Refugio Paz de las Aves; a good news ecotourism story

Ecuador is a wonderful destination for anyone who cares about nature, and it seems that the government actually realises this. One of the wonderful things about the country to me is that it has an official National Avitourism Strategy! I wish my country did... An important part of the strategy is the involvement of local communities in helping people see the astonishingly rich birdlife of Ecuador - in just 280,000 square kilometres (about the size of Victoria, for my Australian readers) there are some 1600 bird species, which is an amazing 15% of the world's total, and more than half of all South America's! One of the cornerstones of birding tourism in Ecuador is the rich Mindo Valley area, a little north-west of Quito, part of the Chocó cloudforest bioregion, one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. Many people have worked to protect and promote it, significant among them being members of the Mindo Cloudforest Foundation, but one resident, a quiet smiling man, has earned a place in birding folklore.

Ten years ago Angel Paz and his family were poor farmers, contributing in their small way to the incremental loss of the cloud forests. Today they are regarded as pioneers and leaders in cloud forest conservation tourism. Until recently their place - open only through bookings - was better known as Paz de las Antpittas, but the more general name seems now to be preferred. Paz in Spanish means peace; 'Peace of the Birds' is a lovely name, apart from the allusion to the family behind it.

Angel Paz (and a blogging birder you may have heard of).
Photo courtesy of Juan Cardenas - gracias amigo!

In 2004 Angel discovered a small Andean Cock-of-the-Rock lek in a forest gully and, encouraged by local bird lodges to diversify his income, he built a track down to it to attract birding visitors. 

Cloud forest, Paz de las Aves.

During the building process he noticed a plain bird following him in the hope of obtaining worms; all he knew of it was that it was edible. Fortunately on this occasion he resisted any temptation in that direction, and local ecotourism operators convinced him that if the cocks were silver attractions to birders, then Giant Antpittas were pure gold. 

Giant Antpitta Grallaria gigantea, Paz de las Aves.
Antpittas (not at all related to 'real' pittas) are a group of mostly ground-dwelling members of the uniquely South American funariids, notoriously hard to see anywhere - until the advent of Angel Paz.

Angel took to feeding the birds with worms. It took months, and persistence in the face of objections from his wife who suggested on more than one occasion that there were better ways of spending his time than feeding his forest chooks, but eventually individuals of four different antpitta species had become habituated. These birds are notoriously shy and hard to see, so the concept of them coming out to a group of visitors is remarkable. 

Ochre-breasted Antpitta Grallaricula flavirostris, Paz de las Aves.

Yellow-breasted Antpitta Grallaria flavotincta, Paz de las Aves.

 

Chestnut-crowned Antpitta Grallaria ruficapilla, Paz de las Aves.This is a relatively recent addition to Angel's successes; I first saw it there in 2014.

Moustached Antpitta Grallaria alleni, Paz de las Aves.

Angel has tried tempting them with worms from the garden, but they are adamant that free-range forest worms are best, requiring a lot of work on his part. 

These are not the only birds he has patiently trained to come to his call to feed either. Dark-backed Wood-quail Odontophorus melanatus are New World quail, not related to the Old World quail; it is another heart-breaker of a bird to find normally - my trusty Ecuadorean field guide says it is normally encountered "only by chance". Not so at Paz de las Aves.

 

Dark-backed Wood-quail, Paz de las Aves, another dream-like encounter.
Here the attraction is not worms, but fruit.

By now nothing should surprise about Angel's abilities, but when I returned in 2012, the latest addition to his list of bird familiars still startled me. Tapaculos are another almost mythically skulking group of dense forest ground-dwellers, also funariids. A bird often heard in the Ecuadorean cloud forest where its piercing whistle carries long distances - but almost never seen - is the wonderfully named Ocellated Tapaculo Acropternis orthonyx, an unusually large and spectacularly coloured tapaculo.

Ocellated Tapaculo, Paz de las Aves.
As I sat within a very few metres of this extraordinary bird, I could scarcely believe what I was seeing.

Reserve managers now come to Angel from other parts of Ecuador and further afield to learn the tricks of the trade. I understand that different species of antpittas in Peru and Colombia at least are now being attracted by regular worm-feeding. 

Angel's fruit-feeders attract many other very special forest birds too, especially at that period when the rainforest fruiting trees are drying up. 

