Laguna del Tigre - week 1

Hi Everyone. Just returned from a long and rewarding week in the Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre. The guys took me out driving and hiking through the forest to get to the macaw nest locations...quite tiring in this heat and humidity. At the end of the long hike I still needed to muscle my way up to the cavity. Whew! It's really fun working side by side with the Wildlife Conservation Society biologists. They're a passionate and knowledgeable group, more than willing to spend time answering all of my questions despite my terrible spanish.

It's a bit crazy climbing up these trees, suspended 80 feet above the ground with squawking parents flying around making all kinds of rucous. Then with all this commotion, I lined up with the nest entrance and then the chick (almost fully grown) would begin screaming...wow...crazy. I only had one opportunity to actually pull a chick out of the nest, the size of the photo above (two of the other opportunities the chicks had successfully fledged). It ended up biting off the finger of my latex glove. Then I tried again and it flipped on its back using both feet and that massive beak to fend me off. Learning how to bag these birds at their largest/strongest size is a bit intimiating! Very humbling. It was stressing the bird out to much so one of the WCS guys climbed up and pulled the poor critter out. Man it was pissed! It bit the vet (Melvin) three times, once drawing blood. So next week I get another shot at extracting a chick.

Traveling around these muddy, narrow, windy roads is a bit tricky, especially on the inclines that slightly slant to one sie or the other. Constantly dropping down into 4Low, we got stuck a couple of times. Once we had to load the road up with palm fronds. The second time we actually had to hook a rope up to another truck to get up the hill. It takes a half day to travel to and from the field station.

Well, two more weeks to go in Guatemala. Tomorrow I go with a couple of friends to a local Futbol match. Can't wait...thousands of screaming Guatemaltecas (not Guatemalans) cheering on for their favored team. Man it's hot today, good to be in the shade with a fan, but I'm thinking of jumping in the lake. Yup, gonna do it...later!