Counting Wild Parrots – Counting on Wild Hope

 

 Pillar Canyon

 

Though it’s just now 6 a.m. on November 14, it is already light when Fernando Aldana comes to the door of my temporary home in Antigua.  He greets me with warm enthusiasm and apologizes for his sleeping son, David, in the back seat. We quickly plan our day and then head off to Finca Pillar for some early morning bird watching.  Fernando is a biologist and bird guide and has given his day to showing me birds and then helping to conduct a count of the parrots sleeping at the roost site used by the Yellow-naped Amazons in our study area 15 years ago.  The goal is to see how the population of parrots has changed over the years.

 

Leaning on Fernando for a Good Bird Sighting

 

We walk up a canyon trail, bundled up against the cold weather, and stop to identify the many versions of humming birds and warblers around us.  Fernando is a wonderful guide, gracious and welcoming in manner.  A real treat is his son David who has a great eye for noticing objects and animals in the environment. He helped us see many wonders, including himself who was bright, engaging, and fun to watch as he explored the trail sides.  

 

Fernando and David in Pillar Canyon

 

After midday we head down from the highlands to meet Colum Muccio and his wife Silvia Ruiz de Muccio. Colum is the director of ARCAS and Silvia is an artist whose projects and breadth of creations is astounding. Over lunch we began to talk of plans for the parrot projects of the south coast and possible grants to fund these projects.  We then drove around Escuintla and entered the study area that comprised the three fincas, Caobanal, El Trebol, and Ilusiones.  We have permission to enter Ilusiones to count the birds who roost there.

The scene is quite different than when I was here the last time in April 2009. Then the sugar cane was being harvested and loud trucks roared day and night, throwing up dust and fumes to add to the snowing ash of the burning cane fields.  This evening it is quiet as the sugar cane still grows tall  around the roost trees.  We place ourselves in locations so that we can see the birds as they fly in and then sit quietly for over an hour. 

 

Silvia and Colum Counting Parrots

 

I began to worry as it is almost dark and there is only one pair of Yellow-naped Amazons in the tree.  Three more pairs fly in for a total of 8 birds. Last year we counted 12.  Fifteen years ago we counted 250.  Though we have only 2 counts so far, I fear that we know enough – the population has crashed. We will conduct a year’s worth of counts in this area to confirm what the preliminary results show.

I admit to having a heavy heart as we drive away in the dark back into the high lands.  Still, I am grateful that I have these biologists and this young man David to witness the loss, and to share in plans of what might yet be done.  I asked David if he had hope and he said, yes, because something could still be done.  This is great wisdom – to go on working because we can. He also added via email a few days later; “There are few animals left in our big world but we have to remember not to lose the HOPE. We are responsible for the animals but (it) is very hard to make all the job so we should remember that God is there for us and in this time he is very important to help us  to conserve parrots  like the  Yellow naped  and other animals.”  His father, Fernando answered similarly. He said that his hope came from God , for what humans destroyed, God will restore. 

During the count at the roost site a lone parrot sat on top of the tall Ceiba tree acting as a sentinel.  Though I was under the sugar cane stalks, I felt as if the bird was looking directly into my soul.  She was like a bright light atop the darkly foliaged tree that once held so many of her kind.  We, the counters, are the holders of the light of love in the darkness.  As Fernando says and I agree, we can save a little bit of it at a time.

 

Looking up at Roost Tree Where Lone Parrot Perches

 

Question to all of us:

How might we save even a little bit in the face of such devastation and darkness? 

Answer to consider:

By loving a little bit at a time: even if we feel like just one lone parrot on top of a tree when there used to be hundreds.  From that beauty and rededicated observation, I believe we must count on ourselves to love ourselves as our neighbors of all species.

Thank you David, Fernando, Colum, and Sylvia for sharing this day and adding hope to our shared work a little bit at a time with every word uttered and parrot counted.

 

Mary Oliver Helps Us Mourn

 

From This River, When I Was a Child, I Used to Drink

 

But when I came back I found

That the body of the river was dying.

 

“Did it speak?”

 

Yes, it sang out the old songs, but faintly.

 

“What will you do?

 

I will grieve of course, but that’s nothing.

 

“What, precisely, will you grieve for?”

 

For the river.  For myself, my lost

Joyfulness. For the children who will not

Know what a river can be – a friend, a

Companion, a hint of heaven.

 

“Isn’t this somewhat overplayed?”

 

I said: it can be a friend.  Companion.  A hint of heaven.

