Dear all
Here is a short report on my latest birding tour. This time
it was a VENT-tour to Venezuela, billed as 'an easy and relaxed tour' and led
by the Venezuelan David Ascanio. This was a short tour, only a little more than
a week, with basically only two places, Casa Maria in 2 nights and Hato Piñero
in 4, in addition we spent the first and last night in two different hotels in
Caracas, and as almost always when there is jet lag involved, I arrived one day
early in Caracas. The group consisted of 8 people, all exept me Americans, plus
leader David Ascanio, and his 'samboer', young Desiree Starke.
David Ascanio, the guide (48 this week) was
altogether excellent, both as a bird guide, as well as as guide to understand
his country, which he clearly loved dearly and which is in considerable trouble
nowadays. He told very openly and in detail about that; he disagreed with the
present government (Maduro is a follower of the late Chavez, but without his
charisma),but also thought that the present opposition had little to commend
them. Chavez is still present in lots of billboards (hardly any of Madura), and
everything is 'Bolivarian', from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela' to the
'Bolivarian' police and buses. There are surprisingly many well-armed soldiers
along the roads (usually two at a time), but not all that many checkpoints and
our bus was in addition waved through at most of them. Venezuela has 26 million
inhabitants, of which far more than half live in the five largest cities (all
near the coast) and 7 million in Caracas alone. That city is considered very
dangerous and crime-ridden, but we noticed that only indirectly: when we the
first day walked from the hotel to a nearby park (with macaws) David collected
all ur field glasses in his backpack until we were in the park proper. Caracas
is also a place where the traffic is almost constantly gridlocked, while the
drivers try to get on every which way, never mind rules or traffic lights. The
reason for the vast amount of cars on the road (with hordes of light
motorcycles weaving among all the cars) is that petrol is almost free: David
told me that he could drive a whole year for a few dollars, and when I was with
a guy who filled his tank, I saw he paid the equivalent of 4 or 5 cents for a
whole tank! The government had decided 17 years ago to make the petrol cheap,
in order to help the poor, and since then the price had remained constant, even
though there had been heavy inflation of the bolivar, now ca 100 to a dollar.
We traveled in a roomy bus, about 3 hours to Casa Maria, another 4 hours to
Hato Piñero and ca 8 hrs back from there to Caracas.
I arrived in Caracas in the late afternoon, and
was brought to a hotel in between many skyscrapers, a room on the 13th floor.
When I looked out of the window, I was surprised to see many large macaws on a
neighbouring roof. These were Blue-and-yellow Macaws, which I had first seen a
few months ago in the Pantanal in Brazil. Here it turns out that they have been
introduced. But the next morning, from the roof restaurant, we also saw some
smaller macaws, Chestnut-fronted, fly over and these are indigenous and also
life birds for me. David had offered an extra tour to me, and Richard and
Regina, and this was up the steep sides of the Coastal cordillera, to about
2500m a.s.l.; these hillsides are entirely forested and constitute El Avila NP.
The area turned out quite birdy and we had a fruitful day. As usual here
tanagers were much to the fore, as were N. American migrant warblers. there
were thrushes and vireos, various tyrants, among them the Venezuelan Tyrant,
and as more spectacular elements an antpitta, a fruiteater, and the colourful
and impressive Chestnut-capped Brush Finch, all birds we did not see later on
the trip, when we never were at the same height.
That day the rest of the group arrived, and
the next morning our roomy bus brought us to our next destination, Casa Maria,
again in the Coastal Cordillera, but at 1500m. Here it was often foggy or even
drizzly, and less hot that elsewhere in Venezuela. This turned out to be an
extremely hospitable 'home away from home'. The owners, Germans Norbert and
Gaby, with their adopted Yanomame Indian daughter, had made the place into a
veritable little paradise (Norbert is very big on reforestation, among his many
other passions). There were small chalets several places on the grounds (but I
had a room high up in the main building), and there were various pets: Three
frisky but friendly dogs, several Peacocks, a magnificent Yellow-knobbed
Curassow, who whistled his 'falling-bomb' whistle all day (poor guy must have
been lonely), and also a parrot. Also the wild chachalacas were so tame that
they ate bananas from Norbert's hand. Gaby delighted in cooking and trying out
new things (the hosts ate with us), and she i.a. had also concocted new jams
from the local fruits. In the garden there was a.o. a gauze contraption with a
very strong light inside, built to attract insects (Norbert is primarily an
entomologist), but which also attracted birds in the early morning, feeding on
these insects. Here we saw several woodcreepers and tanagers, as well as
various flycatchers. Walks through the forest, here and a few hundred meters
higher up, yielded many more birds, i.a. an impressive Ornate Hawk Eagle high
up in the air, the brilliant jacamars, and the funny Groove-billed Toucanets,
in addition to various foliage gleaners, spinetails and tyrannulets. At the
house banana feeders attracted colourful tanagers and euphonias, as well as the
raucous chachalacas. A very special occasion one day was the observation of a
'rolling front' of army ants (animals that figured often in my boys' books, but
which I had never seen so well). David demonstrated courageouly that by
standing stock still the ants would just move around him, while all around
spiders and insects tried in panic to flee, in many cases only to be gobbled up
by the attending birds (woodcreepers, antbirds, Grey-headed Tanager).
