Cock of the Rock Nest!

It's one thing to see a life bird. It's quite another to get a little glimpse into its life. Although I didn't know it when we entered this little cave, there was a cock of the rock nest pasted to the wall, phoebe-style.
It was bigger than a robin's nest, and made of mud and rootlets, perched on a very narrow ledge.
It appeared not to be in use at the moment, but it also looked as if it might have been in use for some years, layered as it was. I was beside myself.

Looking around, there was more to the story. As the female cock of the rock incubated and brooded, and as the young birds grew, they had regurgitated the seeds and pits of the myriad fruits they eat. There was a carpet of pits under the nest.
And off to the side, a small forest of hopeful seedlings, probably never to prosper in this dry, dark cave.
But what a treasure trove for an ornithologist, botanist or ecologist! Here, clearly written in seeds and plantlets, is the diet of the cock of the rock, laid out for anyone to identify and study. Here is the evidence of the bird's value as a seed disperser, here is the list of plants that the birds need to survive. Of course, I was no closer to identifying any of the seeds or plants than anyone else; they were all foreign to me. But I could have, given time and the right resources. It was a heady thought.

But there was more. High up in a crevice, I noticed a bump.
Drawing closer, I could see that the bump had a nose.
Closer yet, and it resolved into a little bat.
Oh, you precious thing. I was reminded of the captivating red bat my friend Caitlin found on our field trip into the forest behind Clermont Northeastern Middle School in southwest Ohio, way back in November.
who has graced my desktop ever since. Hello! I say it every morning.
Each one, a gift. I don't understand people's fear of bats. I think they're just about the coolest animal of all--a flying insectivore! the only mammal that does not simply glide, but truly flies.

Meanwhile, the cock of the rock posed--here is a head-on shot of that orange cookie crest. Come nibble my fringe, ladies.
and it occurred to me that this had been one of the most satisfying experiences I'd had in nature--not only to see a strange, new and beautiful bird, but to understand a little something of how it lives.
To see its nest, to see its food, its habitat, the plants that support it, and then to see the male bird, glowing like a coal in the forest. It was almost too much to take in, in a single afternoon. Now, I yearn to see the female cock of the rock. She's a strange dark maroony brown, with the same semicircular crest. I guess that will have to be another time, another place, perhaps another life.

Cock of the Rock Displays

I mentioned Guyana as a premier destination for spectacular birds, particularly cotingas. Undoubtedly one of the most magnificent cotingas of all is the cock of the rock. For sheer brilliance, it's got them all beat, and it's obliging enough to sit at eye level in the forest where you can study it for many minutes on end. The rest of the cotingas we saw were often frustratingly high in the dark canopy. The other huge bonus of COTR is that it's predictable, appearing where there are caves and rock formations in which it can nest, and displaying in a loose lek situation like many other cotingas. So you can go to Guyana and count on seeing this stunning orange dreamsicle of a bird.

There's nothing quite like walking silently along a padded forest path, knowing that somewhere along the way you are going to see a cock of the rock. It's like Christmas morning, coming around the hall corner and seeing the presents under the tree. You just can't suppress a gasp when the neon-orange bird hoves into view.In the dark forest, he glows like an ember in the wind.

When you're brilliant orange, you don't really need to do much to impress the ladies of the rock. You just sit there and look gorgeous. Of course, when it all comes down, it's more interactive. When a female shows interest, the male COTR will descend to the ground, dance and crouch, and the female, ideallly, will approach and nibble at the wispy foofuraw coming off his tertial wing feathers. You can see his ladyfringe backlit, here.Next: The Cradle of the Cock of the Rock.

DOUBLE ZICK ALERT: I will be talking about hunting morel mushrooms this afternoon (Thursday, April 9) on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, which starts at 4 pm ET. If you miss it, go here.

Please leave a comment on the NPR site (registration's a breeze) and hit Recommend if you like it. That helps with everything. Go, flying monkeys! Go!

