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.

Colonial Spiders, Long-tailed Potoo

Where were we? Oh yes. Colonial spiders. As if one spider weren't enough, in Guyana they have colonial spiders, or communal spiders. Let's just say unimaginable bunches of spiders, all living together in one enormous web. This is a single web. Once again, a British bird magazine editor for scale and human interest.

And here's a close up of what's going on in the giant web. A whole lotta spiders, all doing spidery things. Together. Lucky for arachnophobes, most North American spiders come one or two to a web. Although I saw live oaks positively draped in spider webs in Anzalduas Park in So. Texas once. It looked like Christo had had a nightmare there.


I have no idea what these little beasts are up to, why there are several hundred thousand of them all spinning merrily away. I imagine that they share whatever falls into the web. That may be going on here, with the cluster of spiders, or maybe they are having a meeting or maybe it's a bar scene or a stoning. I just do not know. But I enjoyed wondering.

Here's our guide Asaph at another enormous web. Yikes. It was the size of my Explorer. This is one good reason not to walk in the forest at night. There are others. I don't know. Maybe if a person fell into a web this big the tiny spiders wouldn't all converge and cluster all over him and make short work of him. Or maybe they would. I wasn't about to try it, as curious as I was.

The trees at the foot of Turtle Mountain were spectacular, muscular and huge. Looking down into the forest, I felt I could see almost anything walk, fly or crawl by.I saw a Kevin Loughlin stopping to rest along the way.

And some other creatures, too. Here's a colorful little frog, perhaps a poison dart frog?

At last, we reached the top. The view was even better than promised. So much forest, so much life, so much potential. It was breathtaking to think of what might live under and in this unbroken canopy.

The cliff was severe. And there was no guardrail. 

Infinity always gives me vertigo --Bruce Cockburn

In the distance, the Issequibo glimmered.


It was all downhill from there. We never wanted to leave, just sitting there looking out over the rainforest, dreaming about what might fly by. What a place for a Big Sit. Black and white hawk-eagle, capuchinbird, jabiru...oh my.

But climb down we did, and near the trailhead we found the coolest possible wasp nest. Shaped like a butternut squash and covered with steel-blue and orange wasps it was.

Weedon wanted to see it more closely, get a nice picture of this amazing paper nest. I'll confess: so did I. But I used the 300 mm. telephoto. They were gorgeous things, blue and bronze, stripey and alert, with bewitching magenta wings. Luke warned in a low voice, "Don't go any closer, that's close enough." Everything was fine until Mike tripped on a palm frond, and a phalanx of winged warriors stormed out and stung the blue-eyed crap out of poor Weeds. Ow! I was out of there like a scalded ape.

There was a consolation prize, though---probably the most elegant potoo on the planet, the long-tailed potoo. I knew it only from a very strange Louis Fuertes painting, which turns out, seeing the live bird, to be right on.
Here, it's doing its potoo best to be a dead snag.

Eureka! its eye is open!

A beautiful potoo, with its eye open, that doesn't look like a bag of rags. Major bonus. This is the Fred Astaire of potoos. What a dandy capper for a wonderful day.

Back in Ohio, we're plunging down to the 20's tonight, something which fills me with great sorrow and ennui. I will have to say goodbye to hundreds of lilac buds this evening, to the roses' new growth, just pruned; to the bleeding heart, laden with flower buds. Oh, I'll spray things down with water at dusk, hoping to make protective ice on  buds and leaves, the way the orange growers do, but I expect the weather will win out after all. Wish me luck.

April is ever the cruelest month for the things I love most. In fact, I realized today that I dread April altogether. Hence the Guyana posts, an escape for the weary heart.

Turtle Mountain Butterflies

In Iwokrama Reserve, there's a place called Turtle Mountain. It's an easy hike, once you get there in a boat. We had a fine hot sunny day for the hike, and the butterflies were fabulous.

