Notes from my field course in Ecuador:
--- I'm birding in Ecuador. During most of the first hikes - "bird walks" - I was on , I didn't pay too much mind to the birds we were supposed to be seeing - or at least, to who they were. It became a joke - "Look, a bird!" (my call) "Which one?" (the reply) "Big one! Blue one! Green one! New one!" (a Dr. Seuss book of my responses) I've been avoiding engaging on bird walks because I don't care about "the list." I'll explain - birding "properly" always seems to involve making a list of all the species you have seen. Check, check check. There are lists for the day, lists for the trip, and lists that people add to over the course of their entire lives. There are many, many rules for these lists, and the rules vary based on the personal standards of whoever you ask. A particularly frustrating one to me was - if you only hear it, it doesn't count. Perhaps there's also a rule against adding it to the list if I see it only during the crepuscular hours on Wednesdays. I don't know who is in charge of making such rules, but the birder's I've met have always seemed very uncomfortable with me making up rules of my own. Besides, I've never been one for rules in general. So I eschew the list. I take photos of my classmates on our walk, looking through their binoculars, taking notes, and playing bird songs on their phone. I try to find the essence of birding in framed shots. Perhaps if I can capture the feeling of what birding is like on my camera, I will understand it. We are walking down a dirt road at dawn to see tiny creatures flit through the air. I see the morning light; it brushes warmth across the cheeks of my friends. I see empty rice bags draped over fence posts; they hint at the story of what someone left behind in the green swath of the field. I see the brilliance of the silvery clouds; they gleam reflectively and symmetrically both in the sky and in the standing water of the rice fields. We move slowly, almost at a standstill, when there are birds about. I see the stillness; they look through their binoculars. Then we flit to the next one. I repeat this process on several of our bird-intentioned walks. Sometimes, I hang back and ask questions about the plants we're seeing; but I'm having a hard time committing any of the plant names to memory. Some families are easy to identify, so those are easy and relevant to remember. But we're moving up and down the Andes every day, and we aren't often coming across the same species as neighbors and friends. If I'm never going to see them again, I won't spend time pouring over specificities. Rather, I take note of the generalities - the size of the trees, their leaves, the colors of their bark. How many epiphytes there are growing on their branches. What the air in the forest feels like on my skin. What it smells like. How softly the raindrops slide off leaves and onto my skin. How lovely the light looks streaming through the leaves at the crepuscular golden hours of the day. --- I am finally in one forest for more than a day. Our group has made it to the lowlands; the most biodiverse tropical wet forest area in the world. In familiarity, we find comfort, and we venture out to explore by ourselves. I enjoy walking solo for a few short times, finally capturing glimpses of several kinds of primates (shy creatures such as these are usually not conducive to being seen by 20-person strong groups who chatter loudly during their walks in the forest). Then I start walking with a few others; people who have practiced how to step softly and keep their voices low. I set out with two others, Meghna, my good friend from home and Gonzalo, a friend from Ecuador who we have met recently on this trip. I haven't been walking with the bird group in this forest - best to leave them to enjoy it for themselves, I've though. But Meghna loves watching birds, and tells me that, though Gonzalo is an expert, he is not only a list maker. He draws pictures; depicting the birds' feathered forms in soft, grey lead lines, and he's excellent at spotting their tiny bodies in the kaleidoscope world of the forest. If I am ever to understand what passion looks like in a birder, Meghna suggests I look here. We set out at 4:30pm, just after the forest is just starting to wake up from its afternoon nap. Sunlight glitters through the leaves and washes the world in golden, tungsten light . We hear macaws and parrots and see a few kinds of monkeys. We're walking stealthily through the forest and communicate mostly in mouthed words, low whispers, and gestures. We see few birds, but the trees wave lazily in the wind, and the afternoon walk is lovely and invigorating. I'm watching some monkeys - they're caught in a common dispute. Baby is awake and wants to play, but mom is still sleeping lazily on a tree branch. She tucks the babe up onto her back and they both become still, cuddling in the warm light. I was content and captivated by the scene, when Meghna and Gonzalo hear a bird. Apparently, one that is hard to spot. I see both of them become alert and aware. They are different than the birders I'm used to walking with. They don't jerk to attention and twitch their head this way and that, imitating the creatures they are desperately trying to find. They become slow. They stand tall. They put their hands under their ears look at the green, layered stage in front of them with wide, slow-moving eyes. They see it. There's a ssst! and swiftly gesture pointing towards a tree and tracing it up to (where I assume) the bird is perched. Meghna and Gonzalo both have their binoculars