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.

 

Of the Empire

  Of the Empire

Mary Oliver

We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness. 

 

 
John Myers and Lucrecia Masaya Arias (with the wedding party)

 

Two nights ago I officiated at a wedding in Antigua, Guatemala.  The couple, John Myers (Nature Conservancy) and Lucrecia Masaya Arias (Jaguar specialist), are conservationists whose lives are dedicated to serving the life around them.  The ceremony took place in the circular tower of El Convento de las Capuchinas.  This is the room where the stone block cells of the nuns fed into a central round chamber that in this day and time was open to the sky because the roof had long crumbled.  In those times, as in now, the culture brought much insecurity to the many, and only a few had the power to perceive safety. Yet in the midst of colonialism that ,oh dear heart, please bear this pain, ruined the world were my beloved parrots and people are disappearing, there was also the commitment to build a new world based on love.  In the ruins, we find evidence that the heart is quite large.  It’s just that the last chamber that pumps blood to the body, has constricted and lets little light out to the world.

 

By candle light the couple marrying one another stood in this ancient chamber as I asked them to look to the sky, to the garden of the earth, and to the friends and family around them.  In their promises to one another, I heard all hearts there come together, letting the roof of their ego-protecting shells crumble for one moment so that we could take in the power of love around us. 

  View from one of the Nun's Cells

 

In this ruined land of the south coast of Guatemala, industrial production of sugar cane threatens to finish off what colonialism and other forms of agriculture already did to the original inhabitants here.

 May we live today looking to love so that those who come afterwards know that the Empire was not a monolith of fear and corruption, but contained an underground counter insurgency whose ranks fill with those who promise fidelity to jaguars, people, and parrots. 

 Thank you John and Lucrecia for showing all those who gathered how to open the chambers of the heart.

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

Nourishing and Healing Our Spirits and the World

Me teaching about how to nourish wild macaw chicks 

In my last blog I spoke
of how the conservation team in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve is attempting to
augment the wild macaw population by incubating eggs and placing the hatched
chick into foster nests. This process entails being able to feed the chick once
s/he hatches up until it is accepted by his or her new parents.  Feeding parrot chicks may be routine in
captive, controlled situations, but how do you prepare and serve food in areas
with spotty electricity, long hours away from any kind of store?

To answer this
question, I gave a presentation on feeding wild chicks yesterday at the
Wildlife Conservation Society’s headquarters in Flores, El Peten,
Guatemala.  I reviewed concepts and
techniques of pediatric nutrition, and demonstrated how to use Nutristart.  Nutristart is a powder that you simply mix
with hot water to have a complete diet for parrot chicks, although adding 1/8^th
to 1 tsp of peanut butter might be needed for macaws. Lafeber Company donated
this food so that WCS may feed the chicks, which will nourish the wild macaw
population.  Following this I
demonstrated how to use Emeraid, also from Lafeber Company. This is a powdered
enteral diet for weak or debilitated chicks. They do see sick and malnourished chicks
in the wild, especially the 3^rd chick, and an easily prepared
emergency diet such as this might save future lives.

 

Chepe volunteering to be a chick so I could demonstrate tube feeding 

As a wrap up for out
time together, I asked a few questions to augment my ethnoornithology study,
which is focusing on how to support the human dimension of avian conservation
in Central America.  

Filming the presentation and ethnoornithological discussion 

I asked the conservation
team members what values were important to them that they got to live out in
their work.  They spoke of the importance
of their relationships with one another: that they are united, and value the
dedication, respect, humor, and creative interplay that fills their days and
nourishes their own spirits. Under it all is their love for conservation and to
be doing something positive, with others, that helps heal the world.  I then asked what they would ask of the world
and they replied to you. “Do something real, not just for show. Every person
can do something, and what you do, no matter where you are, will help us here.”

 I translate this
into:  If the situation of the world or
your community bugs you, do something about it. 
It matters what you do!

 

Bug seen from side of road on our way back to Flores (photo by Dr. Melvin Merida) 

 

Hatching Hope

 Adult Wild Scarlet Macaw

There was a time in my life when I lived egg
incubation and psittacine pediatrics.  I’ve
been responsible for thousands of eggs and chicks in “the days.”  Recently, the work in Guatemala reminds me
how much one embryo in one egg means to me, and to others.  It is a life full of possibility, and to lose
one egg, is to lose beauty and wonder.