Our goal was to reach an overlook where we'd see an unbroken blanket of pristine rainforest stretching out before us. But the bugs were so good, with an army ant swarm with associated avian hangers-on, that I would have been perfectly happy never to make it to the precipice. Yeah, I know. Not many people enthuse about the bugs being good; they usually talk about bugs being bad when they're out hiking, but you'll see what I mean.

It's a huge thrill for a butterfly enthusiast to be in a place where all the butterflies are new. Well, not quite all of them. The white peacock is common throughout the Neotropics.
I knew this was a cracker, but I couldn't tell you which one.
A danaiid, related to our monarchs, but there my ID grinds to a halt.
And this skipper is a longtail, but I don't know which one.
This heliconiid was fluttering delicately, in the buoyant way of their kind, all around a clearing at the Turtle Mountain picnic shelter.
As was this gorgeous little thing. Maybe a metalmark?? Durn it! I wish I could tell you what it is, but I was reduced to simply enjoying them instead of categorizing them (my preferred means of organizing my joy).
So it was a thrill and relief to find one I did know--the magnificent, show-stopping malachite. Luke Johnson and Mike Weedon traded turns photographing it.
Here's the malachite, head on.
And the equally captivating side view. It's a big bug, easily the size of a tiger swallowtail. Tame, confiding, elegantly proportioned--everything a butterfly ogler could ask for. In my next post, more invertebrates, some colonial spiders, eek! and another potoo. I bet you'll have trouble sleeping , waiting for colonial spiders and a potoo.

In local news, spring is visiting Whipple for two days before the cold clamps down again. Bill got our old tractor going and mowed the whole meadow and rototilled the pea and lettuce rows. I began the large job of pruning the roses and weeding the front flower beds. We put up two new bluebird/tree swallow boxes. Nothing I love better than to spend a day in the fresh breeze and sunshine, doing that.

On the Issequibo River

The Issequibo River flows right by Iwokrama Lodge. It is an absolutely gorgeous river, clear of water and abundant in life. This is Sankar, a huge black caiman who hangs out right by the dock. He gets fed. I don't know if you can strike a deal with an 11-foot caiman, like: we'll feed you if you won't eat us. Can you work something like that out with a giant reptile? Is it capable of knowing you shouldn't eat the people who bring you chicken scraps? Probably. Anyway, Sankar hung around like a dirty shirt, floating like a hopeful log just off the dock.

We took a few boat excursions in open whalers to see what there was to see. One of the most fascinating birds we found was the black-collared swallow, Atticora melanoleuca. This diminutive bird nests in crevices in river rocks, which would seem to put it at great risk in the face of fluctuating water levels. On the bright side, there's not much that's going to swim across a swift-flowing river and prey upon their eggs and young, especially far back in a narrow crevice. I should think it would cut down on the snake predation, especially. I like this picture because it shows the great big, deeply-forked tail--such a surprise on a bird that otherwise looks a lot like a bank swallow.
I decided to stage a shot of me reading Bird Watcher's Digest in the boat. This is a tradition with Bill and me, staging such shots, just to show that BWD goes around the world.Photo by Mike Weedon. See, Mike, I credit your photos.

That was so much fun, we staged another of me reading BWD in a bar on the Issequibo River. One night we wound up in a very funky, cool little bar within shouting distance of the lodge. There, we got pretty snookered on rum and vodka mixed with Orange Crush, because they were out of fruit juice. This is something that I would not even consider drinking at home, but it actually tasted sort of not too horrible in this little bar, because it was so cute and friendly there. They had a videotape playing on the television. First Anne Murray gave a concert, and then Kenny Rogers gave one. Then Anne Murray, then Kenny. Then Anne, Kenny, Anne...The tape was probably about thirty years old, and they probably know every single song by heart, but that's what they had. This is what I look like on vodka and Orange Crush.Photo by Kevin Loughlin

I wish you could see Kenny on the screen but you can't.

After that, we went out spotlighting wildlife, but we probably didn't see near as much as we could have because Weedon and I started talking about Cockney rhyming slang and other ridiculous things and we laughed too much. I took one picture of a large frog they call mountain chicken. Why you would call a frog "mountain chicken" I have no idea, because it lives in the river. Sadly, this is the only photo I took that night.

