Saturday 30 June 2012

Con tristeza


It sounds so sad, the West Peruvian dove on the fence outside my room. It looks so sad the mist-white Lima evening sky. It feels so sad to be leaving South America again, after a stolen sojourn here.

Stride through your Andes, Juan, inspiring visitors with tales of Inca kings and Spanish conquerors. Wade through those Amazonian muds, Fernando, sharing all the knowledge of the forest's birds and mammals held in your quick eyes and your sharp ears. Laugh your big laugh Renato as you usher new friends to the dry-sky wastes of Ica and Paracas.

Iré con Ustedes en mi corazón.

A rainforest lexicon


I talk a lot, especially when working with local people who have vast stores of knowledge and understanding to share. As always, on this (now-extended) trip to Peru I’ve spent hours learning from my superb, generous colleagues; nowhere more so than in Amazonia where long boat rides sped past in happy conversation, comparing names for plants and animals in Amazonian Bolivia and Peru. For the linguistically savvy, here’s a list of Peruvian names I’ve learned recently in Amazonia, and of names I used for years for the same species while I lived in Bolivia. (Note that it may contain spelling errors as these names are derived from an oral tradition and all were hastily noted in the field.)


English name
Peruvian (Tambopata) name
Bolivian (camba) name
leafcutter ant
curbinchi
cepe
walking palm species 1
pona
pachiuba
walking palm species 2
cashapona
zancudilla / pachiuba zancuda
Euterpe edible heart palm
wasaí
asaí
titi monkey
ojo-ojo

spider monkey
makisapa
marimono
river turtle
taricaya
peta
howler monkey
cotomono
manechi
bullet ant
isula
tucandera / tucanguira
tiger heron
puma garza
socó
grey-necked woodrail
unchala
caracoé
common potoo
ayaymama
guajojó
capybara
ronsoco
capiguara
Cecropia
cetico
ambaibo
Astrocaryum palm
huicungo
chonta
Triplaris tree, home to vicious stinging ants
tangarana
palo santo / palo diablo
neotropic cormorant
lavaculo
pato cuervo
Erythrina coral bean tree
amasiza
gallito
screamer
camungo (horned)
tapacaré (southern)
tapir
sachavaca
anta
fer de lance
jergón
yoperobobo / yope
bushmaster
shushupe
pucarara
giant armadillo
yungunturo
pejichi
ocelot
tigrillo
gato montés
tayra
manco
melero
undulated tinamou
¿dónde estás?
fonfón / fonfona
tinamou
panguana
perdiz
oropendola
paucar
tojo
plumbeous / ruddy pigeon
falta poco
huasca flojo
pale-vented pigeon
ya te vi

speckled chachalaca
manacaraco / mierda carajo
charata
yellow-rumped cacique
¡ay qué rico!
tojo
razor-billed currasow
paujil
mutún
jaguar
ibhá
chirapa / pata 'e lana / tigre
red-and-green macaw
guacamayo cabezón
paraba roja
blue-and-yellow macaw
guacamayo boliviano
paraba amarilla
chestnut-fronted macaw (and other small macaws)
maracana
parabachi
silky anteater
serafín
osito oro
tamandua
chiwi
oso hormiguero
giant anteater

oso bandera
vulture
gallinazo
sucha
giant otter
lobo de río
londra
sloth
pelejo
perezoso
agouti
añuje
jochi
paca
picuro
jochi pintao
squirrel monkey
huasita / fraile
saimiri
mealy and yellow-crowned parrots
aurora (which is the name used for a trogon in Bolivia)

nunbird
monjita
bati bati
violaceous jay
pían pían

blue-grey tanager
sui sui
(not present in eastern Bolivia where sayubú is used for the near-identical sayaca tanager)
white-throated toucan
tío juan
tucán latidor
coati
achuni
tejón
red brocket deer
venado colorado
huazo
grey brocket deer
venado cenizo
urina
cobalt-winged parakeet
pihuicho

pepper tick
isango
garrapatilla
giant cowbird
chichirichi
seboí grande
Tabebuia tree
tahuarí
tajibo

Kukulí


We are to be taken to the airport at seven tonight.

Rumour has it that we'll be on a flight at around midnight, if the new pump is fitted successfully.

Who knows how long I'll be in Schiphol before the once-monthly flight to Norwich?

There is a West Peruvian dove on a fence outside my room and lunch, courtesy of KLM, was yummy.


Fawlty Towers



1)    Yesterday I got up at 4:30am, having got to bed at 12:30am.