 Here’s the theory why incubation and raising chicks
for a short time in captivity can be an important strategy for parrot
conservation. In Guatemala¸ wild parents frequently lay 3 eggs. The 3^rd
egg appears to have lower hatchability and the 3^rd chick definitely has
a much harder time surviving – they usually die.  The thinking is, if we can help hatch these 3^rd
eggs and raise the 3^rd chick until they are strong enough, these chicks
can then be placed into wild Scarlet macaw nests where there is only one chick.
This will raise the population numbers which are frighteningly low in the only remaining
area of Guatemala with macaws, El Peten. There is also the possibility of transferring
eggs from captive parents into the wild as well.

 

 Dr. Fernando Martinez   of ARCAS pulling two eggs out of a clutch of 4 to give to Dr. Melvin Merida of WCS to transport to Laguna del Tigre

This past week I got to witness the first experiment
in seeing if egg manipulation will help the macaws here.  CONAP, ARCAS, BALAAM, and WCS are all working
together to attempt to incubate eggs and raise chicks deep into the Mayan
Biosphere Reserve, Laguna del Tigre. 

Two eggs were removed from a captive pair of
breeding macaws at ARCAS and then transported very carefully up into the
reserve.  It is a very bumpy, rough road,
and this time of year the mud makes the going even slower.  What can be a 3 hour drive turned into over 5
hours because of a broken clutch in one of the trucks.  We were worried about transporting the eggs,
in part because of the rough road, and also because the eggs were young. The
two eggs showed an embryo that perhaps only had a day of incubation, and the other
with less than week old.  Eggs this young
are fragile, and need to be kept at 99 degrees. We learned that it is somewhat
easy to maintain the eggs at 99 if the outside temperature is around 100
degrees, which it was.

 Melvin and Challo looking for missing clutch piece in mud where were we got stuck

 

Once up at the station in the forest where the eggs
will be incubated, we held our breath while we candled the eggs, which means
shining a light into the egg in a dark room. Did they survive that long
ride?  Indeed they did!

 Live embryo in egg (notice the red blood vessels surrounding embryo)

 That night we drew lots to see who would check on
the eggs and incubator through the night. 
Eggs are sensitive and we needed to monitor carefully how stable the
temperature and humidly was or was not in the incubator.  My turn came at 2 a.m.  Stumbling into the dark under a starry sky, I
looked up and mused that the stars themselves are incubators of life .What
miracle of temperature and humidity/water led to life on this fertile
planet?  I dallied under the stars,
soaking in the peace when my meditation was shattered by a Howler Monkey in a
tree right over my head.  Maybe he too
was looking up at the stars, proclaiming this his proven territory.

 The next afternoon as we prepared to leave this area
after a morning of climbing nests, we candled the eggs once more. Were they
still alive?  Indeed they were, and
growing nicely.   Hope was hatched in the vigor of this species
at such a young age and in the strength of this egg/chick management project in
such a young stage of incubation.

 Happy incubator crew after installing live eggs in new incubator room

These eggs, this forest, this planet, all are our territory.  May we prove adequate to guard and to cherish
these treasures accordingly as we continue to howl our proclamation that every
egg has inherent worth and dignity, as does every being.

 

 

 

What They Do For Love

 Rony Garcia, Head Biologist, WCS - working with video nest monitoring equipment. (Scarlet macaw chick on screen in real time in her/her nest and Rony is below nest)

I have not visited the Wildlife Conservation
Society’s project in the Mayan Bioreserve since this time last year.  The biologists  then were organizing their strategies for
studying and managing the dwindling population of Scarlet Macaws and I joined
them for a month sharing what I know about wild parrot nest and chick
health. 

Their dedication and focus appears ever more apparent.   I’m
impressed with what they are accomplishing including collaborating with other
agencies to protect the birds, guarding and checking nests regularly, and
continuing with nearly weekly chick exams. 
I shared with one member of this conservation team how wondrous it
was to see what they were doing for this species (and hence, for the whole
forest) and he replied – “We are able to do what we do because of love of the
birds.” 