And there's a brand new This Birding Life podcast up at the Bird Watcher's Digest site: me reading my True Nature column about sandhill crane hunting, "Love and Death Among the Cranes." I'm going to listen to it so I can remember what my voice sounded like before I got the chest cold to end all chest colds. Hackahackahacka. Thanks to my brainy hubs, Bill Thompson III, for creating such a cool series of podcasts for nature lovers. Be sure to download the version with graphics! Great job, B!
Listen here.

Capuchinbird Trek

What an inviting name for a nature trail! The South American bushmaster (Lachesis muta) is one of the world's most dangerous venomous snakes--a big sucker, the biggest known having been 12' long, given to looping its browny length in the top of a shrub and waiting by the trail for something to walk by that's small enough to inject and swallow. I've seen one, in Brazil, and I'll never forget it. Oh, there you are, right there at chest level, looking like a rope thrown over a shrub. Big devil you are. I'm backing away from you now. I have things to do, places to go, people to see.

On our last morning at Iwokrama Lodge, we made a short trek to see a lekking site for capuchinbirds. I apologize if that sentence looks like Greek to you; it sort of is. A lek is a place where male birds get together to display, hoping to attract females. Famous North American birds that lek are prairie chickens, sage and sharp-tailed grouse. Woodcocks lek, too, sort of, although they're more dispersed. The idea is that a bunch of noisy male birds gathered together in one place have a greater chance of attracting interested females than one noisy male bird at location X, and another at location Z.

There are lots of birds that lek in the tropics. They include many species of manakins and cotingas, the darlings of tropical birders. Guyana is the most cotinga-rich place I've ever been. Purple-throated fruitcrows, pompadour and purple-breasted cotingas, Guianian red-cotingas, swallow-wings, puffbirds, nunbirds and capuchinbirds--they are the ones that birders dream of and drool over as they plan their trips. They're big, colorful and bizarre, and the capuchinbird (or calfbird, as I know it) is one of the weirdest. It's a large, cinnamon toast-colored bird with a bald gray head (and a monklike hood of brown feathers, hence the name capuchinbird). Its call sounds like a cross between a chainsaw and a calf--a rolling bup-bup-bup-bup-brrr that sounds like a chainsaw just being started, ending in a long, nasal WRAAAAAAHHHHHH that recalls a lonely calf or a spadefoot toad. There's a mechanical quality to it that makes you question whether a bird could make such a sound. It's almost more froglike than birdlike, and very loud. It comes from the very top of the canopy, which in primary rainforest is very high up indeed--80-120 feet. Arggh. Can you feel your neck cramping?

On the way to the lek, we spotted a beautiful passionflower vinean intriguingly fluted termite nest
more monkeyladderssome bizarre woody seed capsules, each with a perfectly fitted lid, called monkey cupsI really, really wanted to bring one home. They were big--about 8" long--and looked useful somehow, I don't know, maybe to carry something in? but that's against the rules, and besides, they were too rotty. Everything on the forest floor in Guyana is pretty rotty. If you could just get it when it first fell.

We found the extraordinary cotyledons of a mystery seedling, a green angel on the forest floorbut no bushmasters. Deep sigh. It would have been fine to see one, as long as we saw it first.

It wasn't long before we could hear the wraaah of the capuchinbirds sifting through the hot morning mist. We checked the ground for snakes and army ants and sat down, because the birds were too far up in the canopy to bend our necks back far enough to see them any other way. Here's the first thing I was able to pick out:

Bear with me here. See the two little orange balls? I told you they were weird birds. You can see them again in this picture, but they aren't quite as prominent.
They're under the tail of the male capuchinbird, and they aren't what you think--merely undertail covert feathers that can in some bizarre way be (oh, here I go) erec... puffed out... so they look for all the world like...well, you already have the idea.

Here's the upper body and head of the capuchinbird.Kind of vulturine, with a big ruff of cinnamon feathers at the back of the skull.