2)    On arrival in Lima we were met by a guide and a driver who were warring with one another in Spanish. ‘Why do all the drivers called Rubén cause me so much trouble?’ asked the guide. Half an hour later, on arriving at our first museum stop, she remembered to introduce herself. ‘What’s the Spanish for Fawlty Towers?’ asked one of my clients.

3)     Having visited the archaeological museum, where we were berated for not knowing our Mochicas from our Nazcas, and I’m ashamed to say I got the giggles, we had lunch at what the government styled a healthy restaurant. The health was bacteriological, not arterial.

4)    In the sumptuous town hall in Lima’s beautiful Plaza de Armas we met Miss Peru, squeezed into a skin-tight pink-shock frilly ball-gown and being photographed in preparation for her trip to China to participate in the Miss World pageant. She congratulated us on being from the country which had given the pageant to the world.

5)    At the San Francisco church we admired the catacombs where generations of vergers with far too much time on their hands had sorted the bones of thousands of faithful departed into piles of dusty skulls, femurs and tibias. Miss Peru looked fleshy by comparison.

6)    Our guide explained to us that she had been down in the catacombs during an earthquake and during one of the frequent power-cuts occasioned by the terrorism years. My clients seemed keen to leave.

7)    At Lima airport, leaving the country was as long and protracted a process as anywhere I’ve ever been; not quite as bad as entering Madagascar, but close.

8)    Around seven-thirty, the boarding time for our flight, the captain admirably and charmingly informed us that a hydraulic pump had failed on landing. Our flight would inevitably be late.

9)    Two hours or so later he told us, with a touch of frazzle in his voice, that the pump could not be fixed and a new one would have to be brought from Holland the next day. Our flight would be rescheduled twenty-four to thirty hours later.

10) Getting our exit from Peru legally cancelled, allocating us to hotels, restoring our luggage to us, bussing us to our destinations and getting us fed were a hoot. So too was the fury of some of our fellow passengers. Two elderly ladies in wheelchairs smiled benignly, amused by the drama of it all and not a bit flapped. I got to bed around two in the morning. What’s the Spanish for Fawlty Towers? (In fairness to KLM and the Sheraton Hotel in Lima, this logistical migraine was dealt with as swiftly and efficiently as could be expected under the chaotic circumstances, and all my clients seem cheery. Naturetrekkers are a nice bunch.)

11) And now in Lima we wait. Tummies full, clean beds to laze on and black vultures on a pylon outside. It could be far, far worse and I am enjoying not having to know when we have to leave for our next activity.

12) If you’re one of my UK employers and you’re expecting me to teach a workshop for you this week, I imagine I’ll be back soon.

Tan sólo escuchadas


When I made the rules of my list at the end of December last year I gave myself a grave handicap: I could only count species which I had seen. In Amazonia, of course, many birds are to be heard and not seen; but rules are rules and such species don't count. In an idle airport moment, however, I've come up with a list of birds I heard in the Amazon and Andean forests of Peru this month but which this time I didn't see. Almost certainly there are others which will emerge when I write the report of our Peruvian trip but these are the species I can remember for now. 


Birds I heard (but didn’t see) in Peru and which therefore don’t count on this daft list of mine
little tinamou
Crypturellus soui
brown tinamou
Crypturellus obsoletus
undulated tinamou
Crypturellus undulatus
tawny-bellied screech-owl
Megascops watsonii
crested owl
Lophostrix cristata
spectacled owl
Pulsatrix perspicillata
Amazonian pygmy-owl
Glaucidium hardyi
common potoo
Nyctibius griseus
collared trogon
Trogon collaris
rufous motmot
Baryphthengus martii
striolated puffbird
Nystalus striolatus
rufous-capped nunlet
Nonnula ruficapilla
pale-legged hornero
Furnarius leucopus
chestnut-crowned foliage-gleaner
Automolus rufipileatus
warbling antbird
Hypocnemis peruviana
chestnut-tailed antbird
Myrmeciza hemimelaena
Goeldi’s antbird
Myrmeciza goeldii
black-faced antthrush
Formicarius analis
rufous antpitta
Grallaria rufula
flammulated bamboo tyrant
Hemitriccus flammulatus
forest elaenia
Myiopagis gaimardii
bright-rumped attila
Attila spadiceus
screaming piha
Lipaugus vociferans
lemon-chested greenlet
Hylophilus thoracicus
dusky-capped greenlet
Hylophilus hypoxanthus
moustached wren
Thryothorus genibarbis
scaly-breasted wren
Microcerculus marginatus
Andean solitaire
Myadestes ralloides
white-eared solitaire
Entomodestes leucotis
tit-like dacnis
Xenodacnis parina