Origins

It seems like I have done this my whole life, chasing birds to far flung and remote places for month on end and to some I have been this way long as they have known me.  But it has not always been this way.

If you had asked me 5 and half years ago what I thought about parrots I would have told you how dull they were. How they were practically a mundane, everyday, household item. When it came to birds I would not stop in the street to watch a group of house sparrows arguing over some discarded item of food. Neither could I find Zen in the sunrise and sunset doings of the Jackdaws of north England. 6 months later that had all changed.

I was 9 months away from starting my undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Bristol. I had been whiling away the time as a lifeguard, all the while thinking how boring it was and how I really should be doing something ‘Biology’ related.  I tried in fine to find something along those lines within the United Kingdom, repeatedly slamming into the wall built especially for the young from the words “You need more experience before we will give you any experience.” (Slights, however wrongfully, that are still not forgotten or forgiven.) In my frustration I made one of the brashest, stupidest and most life changing decisions of my life.

I encountered an article in a British news paper talking about volunteering in animal refuges in Bolivia. The following 4 words are possibly the most underestimated in terms of significance in the whole English language:

“Fuck it, I’m going.”

6 months later, just 3 away from beginning my degree I sat, comfortably surrounded by my ignorance and naivety (I had never lived away from home before, neither did I speak a word of Spanish), aboard a southbound jetliner in Miami.  Had I known what lay before me I would have been scared.

I spent the next 2 months immersed in a culture, a habitat and a lifestyle I had previously not known even existed. The trip opened my eyes to a world far removed from our. Where you live today but tomorrow you honestly can’t even guess. Somewhere you are just another part of the ecosystem, another monkey in the forest. Somewhere you can feel your own insignificance as if it were a comforting hand placed on your back by nature herself. It was here that I met my first parrots.

The Blue-fronted Amazon (Amazona aestiva)

I worked in animal refuges at first. At one time I found myself managing over 150 parrots and assorted other birds, with the occasional puma cub, monkey or bear. But it was the birds that won my heart.  Bolivia now boasts two of favourite bird species, the Chestnut-fronted macaw and the Blue-fronted Amazon, animals with which I have spent more time than many would deem rational. The chestnuts, as anyone who knows me is aware, acted as a hand of fate all those years ago, guiding me at a junction in my life that only became clear with hindsight. Bolivia too boasts the beginnings of the most vibrant, devastatingly grand yet fragile place on earth, the Amazon rainforest. It is a place I have longed to return to since I first felt the patter of leathery parrot feet along my arm.

Pakai, the chestnut (Ara severa) that created biologist

And return I have.  Of the 5 years 2009-2014 I have spent a full year of my life living, working and travelling within the tropical, emerald belt of the Americas. I have spent that time working to protect the birds that provided company to a lonely 18 year old so many lifetimes ago. I have learned much along the way; of myself, humanity, conservation biology as a science and, of course of the birds themselves. All the time working in the hope of one day returning to Bolivia, where my determination for conservation was forged, and here I stand.

It has been a long journey, both literally (42 hours from London to Trinidad, Beni, Bolivia) and figuratively. I shall get no further today either. It is Sunday (when writing) and the taxis have stopped. It is moments like this where you question your motives. Why have you left friends and family behind at innumerable cost to maroon yourself in some strange city? For the sake of some bird?  No-one cares if it is the second rarest parrot in the neo-tropics. It’s not going to thank you, and what the hell do you think you’ll accomplish in 10 weeks anyway?

I sigh and make my way to a hotel.

I walk in the door to a courtyard full of trees. Looking down at me are 3 toucans, quite unafraid and energetic. Their antics return the smile taken by sleep deprivation and homesickness to my face. There is a kindly, elderly lady in a wheelchair and with the aid of a young spiritedly helper she offers me a room. It is perfect, just what I need a bed, TV, bathroom with shower and toucan within touching distance, and I settle in.

One thing I have learned in these 5 years is that life, fate or whatever has funny way of guiding you, or providing encouragement when you need, or maybe look for it. When I drew back the curtains of that hotel room maybe I was looking for it, a reminder as to why I had come here but I certainly did not expect to find it, especially in the urban backdrop of Trinidad, Beni’s regional capital. But there it, or rather they were. Two tiny sentinels on an opposing roof. Ara severa, the same species that started me on this path. Their eyes are drawn to my window by the motion of the curtain but they do not fly, merely watch with a calm that relaxes even my travel-frayed nerves.  I nod my head and to my surprise the one on the left bobs in return. I pause transfixed on them and nod again, this time the one on the right bobs. I smile.