Black-chinned Mountain Tanager Anisognathus notabilis (above),
and Sickle-winged Guan Chamaepetes goudotii (below),
both succumbing to the lure of Angel's bananas.

 

I should note that the birds are in no way permitted to become dependent on the hand-outs, which are strictly limited. And there are of course many birds which do not have any interaction with people, but are present simply because of the excellent habitat. The remaining three photos, all taken at La Paz de las Aves, are of mostly indifferent quality, but they portray very special birds; I trust you will forgive me.

 

White-faced Nunbird Hapaloptila castanea, a very rarely encountered bird and this is the only one I've seen

Orange-breasted Fruit-eater Pipreola jucunda, a delightful little cotinga.

Toucan Barbets Semnornis ramphastinus, one of my favourite South American birds,
not least for their wonderful honking duets.
It has relatively recently been recognised that the New World barbets are not closely related to the Old World ones; the Toucan Barbet and one other species are now placed in another family again.

Golden-headed Quetzal Pharomachrus auriceps.Truly a glorious bid; pity about the branch in front of it!

Today the Paz forest is a must for any visiting birders, the family is comfortably off, and they have diversified into fruit growing, which in turn attracts more birds. It is very hard to see a downside to the story, and I'm sure there will be more spinoffs as the word spreads further.

Try to visit Ecuador if you possibly can, and be sure to include a visit to La Paz de las Aves when you do so. Things change there constantly; you probably won't see all of these species in one visit, but on the other hand you're very likely to see others. That's the joy of it.

BACK ON MONDAY

When Nature Satirises Art...

The view from over the fence of a very fancy and pricey-looking winery-cum-conference centre in the Margaret River area of far south-western Western Australia.

Whether this Little Black Cormorant Phalacrocorax sulcirostris was perfecting the pose or just taking the mickey,
I reckon she just about nailed it.
The statue's right arm might offer a hint as to her motives though.

BACK FRIDAY FOR A 'PROPER' POST!

On This Day, 8 October; birth of William Swainson - parrot and goose

William Swainson, a passionate and skilled English naturalist and artist, was born on this day in 1789. Unfortunately his passion seemed to blind him to his own limits at crucial points of his career, a myopia which can either lead to greatness, or – as in his case – a tumble into something malodorous.

At the age of 14 he followed his father into the customs service, but already the lure of natural history was loud in his ears and in order to travel he joined the army (not as a combatant, but on the staff of the Commissary-General) and spent years immersed in the plants and animals of the eastern Mediterranean. Unspecified illness forced him from the army at age 26 on half-pay to pursue his real love, which by now was further empowered by discovering and developing his considerable skills as an artist. Crucially this happened at just the time that the new process of lithography was being introduced, enabling an artist to draw directly onto a stone printing block (with a waxy pencil, to which oily inks adhered) rather than having to rely on an engraver to accurately interpret the artist’s work on a copper plate. Teams of colourists hand-coloured the books, following the artist’s colour template. This was a revolution akin to modern publishing software, allowing artists to self-publish. 

Swainson did just that, pioneering the technique among naturalists, following a trip to Brazil which he undertook almost as soon as he left the army. He was not the first or last naturalist to succumb to the call of the tropics. Nor was he the first or last to have trip to the tropics disrupted by political upheaval, but he collected enough to begin a series of subscription-paid books of Brazilian birds, and of shells, on which he had become an authority. They were published in sections, each section subsidising the next.

Several bird names were published by him, including some Australian ones. He was sufficiently respected for the French ornithologist Anselme Desmarest to name a particularly spectacular Australian parrot in his honour.

 

male Superb Parrot Polytelis swainsonii, Mulligans Flat Nature Reserve, Canberra.

Additionally, bird species from Africa and the Americas were also named for him, though not all the original names have survived.

 

Swainson's Thrush Catharus ustulatus, Mindo Valley, Ecuador.
This species was named by the US-based English ornithologist Thomas Nuttall.

