingestion of clay by a large number of birds as well as some mammals), with approximately 300 documented clay licks (termed collpas, meaning salty earth in the native language) in the region. The clay-lick story is fascinating, since it is really where geology and biology meet. The area contains a very specific strata that is exposed along riverbanks, and the birds very obviously target it when eating the clay; the clay-lick behavior is observed in the Western Amazon, New Guinea, Africa, and North America. This reasons for ingesting clay and visiting the collpa are numerous, including grit to aid in gut processing, mineral supplementation (primarily sodium), binding the dietary toxins (especially important when you ingest large quantities of seeds, nuts, and unripe fruits), adding additional protection to the gut lining (both the clay itself and the accompanying production of mucus), and for social interaction. For the parrots of Tambopata, the binding of dietary toxins appears to be the primary reason, but when you have a chance to visit a collpa that is active, the social interaction is the most striking.

If you are lucky, the early morning begins with the arrival of the small parrots (our experience was the yellow-crowned and blue-headed parrots, my favorites) and parakeets, then come the large macaws. On a good day, the cacophony of macaws and parrots is astounding, and the vision of hundreds of parrots coloring the side of the clay lick in brilliant azure blue, yellow, and green is almost psychedelic. The large macaws, often flying in pairs (they are famously monogamous), with their loud squawking calls and long tails, just puts the whole experience over the top in terms of sight and sound. When a predator is detected (most commonly a hawk or eagle), the alarm goes up, and the sky can fill with flocks winging off in all directions, loudly announcing the threat and settling in the surrounding treetops. There are moments of assessment and decisions, and sometimes the birds turn, and sometimes they decide that the risk is too high and they depart. The opportunity to see all of these birds concentrated in one place simply amazes you, and they are such an icon of the rainforest that the vision of so many remains with you as an example of the world’s wonder and beauty.

The ecolodges that we visit have a distinctive style, and that can present both opportunity and challenge. They are composed of a series of large, high-roofed, long buildings, with open roofs that are thatched and gorgeous wide-planked mahogany-like floors. One building generally houses a large, open, common dining room and gathering space/lobby, often with hammocks and garden furniture type couches and chairs. The bar, serving fruity drinks, pisco sours, and Latin American cokes (made with real cane sugar instead of corn syrup) is a staple. Long, open deck walkways lead to numerous buildings housing the guest rooms; about eight guest rooms will be housed in one building, and the walls will only extend up to about eight feet, with the roof open. The most striking thing about the room is that it is open to the rainforest on one side, with just a railing separating you from your view of the forest. The eight-foot walls have mirrored niches for the oil lamps, which are becoming increasingly electrified; hot water for showers appeared last year. This arrangement presents the opportunity to wake up from a nap and notice that two dusky titi monkeys are watching you; the challenge is that there is virtually no privacy (a fact that became especially apparent when the couple in the next room became ill, and we conversed about the importance of Gatorade as if we were occupying the same set of bunk beds). One of the lodges that we stay at, Posada Amazonas, is a unique partnership between a travel company (Rainforest Expeditions) and a native community of Ese Eje people named Infierno. The business arrangement is fascinating, primarily structured via a 20-year agreement established in 1996. The agreement called for a gradual transition of all lodge operations to the native community, and while much progress has been made, the transition is not yet complete. The agreement stipulated 50/50 decision-making, and a 60/40 split of profits (in favor of the native community). The social and cultural implications of this project are fascinating and diverse, ranging from a revived sense of identity, language, and culture, to the need to establish new community processes for decision-making and investment that were never needed previously. The very best ecolodges take their role in habitat protection very seriously. As always, the tension between number of guests and the preservation of the wildlife that they are there to see is ever-present.

The toll of being far from home, with precious little familiarity, begins to show up about now. The challenges that the students face run the gamut of physical (altitude sickness, Montezuma’s revenge), mental (lack of privacy, no touchstones of familiarity), and emotional (being with a group that you didn’t choose, lack of solitude), and things begin to unravel a bit. The lack of privacy and solitude is perhaps the largest challenge right now, coupled with a somewhat grueling schedule; we have strings of days where a wake up call occurs at 4:00 or 4:30 a.m., embedded in a nine-day sequence where breakfast has to be eaten before 7:00 a.m. There is no place to let off steam as a group of energetic students, no privacy to have even a conversation to let off the inevitable venting that one needs to do. And so there were little altercations, but they were maturely resolved one-on-one, and we did some team-building exercises to make our transition to a “performing” group a bit smoother. These might be some of the biggest lessons. And then we saw the harpy eagle …

The harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja) is legendary, although few people have seen one in the wild. It is a large bird of prey (second only to an Andean condor in size), its wingspan can reach over six feet across, its legs can be as thick as a small child’s wrist, and its curved, back talons are larger than grizzly bear claws at five inches. Its distinctive feature is the feathers atop its head that fan into a bold crest when the bird feels threatened. For nesting, harpies favor kapok or ironwood trees and usually build nests 90 to 140 feet above the ground; they like to use trees with widely spaced branches for a clear flight path to and from the nest. And that’s exactly what the nest looked like: four feet thick and five feet across, large enough for a student or two. We walked quietly through the forest (it was the morning after the slight altercations mentioned above, so perhaps it was a bit of “the morning after” thrown in), and literally tiptoed to a vantage spot with the nest in full view. In the middle of it, up popped the harpie chick, almost full size, looking like a Muppet character with its head feathers unceremoniously blowing about. Its beak, however, indicates its expertise. It spends much of the day alone in the nest, while both male and female parents are off hunting for the large quantities of food that the chick must surely require; I had visions of trying to feed Tom during the teenage years. We watched it feed on some unfortunate large mammal; it would feed, and nap, and then just look about, much like life with an eight-month-old. It was mesmerizing, all of it: the large, structural nest in the vee of the tree, the chick and its face snapping here and there, the large ironwood tree (an emergent tree in the rainforest, approximately 150 feet tall), the quiet of the forest pierced every once in a while by the call of the male or female harpie far away.

The chick will hopefully grow into the efficient and powerful predator that it is intended to be. You will never see a harpy eagle soaring over the top of a rain forest; instead it will fly below the forest canopy at speeds up to 50 mph and use its talons to snatch up monkeys and sloths that can weigh up to 17 pounds (one such unfortunate creature was in the nest for the chick’s breakfast). It can fly straight up as well as down, and can turn its head upside down, as well. It has excellent vision, and can see something less than one inch in size from almost 220 yards away. Impressive isn’t it?  Also makes you wonder how on earth they measure that.

A harpy eagle chick, just in time.

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