Two tiny sentinels

It is nothing, but to a tired mind thousands of miles from home, it was a “Welcome back” not soon to be forgotten. 

Heartwood II

Apologies for the delay, these last 2 weeks have been somewhat manic and actually enjoyable.

They grow up so fast.

On average in just 62.19 days for the Yellow-shouldered Amazon. At the very beginning of my stay I peeked into the heart of a Mispa tree and was confronted by 3 tiny sceptical faces wondering why the face at their hollow was not that of a parrot.  In the few short (or exasperatingly long, depending on who you ask) weeks I have watched these 3 faces change.

I have watched the parents struggle to feed their brood, making endless ferry flights to and from the nest, faces often so covered in fruit that they are unrecognisable as Yellow-shouldered amazons. I have watched the youngest of the 3 fall by the wayside and die, as the youngest of bird broods are wont to do, and be buried by the parents in the bottom of the tree hollow to confuse later archaeologists.

Eventually I returned one day and, after much practice, gracefully swing up to the crook of the tree and peer into the nest. I poke my head over the cavity and, to our mutual surprise, there is a fledgling about 7 inches from my face.  We pause. With a grumble and a flurry of wings he releases the rim of the hole and drops to the bottom and glares. Curiously back up at me, as if half annoyed and half grateful that I have delayed his entry into the real world.

I smile, snap a few pictures and shimmy back down to my terrestrial world. But this will not be the last he sees of me. Returning to base I show the photo to Chris.

“Fuck, we need to get a move on.”

The precise season of the yellow shoulders varies from year to year and the best way of keeping a finger on the pulse is to have a conveniently located nest which to can scale and pear at to see how old they are. Ideally you catch them earlier than this, when there is a full complement of fledglings to be banded so that they can be identified in later life and to fractionally deter poachers. The move on we need to get now is a race around all the known, and unknown nests to band the fledglings before they become enraptured by their bright new world.

The next day we return to the Mispa tree in force. We do not have the radio collars we were also hoping to deploy but then again I can hardly blame them for not wanting to come to this island. We do however have bird bands, special pliers, a small draw string bag and a length of wire with a bend in the end.

“Who wants to go fishing?” asks Michelle holding up the piece of wire.

“I do”

 I reply before anyone else gets the chance. This is my nest. I have been tied to its fate just as long as the fledglings themselves.

There is, and has never been, the need for a harness or ropes here, I merely karabiner the small drawstring bag and fishing rod to my shorts along with a strong torch and skip up the tree as has become my custom.

Once again I eclipse the entrance of the nest. The fledgling is still there. He glances up from the bottom as sceptical as ever and, sensing my intent, hurriedly toddles into the darkest, most in accessible corner he can find. To find such a corner in a round tree trunk is a skill that no human possess. It is as if he has cast a spell and has simply disappeared, apart from the glint of his emerald tail feathers in the torch light.

The ensuing time is somewhat of an adrenalin and sweat filled blur. It could have been 5 minutes (although I am reliably informed it wasn’t) or it could have been 5 hours (which I am reliably informed it wasn’t).  The time, however long it was, is passed using the metal wire with a kink in the end and the full span of my arm attempting to break his invisibility spell. Gently corralling him into the visible spectrum of his nest the aim is to then hook his leg in the kink and drag him kicking and screaming into the real world.

Rest assured that whilst this may have the same effect as receiving your first real bill for something in adult human life; i.e. there is much screaming and panic, there is little chance of physical harm to the bird as their legs are designed to support their weight at any angle.

There are (more than) a few attempts made to bring the bird into the real world. However the bird shrieks at the very idea before, with a swift flourish, slipping his leg out of the shepherds crook and with a disgruntled *whump* and toddling back to his corner.

Eventually I succeed and suddenly I am face to face shrieking struggling bird, uttering howls of anger that would cower a wolf, pausing only to inhale with a noise that sound very much like a rubber chicken.

In this second I am keenly aware I am 12 feet off the ground with no safety lines holding the most precious thing I have ever held. I have to get his wings. He could do himself much harm if he continues to flap and struggle wildly.

I hesitate, he does not.

For all the years I have worked with Psittaciformes this is the first time I have had to grab a completely wild bird. The knowledge of their bite force is at the front of my mind. If I hesitate anymore he will get loose and possibly fall, I couldn’t bear it.

I grab him. He grabs me.  

The bite is strangely reassuring. It feels that despite the lack safety ropes someone has me and I am safe.

I open the drawstring bag and tuck the still snarling bird inside. He releases my thumb and falls quiet.

I sigh and gently pass him to the ground crew who I have quite forgotten about despite their constant vocal input. I return, shakily to the ground, sweating from the battle.

