*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.
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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment