Wrapping Up

11 July 2016

The rapport of the group since Luke got here yesterday has been very different for me – a lot better than before. I think having 3 native Spanish speakers, all close friends, was kind of hard for me. They spoke fast (as a native speaker in any language would) & it was exhausting to try & keep up with the conversations. But with Luke here, the conversations are slower & since he is not a native speaker, he has a tendency to annunciate everything in order to get the right words out – this is a HUGE help for me & I can follow along with his conversations a lot better. It works out to be kind of a nice trade: he knows more Spanish & can help me translate things, while I know more about processing & handling the birds, so I help him out with that (in English, of course).

Juvenile Andean motmot

It almost makes me wish I was staying a little longer because the experience & camaraderie is a lot more comfortable & enjoyable now. I understand new jobs/situations always have a learning curve & growing pains in the beginning. I just wish it hadn’t taken so long to really feel comfortable here. But it’s still been good & I’m glad I got the experience. Last night, I was feeling kind of sad that I only have 2 more days left because we were having a good time together & I’m really loving working with the birds.  But then I woke up at 4am this morning & remembered: “oh yeah, I’m ready for this part to be over”. ;P It didn’t help that last night Loki was going ape shit, barking & crying for a really long time (poor little puppy, the farmer chains him up outside at night). It was keeping everybody awake & we didn’t find out until the morning the cause of the ruckus was a fox that had crept into the chicken coop last night & eaten one of the chickens. Mario sadly informed me that the rooster had not been the victim. >:(

Female masked trogon

Masked trogon

Masked trogon

Weighing the masked trogon

Exhausting morning aside, today was an AMAZING day for birding catching! The new site is a prime location because we caught over 30 birds today – more than any single day since I’ve been here! We estimate that there must be quite a few nests in the area, as we keep recapturing some of the same birds we’ve banded before. One of which was a woodpecker, which sadly tried to tear my hands apart as if they were a tree; another was a beautiful female trogon & one that I actually caught (she says triumphantly) was a juvenile male Andean motmot!! (It hadn’t yet plucked its 2 central tail feathers into a female-attracting pendulum.) The motmot was HUGE with such BEAUTIFUL feathers of emerald green & iridescent blue! We ended up having to tie its mouth shut with a ponytail holder, though, as it’s serrated beak (normally used for eating large insects, lizards, frogs, small rodents) would have torn apart my already scarred hands. But it was an amazing specimen & I was so excited to see one so close up!!

Andean motmot tail!

My motmot

Beautiful wings!

Very string beak

Andean motmot

I seriously need some pets in my life because working with animals just reminds me how much they can add to your life & make you so happy (even if they are trying to claw & bite their way away from you). ;P