Meantime, most unfortunately, he had enthusiastically espoused the new classification system developed by WS MacLeay, the Quinary system. (MacLeay had already been a diplomat and judge in the Spanish-English slave abolition commission in Cuba and went on to play a major role in Australian entomology.) It was a serious attempt at classification, but from our perspective it was also seriously loopy. Groups of animals were allocated to one of three circles, containing respectively ‘typical’, ‘subtypical’ and ‘aberrant’ members of the group. The ‘aberrant’ circle was further divided into three circles (hence the five of the quinary). Associations of species in different circles were linked with lines. The leading biologists of the day took an interest – then shied away from its utter arbitrariness and irrelevance to the real world. Not Swainson though. He was excited by the evident links between tigers and zebras, on the basis that both are ‘striped and impossible to tame’. Or baboons and whales with ‘head very large, little or no tail’, or macaques and rodents with ‘tail relatively long, hare-lipped’. This did not enhance his standing, but it didn’t totally destroy it either.

Cheaper book printing processes also developed at this time, and Swainson contributed to the revolution in learning which accompanied the availability of affordable books by writing for Dionysius Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopedia series. He produced 11 volumes on a wide range of topics before the difficulties of working with Lardner got too much for him and he emigrated to New Zealand. The question of the relative contribution to this move of his problems with Lardner and the fall-out from the Quinary episode is unclear; both are cited as reasons.

He should probably have stayed in New Zealand, though Maori land claims over ‘his’ estate meant it wasn’t an entirely happy time. However, for reasons and in ways not at all clear, he was head-hunted in 1853 by the Victorian government to work on the colonial tree flora; as far as I can determine he had never published or even shown any particular in botany before. Beware the late arrival in a field. With explicit disdain for those who had gone before, he listed in his report 1520 Victorian ‘gum trees’ and 213 casuarinas (where we now recognise about 14). He would have done more but ran out of names… 

He died two years later back in New Zealand. He predicted ‘surprise and almost incredulity amongst the botanists of Europe’. Indeed. Sir William Hooker of Kew – a man noted for his tolerance and tact – wrote to von Mueller “in my life I think I never read such a series of trash and nonsense. There is a man who left this country with the character of a first rate naturalist, and of a very first rate natural history artist, and he goes to Australia and takes up the subject of botany, of which he is as ignorant as a goose.”

Given this, the existence of the Australian pea genus Swainsona might seem surprising, but in fact it honours William’s much older cousin Isaac, botanical garden owner, herbalist – and purveyor of apparently quack medicines.

 

Swainsona galegifolia, Liverpool Range, New South Wales.

Perhaps William should have left the plant side of biology to him; it’s probably better to be remembered as a parrot than a goose.

BACK TOMORROW WITH A LIGHT OFFERING

Living on the Nullarbor

In the last posting I waffled enthusiastically about the wonderful Nullarbor Plain, and summarised the drive across in terms of the physical environments and vegetation encountered. Needless to say there is plenty of wildlife to see too, though much of it is small and tends to keep its collective head down out of the wind and out of view.This is not true of all animals though.

Dingo, Canis lupus dingo, east of Nundroo.
These Australian wolves can be seen anwhere, at any time of the day. See here for more information.

Crimson Chat Epthianura tricolor, Head of the Bight.
Note that Australian chats have no relationships with anything called a chat in other lands;
we now know in fact that they are true honeyeaters.

Birds however are probably more evident in the treed sections either side of the treeless plain.

Major Mitchell Cockatoo Lophochroa leadbeateri, near Nundroo.
This truly glorious cockatoo is thinly scattered across the arid inland.

Yellow-plumed Honeyeater Lichenostomus ornatus, Nundroo, gleaning scale insects from mallee eucalypt leaves.

Nankeen Kestrel Falco cenchroides pair, Eucla.
The dragon lizard in the claws of the larger female on the right is a reminder that, as throughout dry Australia,
lizards are a dominant life form here.

Indeed, the animal you're most likely to see with some regularity in warm weather is the aberrant skink that I grew up calling affectionately Sleepy Lizard, but which is more generally known as Shingleback Tiliqua rugosa. They are regularly encountered crossing the road and some certainly don't get to the other side, but it does seem to me that drivers may be showing more lizard-awareness than in times past. The number of casualties seems low relative to the number of live ones seen, given that they are pretty ambling by nature, and have the unfortunate habit of stopping to threaten the car that's just passed, instead of getting off the road.