pressed up against their faces and speak of how beautiful the bird is in low, soft voices. I scan the green canvas in front of me, but don't see any clues. There are no bouncing branches or lilting songs. I place my binoculars to my face and scan the area that Meghna and Gonzalo's lenses seem to be pointed in. In my magnified view, leaves blow gently in the wind and seem to mock my ineptitude. Every hint of movement seems like a bird's fluttering wings; and though I strain to hear a cheap! or a tw-eet!, the leaves rustling only emphasize how much my ears are straining to hear something in the silence. As is usually the case, I can't find the bird. After a few minutes, I go back to the monkeys. I can see them without much difficulty. My giant, dark, fuzzy lumps are bobbing lazily on their branch, snuggling cozily in post-nap bliss. My binoculars are pressed to my eyes, and I didn't realize Gonzalo had crossed the few feet over towards me until he put his hands on my shoulders. "Let's try again," he whispers, "I think you can see it." His voice and face express sincerity, rather than mocking that usually comes from my birding companions. I have less confidence in his second statement, but I return to the spot that he and Meghna have been watching. I am already silently justifying how being unable spotting this bird doesn't matter to me. I don't have a list, and the only birds I've ever seen are so far away that they always appear as little black dots, silhouettes against white sky, even in my binoculars. I am not excited about them. I don't understand them. I don't need to see them. Obviously, they don't have much of an interest in being seen by me; and I am more that willing to allow them their privacy. But Meghna and Gonzalo are both so earnest in wanting me to see this beautiful thing. They are quiet and patient and doesn't seem so frustrated with the fact that I am practically blind to finding this tiny thing against the forest backdrop. They both trying to explain where to look, which is convoluted at best: "Look at the tree. No, not that tree. The other tree. The tree with the smaller tree next to it. No, the two trees behind those trees. No, not that far back, the ones in the middle. The one with three branches. Do you count three branches? No, it has more than three branches, but the bird is on the third branch. Are you sure you're looking at the right tree? Which tree are you looking at?" After this frustrating bout of whispers, Meghna moves behind me, tries to follow my gaze, pushes me two steps further left. The her hands move my head to point further down. I feel like a telescope being adjusted to look at a very specific star. "Try now." I press the binoculars to my face and search - first with just my eyes, trying not to move my head and betray the fact that I see nothing in magnified the glass. Gonzalo is intently watching me look, Meghna slightly less so - but can feel both pairs of eyes on me. There's a whole lot of looking going on between the three of us. I am very uncomfortable because, unusually, a lot of the looking seems to be focused on me. I wonder if the birds feel this I think to myself. This thought snaps out of my head as I feel Gonzalo's hand on my shoulder again, and I try to refocus my efforts on sincerely hoping to see this bird. He leans over me so that his gaze is almost the same as my gaze, turns my shoulders a teeny bit to the right, and points his arm over my shoulder in the direction I need too look in. "Try now." I think I finally understand which tree I'm supposed to be looking at - there are two trees close to each other in the middle-ground of the forest in front of me, and the smaller tree has three branches. I find its trunk in my binoculars and follow the tree up... 1, 2, 3... Finally. I see this bird. It's simply sitting there on this branch as it has been this whole time, and it seems obvious that this is where it was the whole time. The bird is really close. I can see its eyes, and the details of its small beak. It sits on the branch like a little puffball, smooshed up on itself. Though I have never before seen a bird that I would describe as lazy, I swear it looked similar to the way the monkeys were basking in the warm light on their branch up so much higher and further away. I am lost in the reverie of this bird, watching it move and flutter and twitc- "So?! do you see it?" Meghna whispers impatiently. She thinks I'm still willing to see this bird, searching through my bionoculars with more hope than vision, because I haven't said anything. I say yes, distractedly, because for the first time ever, I'm watching a bird, and I feel... something. I can feel my face work it's way into a smrik when Gonzalo asks, "What color is it?" He's testing me to make sure that I see it, that I'm not just saying that I've seen it. I don't even lower my binoculars to I answer, "blue and orange - blue on top with an orange belly..." and I would have started to ramble more about the colors and the eyes and how he kept moving on the branch, but I could see Gonzalo smile out of my peripherial vision, and I could hear Meghna stifling a laugh. Although I felt embarrassed when Gonzalo brought me back over, when Meghna gently shoved me two steps to the left, when Gonzalo literally had to point me in the right direction to look - I didn't feel embarrassed anymore. They were genuinely as happy as I was - to have seen this bird, and to have shared it. "What's his name?" I asked. Gonzalo answered: "the GREAT JACAMAR." For first bird I've ever truly met, I could not have picked a better name.