I cannot tell you how difficult it was to get an acceptable picture of this bird, shooting straight over our heads and into a bright sunny sky. I had to open the aperture all the way to be able to get anything more than a black blot.Capuchinbirds eat large-seeded fruits by swallowing them whole. I was lucky enough to see this one gag up a fruit pit from its voluminous gape. You could definitely get a small avocado in that mouth; the thing is almost the size of a crow. How I wanted to scurry after the pit and put it in my pocket, but I probably couldn't have found it if I tried, after it dropped 100 feet into the leaf litter. I'm sorry to say this is my best picture of a capuchinbird, but I'm not apologizing. The conditions were ridiculous. This is the kind of thing for which the BBC camera crew takes a month to construct proper scaffolding before the lekking season begins, then sits in blinds for ten hours a day to capture.

Kevin Loughlin was kind enough to loan me this acceptable shot of his, which shows the capuchinbird in full Mas Macho glory. bbbbbbbrrrrrr waaaaaaahhhhhhh! Buenos huevos!photo by Kevin Loughlin. He's taking trips to Guyana, people.

As if seeing this well-balled bird of myth and legend were not enough, I had another bit o' fun in store. Weedon and I had a habit of hanging back behind the group, because we found lots of nice birds that way, being very quiet, or because we were being very silly, and interfering with everyone else. At any rate, we got separated, and I noticed that the trail sort withered away, then split off into threes, something that bothered me. If I took the wrong fork, then what? The Bushmaster Trail on Iwokrama Reserve is not a place I fancied being lost for long.

My mind flitted to Asaph, who had always been so careful to keep an eye on me as I investigated, meandered and snorfled my way through the forest. He was nowhere in sight. That was out of the ordinary. I stopped to gather my thoughts. Weeds was already starting to wig a little.

From behind a huge buttress root came the unmistakable cough of a jaguar. I'd never heard it, but I knew what it was. Oh, crrrrap.

And there was Asaph, also known as Jaguar, loving his little Wapushani joke (he had a million of 'em!), and about to get a brisk spanking from a very jittery Science Chimp.

Walking with Asaph

After a dozen days afield in Guyana with a diverse group, people gravitate to one another based on compatability, shared interests, enthusiasm level or perhaps even a similar taste for silliness. Like my new friend Murr says, "Really, most everything is funny." When I'm in the field, I laugh a lot, ask questions, root around in the forest duff, come up with ridiculous things. These weird little spiny palm fruits reminded me of Chet Baker.


I go through the forest, touching, feeling, smelling, tasting, like a scientist from Venus trying to experience this strange environment with every sense. A tropical forest is like a box of candy for me. There might be a cashew in the middle or it might be nougat. You never know until you investigate. I teeter on the edge of quoting Forrest Gump.

With my curiosity, sense of humor and enthusiasm always aflame, it's good to have a guide, and I gravitated to Asaph Wilson.Asaph models a hair extension we made from some frayed cord off my hat. Oh, how we laughed together. The scar on his nose was left after one of his multiple cases of leishmaniasis, a dangerous parasite carried by sand flies, and an occupational hazard of tropical forest living. He's fine now.

Asaph Wilson grew up in the South Rupununi Savannah. He's a Wapishani Amerindian. He began hunting on the savannah when he was five, accompanying his uncles. When Asaph finished school, he decided he wanted to channel his love of nature into conservation. He travels all over giving programs in schools, because he believes that changes must start with the very young. One of his major focal points is educating people about the destructive nature of grassland fires, which are set by savannah dwellers, and can devastate surrounding forests when allowed to run wild.

Asaph is an avid birder and keen on identifying birds by voice, which is often the only way to know they're there in the dense, dark jungle vegetation. He is a wonderful guide, getting more knowledgeable by the hour, always finding people from whom he can learn more, remembering a bewildering array of birds, plants and animals. In 2000, he accompanied a Smithsonian expedition to Guyana, and it was then that he learned the English and Latin names for the birds with which he was already familiar. He started guiding in 2002, and was one of the primary guides, along with Luke Johnson and Ron Allicock, on the familiarization trip.