Kender and Dr. Melvin Merida frying plaintains for breakfast before a morning full of climbing macaw nests. 

A few days later out on a long ride into the area of
La Corona I was interviewing members of the conservation team for a
ethnoornithology study.  It’s nearly 5
hours each way along a dirt road, hot, muddy, slippery, and with deep gashes in
the surface in some areas.  So they are perhaps
glad of the diversion my questions provide. I know I am because their answers
provoke me into seeing what is happening here as a beautiful, sacred act.  I asked them what they thought and felt when
working with the birds. One member, a climber of parrot nests, said that when
he is up on top of a tree at a macaw nest with the parents flying around him
and the chicks down below being studied by the avian conservation medical team,
he wonders if others love the birds as much as he does.

Challo Cordova prepared to do a morning's flight of checking location of Guacamayas (macaws) with radio telemetry equipment. 

I think I get what he means.  Seeing these bright beauties, holding them
and touching them, loving them, I scarce can believe that others can feel the
wonder that I do.  If they did, how could
we ever get anything done, being so drunk on flying rainbows. Wouldn’t we all
just wander aimlessly in the forest, looking up into trees, waiting for visions
to confirm that we are whole?  That the
only instructions we need to teach our children is to love? In the words of
Mary Oliver, we are here to love what is mortal, hold it against our breastbone
as if our life depended on it, and when the time comes to let it go, let it go.

Why they do what they do for love - a young Guacamaya 

I am glad to witness this work of WCS, Balaam,
Arcas, White Flight, Conap, the military and a host of others.  It gives me hope that I won’t forget what I have
done for love, and allows me move in the world so I won’t regret what we do for
love, together.

Me, grateful to be sharing this work with the parrots and people of Guatemala 

Compassionate Conservation in Central America

 

 (Yellow-naped Parrot)

Studies confirm that caregivers play host to
a high level of compassion fatigue. Day in, day out, workers struggle to
function in care giving environments that constantly present heart wrenching,
emotional challenges. Affecting positive change in society, a mission so vital
to those passionate about caring for others, is perceived as elusive, if not
impossible. This painful reality, coupled with first-hand knowledge of
society's flagrant disregard for the safety and well being of the feeble and frail,
takes its toll on everyone from full time employees to part time volunteers.
Eventually, negative attitudes prevail.

Compassion Fatigue symptoms are normal
displays of chronic stress resulting from the care giving work we choose to do.
Leading traumatologist Eric Gentry suggests that people who are attracted to
care giving often enter the field already compassion fatigued. A strong
identification with helpless, suffering, or traumatized people or animals is
possibly the motive. It is common for such people to hail from a tradition of
what Gentry labels: other-directed care giving. Simply put, these are people
who were taught at an early age to care for the needs of others before caring
for their own needs. Authentic, ongoing self-care practices are absent from
their lives. (more on Compassion Fatigue)

 

Easily
recognizable in others and perhaps ourselves, Compassion Fatigue surfaces
repeatedly in conservation.   By experiencing compassion, that is, deep awareness of the
suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it, conservation team
members may find themselves unable to contribute and communicate as efficiently
and with as much satisfaction as they would like. By combining compassion and
communication as an intentional practice tool in conservation medicine, and
drawing heavy on social and emotional intelligence, our medical
kit becomes like Mary Poppin's magical bag, a seemingly endless reservoir of
methods to attend to the multiple beings in our circles of care, including
ourselves.

 

I will be leaving
soon for Honduras and Guatemala on a Compassionate Conservation trip.  My back bedroom is strewn with gear of all
kinds to comprise my field kit for studying and supporting conservation
projects in Central America.  The projects
in which I will be partaking are:

 

Lecturing at
University in Tegucigalpa

Lecturing and
consulting at Tegucigalpa Metropolitan Zoo

Consulting, pilot study
and  survey of wild psittacine chicks in
La Moskitia, Honduras

Consulting wild
psittacine conservation, El Petén Guatemala

Lecturing at
University of San Carlos, Guatemala

Ethno-ornithological/Integral
Ecology Study

Writer/reporter/witness
regarding the lives of people and parrots in Central America