He is then gently handled, but kept hooded and with wings pinned at all times. He is banded, one colour for location, one colour, silver, for the 2013 season.

After banding he is swiftly returned to the nest. After a brief argument over ownership of the drawstring bag there is one last *whump* followed by the soft sound of swiftly toddling feet working an invisibility spell.

I return the next day to make check one last time on the Heartwood nest. 

It is empty.

The Bonairean population of Yellow-shouldered Amazons has one new member.

That is not the end of my frantic two weeks.  Climb follows climb follows marathon across grueling terrain as we desperately search the other nests but it is, for the most part, too late.  All are gone. 3 nests at least, I suspect, were taken by poachers, the rest have joined the rest of us in the sun and wind to try their hand at life as “grown-ups.”

But there is one nest left. And from within comes a growl that could cower a wolf punctuated with the sound of a rubber chicken.

The last three fledglings of the 2013 season.

They were  my companions on my last work day and we spend a pleasant evening fishing together.

Moby Dick

The dawn light can play tricks on the eyes of the morning watch as they scan the sea. But the sea I stare at through my binoculars is green and any glinting leaf could be the emerald back of an Amazon parrot. All the more shocking then is a glint of sapphire in the trees. I take my binoculars down and glance far to my left. No. I couldn’t possibly have caught the ocean out of the corner of my view I was focused in the opposite direction. I turn back and raise my binoculars. Sure enough the sapphire form of a parrot dips into view on a swaying wind bent bough.

“Well, call me Ishmael,” I mutter “the blue parrot.”

Unlike his name-sake Moby dick the parrot is not a manifestation of hell sent to torment us. He does, however, seem to have some element of the whales omnipresence, being reported at opposite ends of the island almost simultaneously. Despite this quality he is simply a fledgling from last breeding season born with the inability to produce a protein.

The protein psittacofulvin is a protein only found in parrots. It is used, instead of the carotenoid pigments in other birds, to produce colour from yellow through to red. To become green parrots use light manipulating microstructures in the feather, reflecting blue light, alongside yellow reflecting psittacofulvins. Our Moby dick has a mutation that prevents the production of psittacofulvin, but retaining the feather microstructures, meaning that any yellow feather is white and any green feather is bright blue. This has a myriad of fascinating (to me) potential impacts on the bird, such as their resistance to UV (psittacofulvins are incredibly resistant to UV damage) and their sense of colour vision, but I shall not go on about those here.

I simply wish to share a glimpse of some fascinating science.

Legend says that Moby dick is the herald of death and it seems this is a trait preserved within the parrot homage to the leviathan.  The deaths witnessed since my sighting (Monday 5^th Aug) of Moby dick stands at: 1 Parrot chick, 1 cat and 13 goats. 

Just have to keep reminding myself;

An excerpt from “The unpublished Echo training manual”

“Volunteers must be in good physical condition and we recommend the following acclimatisation training regime to simulate the conditions you will be working in:

One hour cycling

One hour on a Stairmaster in a sauna whilst being whipped with thorn branches,

Two hours sitting in the sauna

One hour on Stairmaster in sauna whilst being whipped with thorn branches

One hour cycling”

Heartwood

*CracK*

*TSCHEEW TSCHEEW TSCHEEW TSCHEEW TSCHEEW*

“Great going dumbass.” I mutter to myself as the bark splinters away from under my feet and a flurry of green streaks out of the tree above me. 

I had been hoping to avoid using the rusty, decrepit looking fence as a foothold but it looks like my tattered boots just won’t hold the bark.  I put my foot on the fence and it buckles unconvincingly, the only thing holding it upright against my weight is a section where the tree has grown around it, incorporating the iron into its trunk. It holds. From the few feet I can easily reach the first branch and scrabble upright. The tree is full of ants, but thankfully is one of the few trees in the forest that is not a tangled column of organic barbed wire. I keep close to the trunk and haul myself the final few feet, standing in the largest notch between branches.

There is nervous chatter in the canopy around me, a good sign, Loras whispering to one and other in their hushed tones somewhere between a waterfall and a purr. 

There are many gashes in this tree, where it has shed branches too costly to maintain in the scorching heat and unrelenting wind. One of which, now at head height, is emitting a musty, almost ocean-like smell.  I pull myself to the edge of it and peer in.

Six beady eyes stare back.

“Wow” I whisper, my voice filling the cavity as if omnipotent. Neither party breaks eye contact until I am forced to retreat to fumble with my camera. Upon looking back into the cavity the three forms are theatrically sprawled across the floor of their home. I pause a moment, then remember that playing dead is a well documented behaviour of young parrots and giggle at them, making them blink.