Here, Asaph shows me the seed of the green-heart tree, Ocotea rodioei. He told me it's used for treating fevers, but also as a contraceptive (!), as it will interrupt a woman's cycle. Gimme some. I'll wedge that nut between gum and cheek.

An English chemist named Conrad Gorinsky has obtained US, Canadian and European patents for the use of compounds from this and other medicinal plants, that the Wapashani were kind enough to teach him about. Gorinsky named the alkaloid molecules "Biologically Active Rupununines" (a reference to the Rupununi River, from whence they come). He has been labeled a "biopirate" for his efforts to wrest economic control of these folk medicines away from the Amerindians who pioneered their use. Sort of: Teach me all you know, and then I'll slap a patent on it to keep you or anyone else but ME from benefiting from the ethnobotany experimentation your people have done for centuries. Nice. For other interesting examples of biopiracy, see this link. It appears to have been translated from Portuguese, so the English is a little convoluted, but it's an eye-opener for those of us who might feel good about using Amazonian medicinals, thinking we're helping indigenous people (as I suspiciously eye my bottle of purported Acai Berry extract...)

Asaph showed me this enormous, anaconda-like vine, which has saved people who are lost in the forest. Cut it with a machete, and pure water pours out. Although the air is saturated with water vapor, the extreme heat and lack of safe potable water in the forest can combine to dehydrate you in a very short time. Drinking the water in the vine is a safe way to rehydrate.
What's the deal with the monkey vine? Why would it grow in such a dazzling spiral? Who knows? But I asked Asaph to give me a smile, and a Wapashani for scale.

Thank you, Asaph, for your grace and wisdom in the ways of the forest, and your skill in imparting it. And thanks for the laughs.

Cock of the Rock!

The falls, the tank bromeliads, the froglets would have been enough, more than enough. But Guyana's Kaieteur Falls Park would give us so much more in our too-short afternoon there. Because there is a bird living there, in this impossibly magical, vine-draped steaming forest, who can hurt your eyes with its color. It is the legendary cock of the rock.

I know. It's a weird name. Google it, and you get all kinds of heavy metal images right alongside stunning photos of a brilliant bird, an impossible bird. I didn't understand where it got its name until I walked in its habitat.
The cock of the rock needs rocks where it can nest. Huge, towering walls and slabs and jumbles of rock. The Science Chimp is elated to say that she will report later on the nesting habits of this marvelous bird. First, she needed to see her very first COTR. You can just imagine how excited I was. Wending our way silently through the forest, the wet floor padding our footfalls, we watched our guide and froze when he motioned that he had spotted the bird, low down in the jungly tangle, some distance ahead. We were approaching the lek site of a group of male COTR's, where they pose and display, hoping to attract visits from the burnt-brown females. Our first looks were a bit compromised by vegetation, but it was clear we had one heck of a bird in our sights.
As quietly as we could, we maneuvered around until we could see and shoot around the obscuring leaves.I shot image after image, upping my ISO to 1600, leaning against trees for support to lessen lens shake. I'm not digiscoping here, just pushing my 300 mm. telephoto lens to the maxx in the almost hopelessly dark and lightless jungle.This is not some little songbird. It's a cotinga, one of the suboscine passerines, and a honkin' big one, about the size of a city pigeon. And the color of a neon orange traffic cone. There's no missing it, even as it sits quietly and still. Think about a pigeon this color and you get some idea what an impression it makes.

Nearer, nearer, trying hard not to upset the beautiful bird who perched so calmly for us. Ooh. What's that foofuraw coming off his back?
They're filamentous plumes, orange as shredded carrots, that the female COTR likes to nibble on as the male crouches motionless on the ground before her. Nice touch.