 

I go as an independent
consultant, Director of Lafeber Conservation (thank you very much for the
grants Lafeber Company!), and as myself. 
Having experienced the burn out and overwhelming challenges of front
line conservation in Guatemala, I know how important it is to have
support.  I have worked hard over the
last decade acquiring the social and emotional intelligence skills necessary
for conservation, lightening my load by letting go of some unnecessary baggage.
So though my current toolkit is packed full of medicines, cameras, and outdoor equipment,
probably the most important tools I can bring are those that deal with the
human dimensions of conservation and wildlife management.  These I carry in my heart and mind (thank
goodness as the airlines won't charge me for extra baggage!).

 

I will do my best
to text/twitter from the field, so come here for updates (either as an update
or as a twitter entry on the sidebar).

 

In compassionate
hope,

 

LoraKim

Guatemala Scarlet Macaw Chick Exam

Examining Avian and Human Virtue

At long last I have up a video in three parts that shows the Wildlife Conservation Society team of veterinarians and biologists examining wild Scarlet Macaw nest in Guatemala. It depicts a fairly thorough physical examination of wild parrots that is possible under field conditions. We learned so much about the birds, and about ourselves while doing this work in April of 2009. As you watch these videos perhaps you too can learn about what it means to be human in a community of mixed species, for me a primary religious, ethical, and hence scientific question. Like us, birds have the virtues of caring, compassion, protection, prudence, and nurturance. The parents care for their young, feed them, protect them, treat them with kindness, while also keeping a safe distance from we humans climbing the trees. You can hear the parents calling out in warning while we handle the chicks.

 

Like us, birds are anxious for the well being of other birds.  The calling of the parents echoes our own anxiety about what will happen to the younger chick, and what can we possibly do to save this one bird, let alone an entire species that is under threat from poaching, forest fires, and habitat loss that results from an economic system that is based on addiction – to consumerism, to drugs, to satisfying one’s own needs, now, at the costs of meeting others basic needs.

 

Like us, birds demonstrate perseverance, strength, and adaptability.  The youngest chick in this nest (the second one to be examined) is frightfully thin and over the next several weeks falls further and further behind in weight as her/his sibling thrives. Yet the bird lives for several more weeks as one or both parents still feed the ailing chick.

 

 

Like us, birds are beautiful, defiantly so as it seems against all odds that such a rainbow of colors and social complexity survives from egg to the powerful, gliding adults circling over us during the examination. How did such beauty come into existence and how shall it survive we ask? To answer this question we continue to examine our own lives, our own complicity in a system fraught with harm for ourselves and others, and we continue to examine these birds and their chicks, for the hope of understanding what is ours to do in this world. How shall we liberate ourselves as we liberate the birds, and love ourselves as all our neighbors?

A Bird's Eye View on Earth Day

                                                                   

                       

  Scarlet Macaw Parents Flying During Chick Exam (photo by Marcial Alvarez, WCS)

 

I arrive back to the USA on Earth Day, a fitting point of reflection to capture my month in Guatemala.  I recall an editorial in the Prensa Libre on April 21 about “Día de la Tierra.”  The author said that the earth like our body can regenerate and that it has mechanisms to break out of the ashes of a crushed forest, but only to a certain point. I wonder if we are getting close that point as I recall my month of fire and ashes in a country that loses more trees per year than Brazil, losing about 1% of its natural resources every year. When asked who is responsible for this I heard such anger, shame, and remorse come from the hearts and mouth of Guatemaltecos. Blame was placed on themselves, other biologists and conservationists, the narcotraficantes, the government, the wealthy, the indigenous people, the land invaders, and internationals.  One conservationist described people as porquería (garbage) and others said that their hope for the future comes from the possibility that the human species to go extinct.  It was rare that I heard praises sung of our kind.  If we cannot have faith in humankind’s good, I wonder if we might turn to the birds to see what they see in us and what they might say…..

 

               You ask me what I see in you when I look down on you from a high.  I see such caring and compassion.  You are spending so much effort and resources to save my kind from annihilation.  There is kindness in your voice when you speak to my chicks below during your exams and when one of our chicks is sick I can feel your heart carry the concern with you as you walk from my home to yours.  And still you find a way to laugh, play, and care for one another in your conservation projects.  We share so much – we too care, protect, and prudently care for others and ourselves.