But I am here for more serious reasons than a game of sleeping lions.

Strapped to my waist, where a safety harness would normally be, is a camera trap.  The tree stands on what was once public land, and is easily accessible, a prime target for poaching.  I am tasked with setting a camera trap that will catch any poacher visiting the nest.

 It’s a f*cking exasperating task. Trying to hide a camera trap from an animal is one thing, but a human intent on not being caught is another. It must be out of sight and have a clear line of fire at the nest. The task took me three days to accomplish, and even now I am annoyed with the compromises that had to be made. More than 30 tree climbs to place, test, review footage and replace were all met with inexplicable failure, despite the nest being well in the range of the camera it could not detect my movements. The difficulty of such an apparently easy task is immensely frustrating, especially with temperatures reaching 32°C in the shade by 10am, and the cameras lives were threatened more than once. But perseverance, by its very meaning takes time to develop.

For me the realisation that my actions may be the difference between freedom and slavery for these birds was my motivation.

 Parrots take easily to the domestic environment. They are loyal, compassionate, mischievous and playful characters, the proportion of each ingredient varying between species. But they are proud. If taken from the wild, at any point in their life, they cannot forget it. No matter how loyal a pet a bird may be it will always find greater solace in the company of its own kind. If taken from their world into ours there will forever be a sadness you can perceive in their demeanour when they stare back onto theirs through windows or worse, bars.  In Bonaire to be taken is not into a life of luxury parrot lovers (should) lavish on their birds elsewhere. The bird will, almost certainly, not live out its life with free reign of a house or aviary, constant stimulation and a safe cage to retreat to at night or when scared. Instead it will always view the world through bars, often of cages no bigger than those used for ornamental finches.

To think of these six beady eyes viewing the world through steal glasses saddens me and hardens my resolve. I have visited houses here with captive parrots in such tiny cages. Played with the birds and watched their eyes light up and their wings tremble with excitement as a wild past companion screeches overhead, whimsically borne on the trade winds without so much as a down stroke from the wings. To think that the six tiny, emerald wings in the dark hollow beneath my feet would never stroke the deep azure above is unbearable.

Before climbing down to continue my battle with the camera I take one last glimpse into the hollow. A ray of light from the, by now, midday sun strikes deep into the black and in its glare two insignificant wings of emerald are spot lit and, feeling the warmth of the sky, start to beat, against all the odds.

The World Parrot Trust and Echo are committed to keeping wild parrots wild, regardless of their IUCN status. It is a cause I feel passionately about, as you may be able to tell, and so I am going to indulge in some shameless plugging.

The World Parrot Trust extends their support and expertise globally under the banner of the Fly Free programme, a campaign I cannot condone highly enough.

http://www.parrots.org/flyfree/

Echo has just launched a local anti-poaching campaign to extend nest monitoring efforts to help Yellow-shouldered amazons across the Caribbean and to buy far less infuriating camera traps to better protect Bonairean birds like the heroes of the story above.

http://www.razoo.com/story/Keep-Parrot-Chicks-From-Being-Poached

As a little uplift at the end I wish to also share this:

This was also a feature in last week’s blog post. This is the crested caracara fledgling. He still has not yet acquired the same fear of man that I have and alighted just 2 metres away one day this week as I was looking for parrot nest cavities in cliffs.  After a moment of shared bewilderment as we glared uncertainly at each other through a gap in jagged of coral rock between us, he tolerated me standing up and was quite content to watch me watch him.

The Dinosaur Reef

               There is an ancient reef on Bonaire. It has been building for millennia, calciferous shell upon calciferous shell of the coral stacking upon one another, steadily rising and crushing down on those below to form limestone. As ancient seas receded and the reef grew upwards it broke the surface, an Atlantis in reverse.  The reef was left high and dry. The very life that formed it was turned to dust leaving nothing but towering limestone ridges and the calciferous outlines of the homes once occupied by the coral and their algae tenants.

The Valley of Roi Sangu

Bowl of Fontein, the one natural source of fresh water on the island

For centuries the coral high rises remained exposed to the incessant wind and sporadic rain. The two forces conspired to create vast labyrinths of caves, crevasses and crevices in the limestone and jagged spires at the tops of the ridges reaching towards the blue of the sky. The wear and tear on the once grand reef covered the island in a fine dust, and on the unforgiving wind came the seeds of the first plants, falling into the dust filled cracks, gradually colonising the reef.