Tiliqua rugosa

Tiliqua rugosa

Tiliqua rugosaTil

One of the many endearing things about Shinglebacks is that they seem to pair for life, an unusual behaviour among reptiles - indeed among animals in general.
Much more to be said about these animals, one of my very favourites, in a post to come!

However, there is one animal, a mammal, which is probably the one that most people making the crossing between May and October make a special effort to see. These days though, thanks to the Yalata Aboriginal Community which runs the excellent interpretive centre, and the South Australian Parks Service, the effort to see this spectacular animal is minimal. In fact, I suspect this is one of the world's truly great land-based whale-watching experiences.

From this platform on top of the spectacular Bunda Cliffs can be seen at close quarters....

Tail of Southern Right Whale Eubalaena australis, immediately below the cliffs.

In May these mighty animals begin to appear in the Bight - and other southern Australian waters - having migrated north from the far Southern Ocean where they spend summer. Initially only adults are present, but by August females are starting to give birth in the sheltered on-shore waters.

Southern Right Whale with calf.
This youngster was becoming adventurous, swimming away from mum, but not for long.

At birth the calf already weighs a tonne, but on a diet of very rich milk gains 50kg a day.
A female only has one baby every three years.

They are baleen whales - that is, they sieve plankton and small animals through baleen plates,a filter of long bristles along the upper jaw.

The baleen can be seen clearly in this adult - as can the callosities, raised roughened patches of skin - which are used to identify individual animals.

The adults weigh up to 50 tonnes and are up 17 metres long. Like all the great whales they suffered terribly from over-hunting, well into the 20th century; being slow and having a body which floats after death, they were regarded as the 'right' whale to hunt by inshore whalers. Once they were in vast numbers - the Tasmanian governor once complained that their 'snoring' in the Derwent River kept him awake at night, and it was dangerous to navigate the river in winter. Numbers crashed from an estimated 65,000 - 100,000 originally to perhaps 300 in the 1920s. At least 150,000 were killed during the 19th century. A single animal reported off Western Australia in 1955 was apparently the first in Australian waters for the century. Despite theoretical world-wide protection recovery was very slow - explained in part by a later confession by Russia that they had continued illegally killing the species in the Antarctic during the Soviet 1960s. 

There may be now 15,000 Southern Right Whales in the world, a steadily increasing number; some 2,000 of those visit southern Australian waters.

A group of four Southern Right Whales from the viewing platform - truly a thrilling sight. There were at least 10 present during our visit in late September.

There are many reasons to cross the Nullarbor, as I tried to explain last time; this one alone however surely is enough.

BACK ON TUESDAY

Crossing the Nullarbor

It's nice to be back writing a post after a solid - but exhilarating - month's work in the south-west of far-off Western Australia, including an 8000 km return drive there and back. Part of that drive involves 'the crossing', still one of Australia's great driving experiences, though it's a lot easier now than when my parents did it on a dirt track back in 1947. 'The Nullarbor' is part of modern Australian folklore, though most of us would have trouble defining it. I think it's best to think of it as the vast limestone plain - the largest in the world - that stretches for some 2000km from west of Ceduna in South Australia nearly to Norseman in Western Australia (henceforth WA), covering a quarter of a million square kilometres. Others would define it more tightly as the treeless 'core' straddling the state borders. Some people even use the term very loosely to talk about the whole drive from Adelaide to Perth, but that doesn't bear close scrutiny.

The red arrow in the Great Australian Bight indicates the general area of the Nullarbor. I have shown the huge karst (limestone) plain in purple hatching, with the 'core' in blue horizontal stripes. If you enlarge the map you'll see that the Eyre Highway runs mostly through the southern fringe, some of it very close to the coast.

The somewhat twee name Nullarbor was coined in 1866 by South Australian Surveyor Edmund Delisser, who crossed to the WA border and reported a vast treeless tract; being of the Victorian era he felt obliged to invent a Latin term which essentially means 'no trees'.

Coming from the east, we leave agricultural land in the vicinity of Nundroo, where beautiful mallees (multi-stemmed eucalypts of many species) form an overstorey over the bluebushes (saltbushes of the family Chenopodicaceae) which continue west when the trees end.

Eucalyptus calcareana (the name refers to the limestone habitat) over bluebush, Maireana spp., near Nundroo.