 

                

              

            I worry though about how you see yourselves.  There is blame in your voice and disgust of your own species.  We don’t experience this as parrots.  Perhaps it is because you don’t have the over view vista that we have.  Blame isn’t even in our behavioral repertoire.  What we see is that we all are beings interacting in complex ways trying to meet our individual and collective needs.  There is no bad or good, just the process of ecology.

 

               This doesn’t mean that I don’t get angry with you.  You’ve heard my voice call out when you take my chicks’ temporarily from the nest. It is hard to trust your kind in general for from up here I see my forest burning, my food trees being cut down, and those who do not replace my chicks once they are roughly taken from by beloved nest cavity.

 

 

               Even still I wish your kind no harm. I wish you well for my heart aches for you.  There is such addiction in you, for I’m guessing you wish to still the pain.  If only you could see what I see and know in my being.  We are all inextricably interrelated, we are one.  If I could give you anything it would be this knowing that I have; that happiness isn’t what life is about.  The best that we can is to rise in love and in awareness of beauty out of the ashes of death.

 

               We have a legend of our kind that we share with you – the Phoenix Bird as some call her.  From her far up view as she circles the earth she can spot the fires over Guatemala and her heart breaks as she sees life disappear and suffer. 

 

Guatemalan Fires 2005

 

But from that view she sees too the beauty of the whole, so she flies on and on, tail dipping in ashes and feathers burning with fiery loss.  Though sometimes she falls to the earth under the burden of awareness, always she rises again with lightness in her heart. There is no other path for her. To hold the love and light she must also hold the darkness and the despair.  As the witness for mother earth she holds us all in love, compassion, and kindness, no matter the harm we experience or cause.  Hers is not an easy path, nor is yours, or ours.  But we are not alone.

 

 

We travel together, helping each other fly above the mess of our daily lives to see the long perspective – that we are here to love another, love the earth, and love ourselves.  Even though there is pain, there is always love.  Love may not be enough to quench the fire of human desire, in this moment, in this decade, but I see it rising in you ever stronger throughout the years. 

 

I want so desperately for my chicks to grow up and fly free.  This too I wish for you and all your kind that your hearts soar like the Phoenix.   May we all fly free together, forever.

 

Vuele juntos y vuele libre, para siempre!

 

             Wearing the "Fly Free" wristbands during a chick exam    

Bearing Fire in Love

For the last 5 days we have been at several areas climbing nests, El Peru, El
Burral, and La Corona.  These are the
same three areas that the Prensa Libre newspaper states on April 14^th
have out-of-control forest fires threatening. 
Indeed air around the nests is getting increasingly hazy and one cannot
escape the smell of smoke in the air.  
There are biological stations (rustic camp sites) at all three areas
which serve as staging points for biologists, the army, CONAP (those in charge
of protected areas in Guatemala), and us.

(El Peru Station)

La Corona is the farthest, a 6-hour drive from Flores. 
It is also possibly my favorite because it seems that the deeper we go
into the forest, we enter not the heart of darkness, but the heart of light and
love.  Flora and fauna abound, and this
permeates into our own beings.  With
every gut wrenching jolt in the road it seems clearer and clearer to me that I
am not separate from jaguar, macaw, tree, monkey, and ape (that would be we
humans). 

If I am one both with forest and fire
starter, then it seems that I too am on fire, and am killing what I love.  This is not an easy truth to hold but the
beauty and tragedy call to my soul to be a chalice that can hold fire and
light, and forest and darkness together. 
Every tree climbed may show us sick or dying chicks, nests emptied from
predators both human and nonhuman, or bright rainbow splashes of bird being that
are displayed as the chicks grow into their feathers for their first flight.

 

 (Scarlet Macaw chick in nest - photo by Marcial Cordova Alvarez, WCS)

We never know what the news will be, or
what each day will hold for us.  On
Saturday, April 18 we got up at 3:30 a.m. to leave at  5 a.m. for El Burral, a
two-hour drive into the forest with 4 macaw nests along the way.  We don’t get very far before the air changes
with a sense of warmth too early for the sun’s position, and then around the
next curve, fire erupts along the side of the road.  We get out to calm the flames down and ride
on, only to find the fire and burned areas becoming increasingly more abundant
on both sides of the road.  We grow
concerned because the fire is close to macaw nest trees. 