Changing perches, he showed what a beefy broth of a beast he really was. Look at those strong yellow feet. Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man. That's a semicircular crest, neatly edged in burnt orange, that he can erect and push forward so as to completely hide his bill. Not a whole lot of tail on this bird. But he's got a very cool rump. The frills on it reminded me of those awful panties people used to put on little girls, the kind meant to stick out from under a too-short Easter dress, with ranks of frills on them. I wish I could purge such untoward thoughts when I look at a bird, but they well up nonetheless.
Though it's not that close, this is my favorite shot of the bird, on alert.
Let's blow that one up, shall we?
Right after I took this photo, he whirled off to a deeper, more obscure place, on a gasp of pinwheeling wings. Who'd have thought he'd be tricked out in black and white wheels? I was laid out, so much more than I'd ever hoped to see of a bird I'd dreamt of since I was seven. Ahh, thank you, cock of the rock. We'll leave you in peace now. And I will use this image later to rekindle my connection with you...

Caciques, Orioles, Blackbirds and Tanagers

We're birding together in Guyana. I love showing birds to people. First is the yellow-rumped cacique (Cah-SEEK), an icterid named for pre-Columbian tribal chiefs who probably wore flashy clothes. When this bird flies, his whole back half is glowing yellow. And he's a big boy--about the size of a pigeon. This cacique was on a hunt for palm fruits, which he dispatched neatly with his conical glow-in-the-dark bill. And dig those china blue eyes!
Caciques nest colonially, like their huge relatives the oropendolas, building great sacklike nests of grasses and rootlets. Here's a proud male on his nest:
In the wet meadows along the roads, and especially near airports, we all got quick glimpses of Leistes (now Sturnella) militaris, the red-breasted blackbird. This bird acts and looks like a meadowlark or bobolink who got dipped in red paint. It sits atop posts and makes quick stuttering flights above the grasstops, only to drop in before you get a good look at it. It is spectacular, even in a brief glimpse, which was all I got:
Another icterid which was nearly ubiquitous was the golden oriole. This lovely bird was constructing its sacklike nest in the botanic garden.
Everywhere we went, the golden orioles were busy weaving their egg-purses.
This one is just finishing up taking a poop. You probably liked the pose before I told you that.
Perhaps feeling abashed, he struck a better pose for me:Here I am, not pooping.

As gorgeous and glowing as it was, there was something very familiar about the yellow oriole--it favors our Bullock's oriole. My switchboard really lights up when I see a bird that looks nothing like anything we have in the States. Well, this burnished-buff tanager is shaped like a scarlet tanager, but the similarity ends there.
This pretty little tanager has the oddest color scheme--soft turquoise wings on an opalescent buff body. He tops it off with a black mask and a coppery crown.What a treat to see new birds, odd birds, any birds. Here's to birds! and how they enrich our lives.

Birding Guyana's Coast

We might as well start with the chicken pot pie. In my packing frenzy as I prepared for ten days in Guyana, South America, I also went into a cooking frenzy. Realizing that baking is not one of Bill of the Birds' myriad fortes, I left instructions on the fully assembled but uncooked pie. Sure enough, he called me at the airport to ask me how long he should bake it. "Just take the pie out of the fridge and look at it!"

There followed a series of long flights, a 10:30 PM arrival at the one-gate Georgetown airport, an 11:30 PM arrival at the Grand Coastal Hotel an hour away, and a comatose night. At 5:30 the next morning, we left for our first outing, a pattern that would continue for the entire ten-day trip: rising in the dark to constant motion until it was time to collapse back into bed. Our destination was a marshy savannah within earshot of Guyana's coast. Here, birds like laughing falcons, named for their ha-ha-hoo-hoo call, stand sentinel on palm trunks.
before flying off.
There's nothing like a laughing falcon anywhere in the States, but we do have snail kites--an endangered species, found only in the Florida Everglades. In Guyana, they sit all over the powerlines, diving down occasionally to nab an apple snail from a roadside ditch. It's nice to see them being all abundant. This is an immature snail kite.
We'll see it use its specialized hooked bill in a future post.