The next morning, our guides Ron and Asaph sat discussing something, probably what they ought to do about the loud, disruptive people in this press group. Asaph is recommending that they wad up a sock and then put a little duct tape on my mouth, and Ron just thinks they should cut me off on the vodka and Orange Crush.More adventures anon.

Iwokrama Lodge

I guess I'd better set the stage here for some more adventures in Guyana. We'd reached our final destination: Iwokrama Lodge on the big, wild Issequibo River. What a cool place--completely oriented toward ecotourism and research, bird and animalcentric. You know you're in a good spot when there's a table full of skulls right in the dining room. lowland tapir (right) and brocket deer (Mazama sp.), left.Jaguar skull. Possessed of the most powerful crushing bite in the cat family, this is what sabretoothed tigers became, I wager. Jaguars are built like sumo wrestlers, built to bring down lowland tapirs.

Diagnostic Zick habitat.
I burst out laughing when I sank a spoon into my dinner and found it toothed. Just fish, but still. That was one bony stew. What is proper etiquette when one finds oneself being chewed by one's soup? Spitting it across the room is out, that much I know.


Another thing not for the faint-hearted: taking a beloved and highly essential laptop to a place with nearly 100 percent humidity and what felt like nearly 100 degrees all the time. You want to talk computer bugs? Yes, that's a roach, and I found it on our cabin porch, and it is just a whisker short of 3" long. Communal shudder. Easton Apple Store dudes, this is how it happened:

After its ordeal at Atta Canopy Tower camp, when it poured for a day and a night, my computer started spontaneously shutting down. And then, arggggh, it wouldn't start up, either. And there was Internet at Iwokrama, as there is nearly everywhere we went in the interior, and I wanted to talk to my husband and kids. I also wanted my data, and my next book manuscript, and 20K photos, and sundry things like that. I was wiggin'.

I went cabin to cabin interviewing all the sympathetic and helpful gearheads, who also happened to be Mac people (I told you there were great people on this trip!) and we reached the consensus that my laptop had drowned. I should try setting it out in the sun. It had worked for my portrait lens, which I drowned when I put it in a fanny pack with an unscrewed water bottle. Drowning appliances is one of my many fortes. I have drowned three, count 'em, three cordless telephone handsets. I watered one and washed two in the machine.

But back to the Mac. Now, setting something out in the Guyanan sun is tantamount to broiling it. So I decided to set it out for only a half hour and see if it would start then. After about five minutes, I peeked at it. Tiny red ants were POURING out of the keyboard, running in crazy zigzags across the white-hot titanium. And each one had a cookie crumb in its jaws. That had to be a good thing. People go to spas to stick their feet in fishtanks and let little fish eat the dead skin off their feet. I thought this might be something similar. The pharoah ant treatment for your laptop.

Lo and behold, after its time on the tanning bed, it started. I've never been so happy to hear the annoying DAAAHHH! it makes when I wake it up. (Why can't it peep or twitter instead?) But I had to set it out in the sun every time I wanted to boot it up. That couldn't be a good thing. I am happy to report that my Fed-ex guy came up the sidewalk today with a laptop-shaped box, and the people at Apple had done something to the logic board, fixed the fan, and fixed the disc drive, too, and we are cookin' now, and she's not shutting down no mo'. And I am real, real glad I bought AppleCare. Real glad. Even though it expires in September. By then, MacIntosh is betting I'll have to have the new AirBook with a green battery that lasts eight hours. Too bad I'll have even less than no money by then.

Too bad I couldn't bring my REAL, 3" long computer bug back home.

ZICK ALERT: I will speak and sign books tomorrow, 6:30-8 pm. at Miami Middletown Downtown, 4 North Main St. Middletown, OH, as part of Miami University Middletown’s public lecture series. Contact email: mumccc@muohio.edu; phone (513) 727-3248 (Dr. Eric Melbye). For more ZICK ALERTS, see my website's Meet Julie page.