0 Comments
A village visit Apologies for the delay in posts - things got a little bit busy around here! Continuing on the theme of the master's students visit and our excursions, I'll recount for you our amazing visit to the village of Ebyeng! --- This day was undoubtedly my favorite day in Gabon so far. The people from the village, Ebyeng (pronounced eb-YANG) were so wonderful. They took so much time to tell us all about their village and their lives. The people were friendly and welcoming, and had a very impressive village association which was in charge of the the goings-on of the village. We first had a meeting with the village association and many other villagers. Everyone spoke together, asking questions back and forth. We learned a lot about daily life in the village: what food they plant in their plantions, where they get their water, how they have a generator for electricity when there is enough money to buy gas, and various other things that people do. They asked us a wide range of questions, from what our role was in conservation to how to protect against malaria and if advances were being made in medicine to prevent and/or treat the disease. The ladies present at this meeting would sing songs - beautiful songs! - throughout to welcome us, to thank God for bringing us together, to open the meeting, to close the meeting, etc. After that some of the village hunters brought us into the forest and taught us how they hunt. Hunting of non-protected species is legal in Gabon for subsistance purposes year-round, which is what the people in Ebyeng do. We walked on the trails that they use to take into the forest and they explained to us what animals they try to look for. For example: duiker, which is kind of like a African deer. We were also shown their nursery, which had hundreds of seedlings of different tree species growing. They chose which trees to grow based on which species are threatened by logging. They also showed use their reforestation project, which took these seedlings from the nursery and replanted them in the forest to give the trees and chance to grow and thrive. Next, we transitioned into talking about food. We visited a plantation and the women in charge of it showed us some of the plants that are planted there: manioc, hot peppers, peanuts, and squash were all mentioned. Following, they showed us demonstrations of how to prepare manioc and use the various seeds (squash seeds) and nuts (peanuts) that they harvest to make different sauces to cook with. At last, for the huge finale, they invited us all into their salon for a huge feast! The meal was amazing - there was fish with squash seed sauce and peanut sauce, hunks of manioc, tapioca (also made of manioc), and manioc leaves prepared with another kind of nut sauce. After everyone had eaten and drank to their heart's content, the women started singing again. They sang beautifully and tirelessly as everyone danced to their songs. Each person had a turn wearing the raffia skirt and dancing in the center of the room to the beats of clapping and stomping. Everyone had an amazing time, and we all left with smiles on our faces! Tree of the WeekFamily: Olacaceae
Genus: Heisteria Species: parvifolia Heisteria parvifolia is a low, dense, bushy tree species that is common in mature forests. The leaves are pink when new, green when middle aged, and turn yellow before they fall off. The fruits are very distinct; they look like pink flowers with a pearly white bubble in the middle. This white bubble is the fruit, and attracts many animals due to its sweet, sugary flesh. The death of a treeThis past week, a group of American university students visited Ipassa for a few days! It was wonderful to meet all of them and get to know them over the course of a few days. Being the first time I had seen visitors from home, it was a little overwhelming to suddenly have more than ten people to chat with! But we got along very well and were able to accompany them on a couple of grand excursions. First off, I’ll tell you qbout our visit to the logging concession, where we saw the process of logging in action and became familiar with the effects of logging first hand. --- After an hours-long drive into the logging concession, we held our hands up in surrender to the mud: our Land Rover could make it no further. We filed out of three cars and loaded into a giant tractor that would take us the rest of the way. It was the only vehicle whose tires wouldn't spin and dig into the slop and goop that was the ground below us. Despite its enormous size, we had still been squished in like sardines for the ride. Upwards of 15 people were balanced carefully in various positions: sitting on the sides with their feet sticking off the back, balanced on the engine in front of the driver, squished in next to the control levers, stood with their hands bracing them during the bumps and wobbles, or hung on from the back and ducked whenever a liana swept over the giant cage overtop of the people inside and swooped back down into the air. After a long ride, everyone jumped off of the giant tractor. My legs were wobbly and my hands stiff from hanging onto the vibrating vehicle for upwards of 40 minutes. Vincent, a post-doc whose specialty is in tropical forestry, gave us a briefing on what the loggers do on a normal day and the types of trees that they cut down. Up until this point I had only seen Vincent in his position of logistics coordinator, a position he excels at but which usually requires him to be talking to someone on the phone. He organized dates, times, meetings, grocery shopping, lunches, dinners, safety briefings - everything you could think of, Vincent