Guacamayos!

Wow is it great to be free of hundreds of thousands of high school students! Chatting with some of the staff around here we realized we can finally hear the howler monkeys now at 430 in the morning. For those of you who don´t know, they are really loud. The fact that the students and nearly all the staff who are attending the annual Rainforest Expeditions company party left on boats early this morning meant that we could hear the birds, the crickets, the jaguars, but unfortunately we still had to keep eyes peeled while on the trail for those secretive ¨bush masters¨.


The Only Good Bushmaster Is a Dead Bushmaster


I was able to use most of the day to wait in the blind for guacamayos, or macaws. Patience rewarded me with many good looks at red-and-green macaws which resulted hopefully some good photos taken with Dave´s camera through my 10x50 binoculars. It´s really easy for me to see why macaws and other parrots are so popular as pets -- it´s absolutely fascinating watching them preen each other, jockey for position, hang by one claw from a branch, flush at the slightest disturbance, or carefully bite off bits of hardened clay from the clay lick, or ¨colpa¨, that is outside the blind. I don´t know though, I think gulls are pretty cool too. And what kind of smart bird eats dirt anyway?