In the nutrient poor and water free reef (there is just one natural spring on the island, a mere trickle barely capable of filling a washing machine, all water is obtained through desalination or wells) the plants move slowly, the Wayaka (Guayacum officinalis), with its beautiful camouflage bark, taking centuries to reach the size of an English garden shrub. As the trees grew they took weird shapes, contorting in relentless wind, thickening their leaves and bark and sap to resist the scorching sun. In the odd nooks and crannies in the trees settled dry forest epiphytes, the orchids with their massive pseudo-bulbs to store any water that they encountered for leaner times.

The only known fully mature Wayaka tree (<1000yrs) left on the island after large scale harvesting of their self-lubricating wood for use in ship building

Dry forest epiphytes

 As the plants took hold the reef began to return to life. The dinosaurs that once moved through the blue above the reef returned. But not the dense boned aquatic lineages of the sea, the lightweight agile lineage of the skies, the birds. But life did not return on the scale it had once been beneath the waves, there are a mere 55 species of bird capable of surviving on this desolate rock year round, and a large number are introduced.  But these 55 come in all shapes and sizes. The minute jewels zipping just above the ground, only settling for an instant on flowers here and there before changing direction too fast to be followed; the splashes of fluorescence screaming their presence in sound and in sight; the savage hunters flushing the others before them in panic.

   

            

A common emerald humming bird female (Chlorostilbon meliisugus) settles for a moment

The fluorescent golden or yellow oriole (Oriolus oriolus)

A crested caracara (Caracara cheriway) takes this year’s fledgling (right) through life’s basics

Then there are the contemplative and playful. The parrots. With their curiosity and adaptability that allows them to exploit this harsh environment. There are two species: the Yellow shouldered amazon (Amazona barbadensis) and the Prikichi (Aratinga pertinax xanthogenia) (whom we shall meet later in more detail). They have made themselves at home, taking advantage of the ants drilling into impenetrable fruit of the callibash tree  and of human irrigation and cultivation of mangoes, papaya and plantains, chattering excitedly as they do so.  And like the morey eels that still inhabit the reef below the sea, they slink into the caves that line the sides of the ancient reefs ridges. In the quiet, coolness of the dark they nestle and nurture their families preparing them for the great blueness that still lies above the reef.

The Peninsula pair enjoying the sunrise at the mouth of Roi Sangu

The Retaking of Animal Farm

“Look, look there’s some”

He says in a hushed tone, squatting on the sun-bleached slope and pointing into the shadows ahead. The dog at his side, clad in a Kevlar chest plate and neck brace, strains at her leash and whines slightly, panting heavily. She is a sleek, Doberman-Alsatian cross, a natural born hunter with teeth and wits as sharp as the forest thorns. Her leash is nothing but a  piece of rope, looped through the Kevlar collar with both ends held together only by the man’s hands, more like a launch system of a weapon than a leash for an afternoon walk. Squatting down beside them my eyes can adjust to view beyond the wall of murk at the edge of the mango grove and squinting against the fierce afternoon sun I see the 4 or 5 pigs rooting through the detritus.

“Are you ready?”

The question breaks my distraction and I nod, feeling for the handle of the hunter’s knife strapped to my hip.  We move forward down the short, steep slope of loose, sandy gravel but the dog is faster and pulls the man so that he slides down the gravel. The sound startles the pigs and the dog gives a yelp of excitement pulling even harder than before.

“Go Serena!” the man shouts loosing one end of the leash.

The dog rockets off through the murk, the man sprinting behind her. I hesitate, everything happening much faster than I had ever imagined anything to happen. “Son of bitch” I mutter and sprint after the pair some 10 metres in front of me already. 

The pig group breaks, each individual running in an individual direction, screaming as they flee. Some double back, thundering past me no more than a few feet away, paying no heed to my own heavy foot falls.  

“This way!” The man shouts from the undergrowth ahead and I follow the barking, squealing shouting and snapping undergrowth.  We plunge through a bank of thorns, tear through an open gate and suddenly we’re on the road. Not pausing to check for any tourist cars or busses, just making the sharp turn onto the smooth tarmac hand on the hilt of the knife to stop it slapping my leg.

“Down here, she’s got it!” The man shouts from the road embankment, pointing down into a patch of forest emanating blood curdling shrieks and growls. He pauses just long enough to make sure I see where to go, then darts off in the direction of the noise.

I run after him, diving off the road and through a thicket only slowing as I reach the source of the commotion.  The dog has the screaming, kicking pig by the scruff of the neck, snarling savagely as she holds it, not intending to share it with the two late arrivals of the pack. I pause at the edge of the clearing. Lost in the chaos and held back by the wall of terror that surrounds the scene.

SSSSSSHHRRRIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKK “TAKE THIS!”SSSSSHHHHRRRIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEKKKK

I look down and he’s holding the back legs out towards me and I take them calmly, almost as if in a dream

SSSSSSHHHRRRRIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEKKK“LIFT THEM UP, GET ‘IM OFF HIS FEET!!”SHHHRRRRRIIIIEEEEEK

SSSHHRRRIIIEEEEKKK “THAT’S IT”SSSSHHRIIEEEEK “SHUT UP YA F*CKER” SSSSHHHRRRRiiIIEEEEEEEK

He stands on the throat of the pig exposing its chest. There is a blur of an arm and a flash of silver.

Suddenly, as if from a spring, there is a jet of ruby, vivid against the faded sun-bleached brown of the forest. No amount of film or video game violence can prepare you for the smell of fresh blood. The blood continues to pour as if it is a prisoner grateful for their release and the pig’s screams as an enraged warden after the escapee.  SSSSHHHHRRRRIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKK

His arm blurs 3 or 4 more times and in the whirlpool of terror that surrounds the scene I dumbly realise that there is nothing I can do. The animal is petrified. No kind word, no miracle of modern medicine, no action at all can ward off the death that I can feel hovering over, waiting like impatient customer at a diner.

No action is exactly what I take.

I just stand there dumbly while the animal screams murder and coughs and splutters, holding its still running legs, running to its own oblivion, watching the blood gleefully escaping and feeling as though I have let a guilty man walk free.

The pig lapses into silence.

The only sound now is the snarling of the dog, the pig convulsing in my hands as she tries to wrench it from my grasp.

“Serena, OFF, Serena, that a girl” the man sooths as he draws what appears to be a cuttlefish bone knife and inserts it between the dogs snarling jaws and prising them from the pigs neck, dragging the still lunging dog back from the pig.

 The pig falls still.

“Leave it here for the moment, we’ll get another one” he says hauling the dog off through the undergrowth. I stare blankly at the new corpse the shrieks still ringing in my ears and nod, turning to follow them back to the road.

“I’m sorry about that. That was a hell of a screamer.” The dog is trotting and panting happily by his side, remounted on her launching mechanism and immensely pleased with herself.

“Is it always like that?”

“No. That was a difficult one.” He says shaking his head.

We pause as we return to the bank of thorns, and this time make our way more carefully through them back into the mango grove.

“There, there, there!”

*Morons* I think. Why would they come back.

“You good?”

I nod again.

Again the dog flies from his side, whining in excitement.

Again the pigs break in all directions.

Again we crash through the slashing undergrowth.

There is the sound of splintering branches, a yelp, snarling with renewed savagery, but this time there is a new sound, a defiant growl from the pig. I duck under a low branch and step into a clearing barely big enough for the two struggling creatures before me. The man pauses beside me.

“Fuck”

The pig, a full grown boar, turns to face us; the only thing obscuring his malicious face from vision is the dog, desperately clinging to his ears. Both snarl and shake each other viciously. The man waits for a momentary lapse in their whirling dance and snatches the pigs legs.

“Steve!” he says holding them out to me. “She’s slipping!” He nods at the dog, holding on to the very tip of the boars ears.

I hesitate a second longer, but realising that to back down would mean serious injury for all but the pig I take the offered legs.

I haul them upwards flipping the boar off his feet and the man managed to pin his neck with a foot.

“That’s it! Got ‘im!”

Again his steal tipped arm flashes releasing another grateful stream of prisoners.

The boar doesn’t scream. He growls deeper and struggles harder.

“Fuck he’s Hard!” says the man, having to pound the knife through the animal’s toughened breast plate.

 The Boar makes one last bid for freedom, but he too realises there is no action to take and lapses into silence.

The dog tugs against me, trying to move the pig into the undergrowth for herself and the man can barely get the cuttlefish into her mouth to pry her off. “Bring her this way.” Without a thought the shear amount of adrenalin that must have been in my body I comply, hauling the pig and tugging dog a full 3 feet in one movement. (When moving the pig for butchering, long after the adrenalin subsided, it would take both the man and myself working at full strength to move the animal a similar distance.)

“Good girl” the man says as the dog is coaxed away panting and obviously pleased with her endeavours.

“We’ll have a break and come back” says the man.

As we return to the to the sun-drenched slope on which we started the man turns to the dog.

“Fuck”

“The fucker got her.”

I turn to the happily trotting god and see the blood trickling strongly from both a large gash on the dog’s leg and under the dog’s chin, her left pupil is also clouded out by blood.

“Fuck” I agree.

The man bends and scoops her up. She makes no complaint.