We were two nights at Casa Maria (including one evening a show of Norbert's
most impressive 3D macrophotographs), but then reluctantly had to leave and
drive into the llanos to our final and 4 nights destinaion, Hato Piñero. This
is an enormous cattle ranch, started by a rich man, who wanted to keep it as
much as possible in its original state (he earned his large amounts of money
elesewhere), but which a few years after his death has been taken over by the
government, in Venezuela a somewhat uncertain status. The area must be explored
by vehicle, because jaguars and pumas do not make it advisable to go there on
foot, and we did practically all of our birding from an open safari vehicle,
usually with 3-4 hrs bouts both morning and afternoon, on two days till after
dark. This is primarily a cattle ranch (Brahma cattle), so there are large
amounts of grassland, but there is also much dry forest, and narrow fringes of
woodland along the dirt roads connecting the patches of forest. Parts of all
this is seasonally flooded in the wet, but now it was extra dry (El Niño year!)
and there were only smaller and larger lagoons left. When these were in the
forest, they invariably had numbers of the most peculiar Hoatzins, quite
prehistoric-looking large lumbering birds. There also always were various
herons and ibises, Grey-necked Wood Rails, and my particular favourite (and a
main reason for coming on this trip), the super stylish Sun Bittern. This bird
turned out to be quite common here (we saw at least ten in the end), but I am
very happy to be able to report that I found the first one myself! This one
even threatened a nearby dove with stretching out its sunburst-patterned wings
suddenly (the dove flew away); the Sun Bitterns invariably walked on the banks
of the lagoons and streamlets, but never in the water. Another constant feature
of the lagoons were the large and dozy capybaras; one time we heard them bark
shrilly in alarm---a sign a jaguar was nearby, said David---, and they all
retreated to the middle of the lagoon, with only the heads sticking out.
A large lagoon in more open grassland was framed by hundreds of Black-bellied
Whistling Ducks (perusal of the flocks unearthed a few White-faced Whistling
Ducks); here there were also Stilts and even two colourful Large-billed Terns,
as well as a number of shorebirds and a pair of the queer Horned Screamers, one
of my many life birds this trip. When we had our picnic dinner here at dusk,
flocks of radiant Scarlet Ibises flew past, no doubt on their way to a roost,
accompanied by a single White Ibis and a Roseate Spoonbill (There were many
species of ibises her, with as the most impressive to me Green Ibises along a
forest lagoon, glistening green in the sunlight). When dark fell, nightjars and
nighthawks came out, and we also heard a Great Horned Owl hoot.
The facilities at Hato Piñero were quite adequate, but with nothing of the
special care we got at Casa Maria. The rooms had AC, but of an antiquated and
very loud variety (Fortunately this is one of the few occasions where my
hearing problems are of help). I had a large rooms with two beds, heavy
mattresses on stone sockets. One night my bed was invaded by minuscule, but
somewhat aggressive ants. I moved to the other bed, but was woken up a few
hours later by being stung repeatedly---the ants had found me also there. In
the end I took one of the mattresses and put it on the ground in the opposite
corner, and amazingly , the ants stayed away for the rest of the night. They
were somehow eradicated the next day by the hosts.
As I said, we were generally not to come down from the vehicle. One day David
asked us to come down, in order to try to find the diminutive, but cozy
White-throated Spadebill. But no sooner had we found our places around him, or
we heard an ominous growling, the Jaguar! David herded us as quickly as
possible back onto the vehicle, and nobody got eaten.
After 4 nights here we returned to Caracas, an 8 hrs drive, and ended the tour
at still another hotel in town. Many people left for the airport in the
morning, but Barb, Mary Ellen and me had our flights in the afternoon, and
David decided to take us birding for a last fling in the vicinity of the
Ecological Gardens (built around the former house of William Phelps, the grand
old man of Venezuelan ornithology). While we walked around there---and saw
still another Brush Finch, the Ochre-breasted--, David happened to meet his old
friend and mentor Leo, who, it turned out, had access to these gardens (which
were closed until later in the day). This was a great stroke of luck, as this
way we got to see a.o. some impressive and heavily visited hummingbird feeders
and a beautifully reconstructed cloud forest. Later that day I was brought to
the airport, where I was at first suspected of being one of those Dutch drug
smugglers, before Desiree succeeded in convincing the Guardia of my innocence
But it all ended well, and even my suitcase arrived in Odijk with only half a
day delay.
Wim Vader, Tromsø Museum,
9037 Tromsø, Norway
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