The End of an Era

After over 6 years of intensive research and community development work in and around the Yachana Reserve, GVI Amazon is coming to a close. We have finished our final research project (look forward to our Road Effects paper, coming soon!) and are handing over the project to our partner, The Yachana Foundation. They will continue to maintain and monitor the reserve, using it as an hands-on science education center for students -- we're very excited to see what fabulous things this next generation of scientists find! For more detail on GVI Amazon's closure, and our accomplishments over the years, please read on...
GVI Amazon Closure Statement

Friday, August 10, 2012

The Early Bird



For those of us who don’t mind early mornings, getting up at 5:00 am, with the possibility of coming close to some birds of the forest, isn’t a hardship. A group of us walked up onto the ‘Ridge’, nearby GVI Amazon base camp, as the sky lightened and we saw the mist rising over the Rio Napo and swirling through the forest.

We unfurled the mist nets and retreated to our temporary base and waited about 30 minutes before checking the nets – but no birds. This was repeated at regular intervals over the next few hours but we caught only one Blue Crowned Manakin – interestingly it had a band put on previously by GVI.



But by using a recorded call of a white-tailed Trogon (sounds a bit like a gull) we became focused on the responding call of a real White-tailed Trogon which came closer to us to investigate the source of the calling. We watched as it got closer to the net area, and although it didn’t get into the net, we were really thrilled to catch sight of both a male and a female above us in the canopy – we had a good view of the orangey underparts and the distinctive white tail with some bars.

As the sun got stronger and evaporated the mist the bird activity increased and we saw a Roadside Hawk soaring on a thermal. Even more exciting was a beautiful Swallow Tailed Kite, with its long forked tail. So even though our netting was not as successful as we had hoped, we were certainly happy with the sightings we had. Well worth getting up early!

Pam Lloyd, GVI Amazon volunteer

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