The vast plateau we're driving across was laid down under a shallow sea - beneath the bitumen are the calcium-based shells and exoskeletons of billions of long-dead marine animals. Towards the state border the trees get fewer and the bluebush starts to take over.

Eastern edge of the plain, with only scattered trees now to break the horizon.

Soon, even those trees disappear, and a variety of low shrubs begins to completely dominate.

Low teatrees - including Melaleuca spp. - above,
and chenopods (especially bluebushes and saltbushes) below,
forming the great treeless plains.

 

Here the road is close to the shore of the Southern Ocean, forming the Great Australian Bight, and the line of the Bunda Cliffs, running for well over a hundred kilometres and up to 100 metres high, is one of the most superb seascapes in the country.

The magnificent Bunda cliffs, near the Head of the Bight (above and below).

Virtually at the border, the cliffs begin to march inland.

The Bunda Cliffs leave the coast here, at the state border, so that there is now a coastal plain seaward of the plateau.

At Eucla, just inside WA, the highway descends onto the Roe Plain, a broad coastal strip of ancient compacted dunes. For nearly 200km we drive along this plain, at the foot of the Hampton Plateau, until at the Madura pass we climb up onto the plateau again. 

Two views from the top of the Madura Pass; above, looking east along the edge of the Hampton Plateau.
Below, looking out towards the distant ocean across the Roe Plain.

As can be seen from the photos above, the trees have by now returned to the landscape; again mallees dominate.

Eucalyptus socialis woodland near Caiguna, WA.

Also near Caiguna is what is claimed to be the longest completely straight stretch of road - 146km without the slightest deviation - in Australia. (Some say the world, but I'm not claiming that! It does seem unchallenged however that the Transcontinental Railway to the north of the road is indeed the longest dead straight length of line - 480km of it.)

Start of the 146km straight, just west of Caiguna.

As you'd expect with such an extensive karst system, limestone caves riddle the landscape, though most are not accessible to the public.

Sinkhole just outside of Caiguna. Some of the caves have produced some very important fossil troves, including the only complete skeleton of the formidable marsupial 'lion', Thylacoleo carnifex.

Finally, near Balladonia, we enter the beautiful vast woodlands of the Goldfields area of WA, worthy of a posting in their own right one day.

If you get the chance to make the crossing, please do it one day (or rather, at least three days for the section discussed here!). I've done the return trip five times now, and I'm sure I'll be doing it again. If you're Australian, it's definitely an important part of the national experience. If you're visiting, it will also leave a deep impression on you. I think you'll agree with me that the experience has no need of such silly cheap gimmicks as an extended golf course - it's much too special in its own right.

BACK ON FRIDAY, TO TALK ABOUT SOME ANIMALS OF THE NULLARBOR, INDCLUDING ONE VERY SPECIAL ONE INDEED.

Apology from Australia

This is not my usual natural history posting - in fact I'm still in Western Australia, about to start the 4000km drive home tomorrow. I don't have time or facilities for a 'real' posting, but events here since I last wrote have driven me to say something to the many people in many lands who continue to surprise me by reading my offerings.

The newly elected government of Australia has already filled me - and many others I know - with shame and embarrassment. This is not the place for a polemic, but I do want to offer my apologies, as an Australian, to those who are doubtless puzzled and even offended by unfolding events here. Both major parties sought, during the election campaign, to outdo each other in abnegating Australia's moral and legal responsibilities to the displaced of the world, and this is to our deep shame. In years to come I have no doubt that a more enlightened parliament will offer an apology to those victims, as recent ones have to 'stolen' Aboriginal children.

More immediately relevant though to those who read this blog is the perplexing and alarming formal rejection of science; there is to be no Minister for Science in the new cabinet (composed almost exclusively of middle-aged white men), a concept which I find utterly bizarre. More directly they have already abolished the independent Climate Commission, the only independent source of information and advice on this most critical of issues - bloody-minded madness. There is to be no Minister for Higher Education, apparently another deliberate move towards dumbing down the country.

The future of biodiversity management can only be viewed with despondency.

This is not why you read this blog, I know, and I won't be carrying on with this theme in future. Please know however, that there are many of us here who do not feel represented by this lot, and who reject such 1950s 'thinking'.

Meantime, back with a normal posting on Tuesday 1 October, as promised!