We had a couple of target birds for this outing, found only in Guyana. One was the blood-colored woodpecker, a small bird which cleverly eluded us for the entire trip, showing only bits of itself before winging away, as if headed for Venezuela. I managed to photograph the back and wings of an immature female. I'm told the male is a real stunner. Still, you can see some red on her back.
All told, this is typical of my Guyanan bird photos. Now, I got some dandies, but the vast majority of the 2000 exposures I made were garbage. This was without doubt the most challenging environment for photography I've ever encountered: hot and humid as anyplace I've ever been, with a blinding bright sky and deep dark jungles, thick with tangled greenery. Most of the birds were right up against that blinding sky, smack dab in the middle of a vine tangle, or just under the canopy of the deep dark jungle against the bright bright sky. Suffice it to say I learned a lot about the limitations of a camera in these conditions.

Another Georgetown specialty: the white-bellied piculet, sort of like a miniature woodpecker, the size of a small nuthatch. Here's the female, preening. It's OK if you yawn. We were pretty excited, but then we're birders, and the word "endemic" (found nowhere else on the planet) gets our hearts pumping, no matter what the bird looks like.
The male dresses it up with a red forecrown, but he is careful to hide behind sticks.
Even those of us with huge lenses succumbed to the conditions, and even got all balled up in our gear from time to time. Here's Michael Weedon, Associate Editor for England's Birdwatching Magazine, trying to figure out which strap goes to which so he can get his camera free. He toted the most gear of any of us, and thanks to that scope and a pocket camera, also got some of the best pictures, I daresay.
We moved on from the white-bellied piculet to something more powerful: a crimson-crested woodpecker, member of the exalted genus Campephilus, and thus a cousin to our much sought-after ivory-billed woodpecker. Just a peek, but the stance is soooo familiar:
Oh, please come out. I need to see you.
Oooh! Look at your beautiful head!
Thank you. Everything about you, your huge semi-circular claws and your powerful bill, your erect carriage and your proud crest, haunts me, reminds me of what might yet be in our southern swamps.

Because there were lots of things like iguanas
and tegus (a life lizard for me!)
scurrying in the savannah forest, there were lots of things like this rufous crab hawk sitting around scanning for prey. This is a dandy huge gorgeous beast, perfectly lit and situated for his portrait, and, like the piculet, careful to have several branches in front of him for good composition.
OK, now, try to get me flying through the same branches. Good work.
His main dietary item appears as dots in this photo. Like the snail kite, he's surrounded by food all the time. Every dot in this picture is a fiddler crab. Yum!
The marshes in Guyana are themselves often dotted with the beautiful little pied water-tyrant, a member of the flycatcher family, which has speciated wildly in South America. There were two full pages of flycatchers in our Guyana checklist, and my eyes glazed over when trying to identify most of them. I prefer tyrants to many other flycatchers, because they are so unequivocally marked.
Female and immature pied water tyrants have some black on head, back and wings.
A good male will knock your socks off. I am not sure what the adaptive value of being so obvious might be. It is not obvious to me.
Our guide to all this beauty was Andy Narine, a Rastafarian birder of East Indian (to distinguish from West Indian) extraction.He's one of the leaders in Guyanan birding, keen of eye and ear and encyclopedic of knowledge. His lilting Caribbean accent lapsed freely into musical Creole, gorgeous and sometimes hilarious to hear. We were definitely not in Kansas any more.
Showing us birds all the way, Andy led us along the coast, where an unexpected dot of scarlet resolved into my life scarlet ibis. I cannot tell you how exciting it was to have a flourescent red bird appear out of nowhere. I was jabbering and hooting and hollering. Pure, vibrant color does that to me, and life birds do that to me, but give me a life bird that is a pure, vibrant color and Sally bar the door.

Again, adaptive value of this flaming color: unknown. Just beautiful, that's all.
Terry Moore of Leica was kind enough to dial Bill on his cell phone and hand it to me so I could stutter, "Scarlet ibis!!" to my surprised mate. It would be the last time we'd speak for ten days.

Too soon, it was time to drop Andy off at his office, where he heads a natural history society. Thanks so much, Andy Narine. You are awesome and 'ital, mon.