had thought of it first. He was good at it, but you could tell it was a stressful job. Now, in the forest, Vincent seemed a little bit different. He was in his element here, talking about every process with easy and fluidity, answering every question with the knowledge of someone deeply immersed in a subject they love. One of the most important points in our introduction to logging talk was this: if someone tells you to move, move. If someone tells you to run, run. As one of the few French-speakers in a group mostly non-French-speaking Americans, I resolved to be on alert and ready to give people instructions. Just in case. We walked into the forest on a large trail, which soon thinned and split into multiple slinking paths through the forest. At the intersections, saplings were marked with machete cuts that served as informational signs: the number of cuts on the tree to the denoted the number of trees to be cut that could be found on the trail that split off. We soon turned off left onto a trail that lead to three trees who were marked for the saw. The first tree we approached was fairly small; the diameter couldn’t have been wider than my arms’ reach. Vincent explained the process of cutting quickly, and then the chainsaws roared to life. Wedges were slowly cut out of the tree buttresses and the trunk was sawed through with care. The last step was to slice through the final buttress that kept the tree attached to its wide roots in the ground. When they did, the tree fell. It happened in surprisingly slow motion, like in movies when a person falls to the ground after being shot. The tree itself creaked and groaned as it came down. Other trees in its path snapped, cracked, and popped. At last the canopy reached its arms towards the ground, sweeping a grand number of trees into its embrace and pulling them along with it, wiping the sky clean and opening up the quiet forest to the loud brilliance of the midday sun. There was a thunderous roar, the ground shook, and then it was over. This giant beast of a tree who had survived storm and drought, fungus and insect, gazelle, gorilla and elephant had fallen. The second tree we saw cut was larger. It was at least as wide as I am tall. There were complications in cutting it; the bole of the tree cracked mid-cut and trapped the blade of the saw underneath the weight of the tree. In the end, this tree didn’t fall as planned. It creaked and cracked and fell closer to us than expected. We all ran; missing the grace and slowness of its fall but unable to escape its thunderous reverberations through the forest: Though it happens every day; I felt the gravity of the word “deforestation” weigh down upon me. Of the guardians of the forest; there were now fewer. Tree of the weekFamily: Fabaceae (Papilionoides)
Genus: Pterocarpus Species: soyauxii Known as paduk locally, this tree is a prized timber species known for its rich, red wood. Phenology made for tranquil, if predictable, work this week. Here's a list of some things that have been otherwise occupying my time. 1. Boiling water Ensuring that we have enough drinking water is my perpetual project, the bane of my existance. Every night we boil a big, big pot of water and let it cool overnight before we pour it in the filters. The filters empty into bottles, which go in the fridge and on the shelf in the kitchen when the fridge is full. It's good to have a stockpile - if we run out of water, a shower can wait, but drinking water is a necessity 2. Reading Desert Solitaire Ah! It's twisted how desperately and predictably I lust after what I don't have. Right now I am missing my other love, the desert. Edward Abbey describes the harsh lines, blinding colors, and sere heat of my one, true home in sweet, descriptive prose: "lavender clouds sail like a fleet of ships across the pale green dawn" "the sun burst out above the canyon rim, flaring like a white scream" I tried to start reading the book in February, but it made me too homesick then. Now it's a comfort; reminding me that such a place truly does exist outside the dim corners of my memory. 3. Exploring elephant/plant relationships I am so wildly uninterested in studying animals for the sake of studying animals. Sure, I like hearing chimps and seeing elephants on the river and watching blue turacos glide across the canopy at sunset, but good lord, I am bored to death by the thought of studying them. Only once I start thinking about them in the context of a complicated web of ecological relationships can I get excited enough to properly nerd out about them in a scientific way. Probably because it appeals to my hippy-dippy tendencies; at it's base, ecology is all about how all living things are connected, man. 4. Learning how to play the ukulele Current faves are by Bob Dylan and Tallest Man on Earth, mainly because they don’t have a lot of chords that require bars and/or disjointing your pinky from your hand.. 5. Rooftop sunsets The best (and sometimes only) place to get cell service, alone time, and a view that skims over the treetops. Tree of the weekFamily: Mimosoideae
Genus: Tetrapleura Species: Tetraptera Voila! The leaves, buds, flowers, new, and old fruits of Tetrapleura! The fruits of this tree have a milky, earthy, almost-but-not-quite chocolatey sort of smell (think Bailey’s – a little bit fermented). The seeds are small disks that rest in the center spine of the plus-sign shaped fruit, and are known to be eaten by elephants and gorillas as well as humans, who use them to flavor soups and sauces. The fleshy wings of the fruit are also boiled to create a beverage - a little bit like coffee - that is said to soothe stomach maladies. |