We walk hurriedly back to the shelter where we left our bags and water, the man gently crooning over the dog. We get back to the hut and he puts the dog down and tenderly removing her Kevlar. Again, she doesn’t object and settles on a cool concrete floor. The man goes to his bag and pulls out a dog first aid kit and the manual of dog first aid.

The next two hours are a blur of following instruction, pinning the dog so her wounds can be cleaned and stapled, of worried calls to the vet and anxious inspection of the clouding eye. As the motion swirls around her the dog remains calm, struggling against the most irritating of the disinfectants, only to be soothed and restrained again. Ice is fetched from the nearest shop and help against her eye rolling the clouds of blood back. Eventually she is released; sore and indignant but standing at the trailhead to recovery, looking accusingly at the anxious humans fumbling around her.

Post script:

The dog is well on her way to recovery. She wore a “Cone of shame” for three weeks and was cooped up indoors while her wounds healed. She is a sweet dog, but by no means over sociable. She greets almost no visitors to her house, regarding them with a passive eye from a distance once they are determined to be friendly. However, on the first visit I made to her after the incident described above she laboriously stood from her bed and padded over to me and stood a foot in front of me. She made eye contact and allowed me one stroke. She then padded over to another person who had helped in her treatment and repeated the gesture. She then returned to her bed, entirely ignoring the remaining 3 people in our party.  

The Puppet government of animal farm

                In Orwell’s “Animal Farm” he discusses how the idea of socialism, in its purest form of equality for all, can be corrupted and turned into a brutal dictatorship as in North Korea or the Soviet Union.  For the purpose of his book Orwell writes of a farm in which the animals of a farm gloriously rebel against the tyrannical human owners and drive the farm. At first everything is well and the animals live in peace. But as time goes on the pigs seize control and begin to savagely enforce their rule upon the other animals, bettering their lives at the cost of everyone else’s.  On Bonaire, and many other islands across the world, the story is not so different. Except here the humans were not the deposed rulers. The humans installed the pigs as dictators in their absence.

Victorian sailors left pigs (and other herbivores) on islands they encountered as they explored the world as living larders for the next passersby.  Often in the absence of any natural predator, the pigs when about making themselves comfortable rooting through the native delicate habitats and generally eating everything in their paths.  In so doing, the pigs have persecuted often rare and unique island species of both plants and animals to the point of extinction.  Bonaire is no exception. The pigs, alongside goats and donkeys, have eaten everything that is not capable of slashing their tongues.  This is what has turned the island’s forests into the nightmarish tangle of thorns I have come to loathe.  This change has also robbed the native birds, and lizards, of a vast array of their foods, forcing them to steal from the gardens and farms of the now returned humans.

There are many ways of dealing with puppet dictators turned rogue, such as the herbivores on Bonaire. Some of them have sound ecological background to them, such as herbivore exclosures or enforcement of the policy stating that goats must be kept within a fenced farm (or “Kunuku”). Some are convoluted and ridiculous, but must be so to keep the tourists’ money happy, like the plan to catch all of the donkeys on the island, keep the females and foals in the donkey sanctuary, then sterilise and reintroduce all the males. There is another option, of which the CIA are strong supporters, violent deposing of those you are against. When it comes to the pigs on the island, there seems to be very little room for negotiations. No-one claims ownership of the animals, and they continue to decimate any chance the forest has for regeneration, and you certainly don’t see the tourist clamouring to set up a pig sanctuary. There is also next to no meat produced on the island and the sale of pork would bolster the conservation camps’ coffers. Although Echo is not involved in eradication projects it is an extracurricular opportunity that volunteers are afforded...

And with the snap of a twig, there is a pause and a glance from the pigs, and just like that, there is the scent of violence at the edge of a forest clearing. 

I love the smell of dead iguana in the morning

Upon landing on Bonaire it is immediately clear that hell is, in fact a place on earth. As the plane taxis back along the runway to the “terminal” a flat arid expanse lays before you and in the distance you can see salt mountains towering in comparison to the scrubby plants. The plane makes and abrupt right turn and comes to a halt on a parking stand you’re fairly certain the captain will have to pay and display like the other cars you can see just off the wing.  Stepping from the plane a wave of dry heat hits you as you make your way across the tarmac to the bright pink “Flamingo international” terminal.  Immigration, a sullen “woo you’re a tourist,” and the bags have beaten me from the plane.  On the other side of the exit doors I stand blinking I am either supposed to be met by Echo’s head “Chris” or the camp manager “Michelle.” I have seen a photo of Chris, which incidentally he no longer resembles, but have no idea what Michelle is supposed to look like fortunately, she spots me.

We clamber into what is left of a pickup truck (well what is left of a car, there may well have been a roof over the back at one point but it has long since vanished leaving what resembles a ragged pickup) and head off down the road. Michelle points out the sites and I quiz her on the state of the islands nature, although I am far too tired to take any of it in.

“What is there in terms of terrestrial animals?” I roar over the struggling engine

“Apart from the obvious” she says swerving between a goat and a donkey, “A snake, and iguanas and a few smaller lizards are all that’s native”

A second later we come to a halt outside a house and peer through its gate. “There’s one now” she says gesturing. Towards the gate lumbers a large dog triumphantly carrying a dead iguana.

            

            Bonaire is not the tropics I am accustomed to, there is no canopy to shelter under. The sun is fierce, with night time temperature falling to a frigid 27 Celsius. The only thing that prevents you from collapse is a more or less constant breeze out of (I believe) the northeast.  If that stops you have nowhere to go, if you try and seek shade it will cut you, quite literally. One of the problems on Bonaire is the invasive herbivores; pigs, donkeys and goats, that will eat anything and everything they can. Together they have uprooted or grazed out all native plants that aren’t defended by savage thorns. All that is left by the sides of the roads are stunted shrubby trees with a thirst for blood. That’s not all that wants to cut you. The rocks are jagged volcanic looking outcrops that slice at hand, legs and boots alike.

The forests are for the most part silent, stiflingly hot and alien habitats. The plants are xerophytes, tolerant of extreme lack of water and have taken forms that seem conjured from the imagination of Dr. Seuss {picture above}. The forest floor of sand is littered with drag marks of the reptiles that roam them. The reptiles here are not the slow and sluggish beasts you see in northern zoo, but possess a frightening speed that makes you grateful the only snake (the Bonaire silver snake (Leptotyphlops albifrons)) is at most 15 centimetres long, 1cm wide and completely harmless {picture below}. That speed does not necessarily apply to the mental abilities of the reptiles. The iguana, for instance is an arboreal species with one elemental escape strategy: let go.  When a threat is perceived the iguana will simply drop from its tree and make good its escape. If, of course it is not too concussed from the impact of falling from a tree on a small cliff to do so.

The other thing you notice about from time to time walking through the forest is the occasional sudden stench. It is slightly sweet, but sickly. It is of course rotting flesh. It is, inevitably emanating from a deceased iguana. It is not a victim, as our first case, but has simply died as it lived, sprawled upon a sunny branch in a tree.  There, after its demise it has become snagged on the thorns of whichever spiteful tree it was in at the time and fermented in the sun.

But up ahead there is a clap of wings, a screech, a “troo-pee-oh” and blazes of colour against the arid backdrop.  The diminutive dinosaurs of the class Aves race overhead. The birds have escaped the hell that is on the earth here by taking to the skies. Only they thrive here, everything else must do its brutal best to just remain in existence. This is their island, a Jurassic park in miniature and it is this I have just begun to explore.  

Southbound

Across the globe millions of birds are coming to rest. They have just completed journeys of a gargantuan scale. At this time of year there seems to be an overwhelming consensus in the bird world that north is best. The long days of the northern hemisphere provide the perfect conditions to forage and rear young and attract many species familial to us, such as ruby throated humming birds (Archilochus colubris) in the USA and barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) and cuckoos (Cuculus canorus)of Europe.  Some birds however, will not come to us. 

                It is because of this that I must undertake my own migration. I am an ornithologist based, for the time being, at the University of Leeds. For the next year I will be working with various conservation organisations to gain experience in the conservations of birds. This current, personal migration takes me south, against the northward grain of the birds, south to Bonaire in the Dutch Antilles off the coast of Venezuela.  Here, for the next three months, I will be working with the Echo Bonaire project under the umbrella of the World Parrot Trust.  

                Echo Bonaire works to protect a subpopulation of Amazon parrot, the yellow shouldered Amazon (Amazona barbadensis).  It works in a number of ways; rescue and rehab of birds from the illegal pet trade, native forest regeneration, public interaction and scientific study. Over the next 3 months I will learn much more about Echo Bonaire, the parrots and Bonaire as a whole, first hand.

                The point of this blog is to share that learning experience and the learning experiences throughout the coming year. To share the trials and tribulations faced by a conservation biologist and to help me remember what I have done when I come to write reports upon my return to University.  To avoid insult any names of people will be changed and due to the rarity of some of the species that will play lead roles in the coming stories locations will, at times, be quite vague. I will be trying to post on here once a week, and whilst I cannot guarantee it will all be great literature, or the most well referenced scientific articles, I hope there will be some entertainment and at the very least there will be brilliant photographs.

                But for now, I know as much, or as little as you. To tell you more I must take to metal wings and fly south.