 Soon we find the road blocked with burning
trees, but we are four with two machetes and we clear the way.  With us this day are Melvin Merida
(veterinarian WCS), Alejandro Morales (veterinarian ARCAS) and Kender -tut Rodriguez, climber
and tortilla maker par excellence. 
Further on there are more downed trees and if we can’t cut up the trees
and pass on the road, we make a path through the forest and go around. 

(Kender fighting forest fire with machete)

Atop a hill we find telephone reception and
call WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) headquarters to let them know of the
threat and they send their biologists to the field for the next several days to
clear out brush around the nest trees so they won’t burn.  Over the weekend it seems that WCS personnel
are alone in fighting the fire and saving what life they can.  There is a tremendous shortage of resources,
and perhaps coordination and will as well. 
We leave the last nest unclimbed because it would mean we would be
driving at night and this could be dangerous if we encounter more fires and
blocks in the road, which we in fact do. It’s a long drive out from the fire
area as every kilometer or so we disembark with machetes to find a way forward.

 

 (Burning tree blocking road)

 

(Melvin and Kender glad to get truck around block in road)

What is the way forward?  How do we look at a dying bird and see a
smile shining through it, feel the glory? (see previous post "Preying and Praying for Life") How do we
determine what is killing our planet and what is ours to do?  

(A female Masked Tityra found on side of road as we come out of the fire. She has just died and we cannot fathom why)

How do we have faith that our attempts will
be enough?  That love is enough?  How do we go on knowing that our work or our
love may never be enough to build the world we wish to live in?

(Melvin fighting fire with our drinking water)

I leave these questions unanswered for now
for I leave tonight for Guatemala City on an overnight bus, to catch a flight
on Tuesday, April 21.  Suggestions for
which bus to take are abundant, and part of this discussion includes which ones
are most likely to get robbed.  This is
mentioned as casually as the other considerations such as likelihood that the
air conditioner will work, that the bus will be late, and that I will be able
to get any sleep. I experience confusion as well as gratitude that I have
privileges and can afford safe transportation, when others ride in terror.  Since January 1, 2009, 43 drivers and driver
assistants have been murdered in Guatemala. 
This happens during robberies and when a particular driver refuses to
pay the extortion fees to the gangs that roam the streets. It is perplexing to
me that we live in a world where violence and harm are taken for granted, where
we allow forests to burn with little intervention and people to be murdered in
the streets. 

 

Not everyone is passive. Every week in the
paper there are reports of towns that hunt down those committing violence or
robbery, and hang them, burn them, or both. 
My path does not lie in that direction, of using more violence to end
violence.  The world and my heart have
experienced enough of that.  Instead I
look to the work of WCS and ARCAS.  They
yield machetes, hammers, syringes, binoculars, cameras, and computers as they
fight, sweat, and toil for what they love, with their love.  Their hearts lead the way through the
darkness as shing chalices of hope.  In
the forest my eyes burn from the smoke, my tears mix with the ashes of the
beloved forest, and I lend what moisture I can to a world on fire as my heart
fills with joy for knowing these people and their land.

 (ARCAS Veterinarians Fernandez Martinez and Alejandro Morales, WCS Volunteer Merlina Barnes, and me at ARCAS)

Around the year 500 CE “Fire is Born” came
from Tenochuacan (current Mexico City) conquering Mayan cities, including
Tikal.  The first evidence of him
entering the Mundo Maya (the Mayan World) is on a stella in El Peru, where I
spend my last night in the forest.

 

(Stella at El Peru)

I go
to sleep, my dreams dancing with moon and stars and wonder what shall be born
from this experience of fire.  My dear people,
what sparks in you that we might turn to one another with the hope of love, and
a prayer of forgiveness and peace in our hearts?

 

(Flag placed atop hill of town Paso Caballos right outside the Mayan Biosphere Reserve.  It indicates that today is dangerous to use fire to clear land)