 Mary Oliver

 

 

Here I am back in Guatemala after a 6 month absence. When last here I posted my blogs in the form of tweets. Somehow this seemed appropriate to use a medium of communication that relates to the diminishing bird song.  The calls of Scarlet Macaws are long gone from nearly all of Guatemala, and the Yellow-naped Amazon calls are fainter each time I come.  I mourn.

 

There was a time when I was unsure of my mourning. It was if I was the only one who knew how abundant the harmony of multiple species of parrot calls here was in the south coast of Guatemala.  People who would see my tears and read my words wondered if I was overplaying the loss. They hadn’t looked into the regretful eyes of older campesinos who tell stories of macaws, amazons, and parakeets all nesting in one giant tree.  Now it’s hard to find even the trees, let alone the birds.

 

In this poem Mary repeats to the skeptic about her friendship with the river. Perhaps she too has felt isolated with the rivers going with no one on the shores to grieve with her, as if the river song was nothing of importance.  But it is.  Mary, you, and I have company now as the rivers leave us high and dry.

In the book, Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, I read yesterday how psychologists, counselors, therapists, and scientists are increasingly aware of the illness and woundedness of humans who witness ecological devastation and extinction.  Writes Mary Watkins in the chapter, Creating Restorative Ecotherapuetic Practices, “I grasped and acknowledged that the plant and animal worlds were a source of primary attachment, a significant contributor to their (her patients) resilience in the face of great difficulties and disappointments in human life, and a wellspring of faith in beauty and goodness.”  Rivers, trees, birds, mountains, oceans, and flowers all befriend our kind.  So I am glad that it is more mainstream to grieve together as a community of mixed species.  That’s step one and it is hardly nothing.  We must hear and sing death songs, as Mary describes in my blog of two days go.  But what next?

 

 

On my part,  I will go in two days to the place we called "Parrot Paradise" where once there were hundreds of parrots and see if any songs remain.  In scientific terms, |will be doing a quarterly count of a parrot roost site so we can document the falling numbers of parrots in this area.  In heart terms mixed with the science, I shall grieve and tell the world about it in journal, conference, presentation, and wail.

 

What will you do?

 

 

 

The Way of Beauty

 

Presentation "Avian Conservation in Guatemala:  The Intersection of veterinary medicine, biology, and human rights." (San Carlos University Master program in Conservation and Wildlife Management)

 

For nearly as long as I have been a veterinarian, I have been coming to Guatemala.  Over a span of 24 years I can tell a story of parrot conservation here in this land whose beauty, and the loss of it, hurts.  But it also a beauty that sustains. So I told a group of biologists and veterinarians studying for their Masters in Conservation and Wildlife Management at the University of San Carlos this past weekend.

Being with them was part of my conservation efforts in Guatemala, first in the north in El Peten with the Scarlet Macaw, and now in the South Coast with the threatened Yellow-naped Amazon . My plan has been to hold discussions with various groups in the hopes of building a coalition that would plan concrete steps to salvage what we may before we lose any more beauty from the world, resulting in only beauty behind us and not before us.

 

Yellow-naped Amazon at Los Tarrales (ecotourist reserve)

So that I could share more of the story I went with faculty and students of the School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Husbandry to visit fincas that could serve as nuclei for avitourism, research, and conservation.  On the way into these isolated spots of flora and fauna, we could not avoid seeing the destruction of sugar cane.  One finca owner, Andy of Los Tarrales, reported to us that one sugar cane factory is not just burning cane, but also approximately 200 truckfulls of mature wood a day (felled trees).  He fears for what we might actually be able to accomplish here given the extensive infiltration of sugar cane economy in so many industries within Guatemala.

Sugar cane factory smoke stacks in background, with sugar cane crops lining the highways.

We have to try, try hard, and try now – so goes the sentiment that I am hearing across the groups I am have worked with this past month in Central America.  We cannot cease from the work before us, for we know not what may yet flower.

 

Field workers in Finca San Julien

 

So we work, for what else can we do?  Until 11 p.m. at night the students and professors catch bats in mist nests upon star graced hillsides, identifying the species amongst squeals and laughter. 

 Bat caught in mist nets in Los Tarrales

We get up early the next morning to walk the hillsides searching ever more diligently for parrot activity.  The next day begins early too, my final day here which starts at 4 a.m.  I journey to Guatemala City to catch my flight back to the United States, grateful for those that are willing to meet me at the airport to squeeze in one more meeting so that we might ponder the way forward, the way of beauty.

Los Tarrales Nature Reserve