At night it starts to
rain, just as the frog predicted in the evening.
If it’s raining,
there is no breakfast at half past six. That’s what we were told. But no one
said what time would breakfast be then. We slip out around eight, when the rain
has eased to a drizzle. The food is brought to the table immediately.
A few meters of boat ride take us across a narrow tributary that flows into the Tiputini right next to the camp. The fact that a large machete comes along creates certain expectations. The forest is dripping and relatively quiet, if you ignore all the cicadas and other insects. There is hope of seeing sloths, but in the end we don’t see any. Instead, we see centipedes: two of them dozing on the trail, one searching something among the leaves and striking poses. We hear a fleeing deer. There are tapir tracks on the ground. We manage to see some antbirds and tanagers. The bearded manakin doesn’t show its face, but the plump blue-throated piping guans can be seen high above. A buzzing insect flying past turns out to be a tiny hummingbird. The leafcutter-ants are having a day off and aren’t carrying any leaves. These ants switched from hunting and gathering to agriculture long before humans did. A troop of squirrel-monkeys moves past, whistling.
Ramiro arranges some leaves on the ground for a while and asks whether I can see it. I look carefully. I see wet leaves. There must be a frog, but there’s nobody there, until Ramiro almost puts his finger right on it. It really is a frog. The pale thing I took for a twig was actually a stripe on the frog’s back.
The other end of the trail runs through swamp, where we have to splash through water and keep our balance rather awkwardly on slippery walkways. In the background something creaks like a rusty swing. It’s a grey-fronted dove.
Until lunch I photograph a wren behind the hut and butterflies near the bridge. The wren is very much like our own wren; even the song is similar. But this one is a house wren. The butterflies, which in the forest always land far away, now decide to settle on my trousers. But this time I have a telephoto lens, and it won’t focus that close. To make matters worse, the camera battery dies. I take the butterfly which is hanging on my trousers to Kalle, who takes a picture with his phone.
After lunch we let the current carry us and try to spot birds from the river. Right at the start a large group of squirrel-monkeys moves along the bank, eating dark fruits from the branches and crashing noisily from treetop to treetop. We see a harpy eagle, two species of swallows, a drab water tyrant, an anhinga, toucans, two kinds of anis, and an Amazon kingfisher. The toucan’s enormous bill is for eating the eggs and chicks of other birds. A dreadful creature.
We spend quite a while watching some strikingly plumaged black-capped donacobiuses. A pair nesting in the dense vegetation comes up to the tops of the tallest branches to investigate when our guide plays a bird song recording. Of course, it isn’t really nice to tease birds like that. A study on hoatzins showed higher stress levels and fewer eggs in nests in areas with many tourists. It’s unlikely that this applies only to one species, but it might depend on how fiercely a species defends its territory. In any case, technology has once again given humans a new way to harass other species.
On the way back the six-o’clock cicada sings. The time is 18:12. Yesterday it sang at 18:09. It’s falling behind.
I find a tick on my body. Its bite hurts, so it gets caught right away.
From the darkness, in addition to the usual chirring, comes a rhythmic humming.
A few meters of boat ride take us across a narrow tributary that flows into the Tiputini right next to the camp. The fact that a large machete comes along creates certain expectations. The forest is dripping and relatively quiet, if you ignore all the cicadas and other insects. There is hope of seeing sloths, but in the end we don’t see any. Instead, we see centipedes: two of them dozing on the trail, one searching something among the leaves and striking poses. We hear a fleeing deer. There are tapir tracks on the ground. We manage to see some antbirds and tanagers. The bearded manakin doesn’t show its face, but the plump blue-throated piping guans can be seen high above. A buzzing insect flying past turns out to be a tiny hummingbird. The leafcutter-ants are having a day off and aren’t carrying any leaves. These ants switched from hunting and gathering to agriculture long before humans did. A troop of squirrel-monkeys moves past, whistling.
Ramiro arranges some leaves on the ground for a while and asks whether I can see it. I look carefully. I see wet leaves. There must be a frog, but there’s nobody there, until Ramiro almost puts his finger right on it. It really is a frog. The pale thing I took for a twig was actually a stripe on the frog’s back.
The other end of the trail runs through swamp, where we have to splash through water and keep our balance rather awkwardly on slippery walkways. In the background something creaks like a rusty swing. It’s a grey-fronted dove.
Until lunch I photograph a wren behind the hut and butterflies near the bridge. The wren is very much like our own wren; even the song is similar. But this one is a house wren. The butterflies, which in the forest always land far away, now decide to settle on my trousers. But this time I have a telephoto lens, and it won’t focus that close. To make matters worse, the camera battery dies. I take the butterfly which is hanging on my trousers to Kalle, who takes a picture with his phone.
After lunch we let the current carry us and try to spot birds from the river. Right at the start a large group of squirrel-monkeys moves along the bank, eating dark fruits from the branches and crashing noisily from treetop to treetop. We see a harpy eagle, two species of swallows, a drab water tyrant, an anhinga, toucans, two kinds of anis, and an Amazon kingfisher. The toucan’s enormous bill is for eating the eggs and chicks of other birds. A dreadful creature.
We spend quite a while watching some strikingly plumaged black-capped donacobiuses. A pair nesting in the dense vegetation comes up to the tops of the tallest branches to investigate when our guide plays a bird song recording. Of course, it isn’t really nice to tease birds like that. A study on hoatzins showed higher stress levels and fewer eggs in nests in areas with many tourists. It’s unlikely that this applies only to one species, but it might depend on how fiercely a species defends its territory. In any case, technology has once again given humans a new way to harass other species.
On the way back the six-o’clock cicada sings. The time is 18:12. Yesterday it sang at 18:09. It’s falling behind.
I find a tick on my body. Its bite hurts, so it gets caught right away.
From the darkness, in addition to the usual chirring, comes a rhythmic humming.
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