Bird-Watching Offers Potential for Conservation & Economy in Colombia’s Guaviare

By Santiago Wills

The assembly took place behind closed doorways one September afternoon in San José del Guaviare, the capital of the division of Guaviare, in Colombia’s central-south area. Five males sat round discussing, surrounded by maps of the division, images of protected areas and dozens of drawings of Japanese anime characters on sticky notes, side-by-side with details about organized crime teams and dissident guerrilla fighters.

“Most come for specific birds in particular,” muttered Ramón Carrillo, 37, an environmental engineer, bird-watcher and one of many founding members of the Guaviare Bird-watcher’s Association (Grupo de Observadores de Aves del Guaviare, GOAG). He had a straightforward smile and infectious laughter born from his personal jokes.

“Mainly for the manakins and cotingas,” Carrillo added.

“Or the tinamou,” added Axorson Lugo, 41, a bird-watcher and biologist hailing from the division of Tolima who has lived in San José del Guaviare for greater than a decade. Formerly a part of the bird-watcher’s affiliation in Tolima, as we speak he’s a member of the Guaviare department of the group.

“Then there’s the umbrellabird; also, the ivory-billed aracari …” Carrillo continued, elevating his arms.

“I’ve never seen the cotinga, but I’d love to,” interrupted Sebastián Di Doménico, 30, Sony’s Latin American photographer who can be a biologist, herpetologist and budding bird-watcher.

“Toucanets.”

“And pikachu! The woodpecker.”

“The most sought-after for a photo is the jacamar. The white-eared jacamar.”

“The black-capped donacobius.”

“The green-backed trogon.”

“A manakin lek.”

As the three males interjected one after one other, the dialog descended into a mixture of unfamiliar Latin phrases with common-sounding phrases in English and Spanish. The different two males within the room — Jhon Barros, 38, a journalist with the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS), an NGO that works on environmental and social points with rural communities in Colombia; and a reporter, 35, who had beforehand been on outings with bird-watchers and thought he knew one thing concerning the topic — had been at an entire loss and stared on the ceiling in silence till they had been pressured to interrupt.

“The Guianan cock-of-the-rock,” Carrillo mentioned to Di Doménico, earlier than turning to the others.

After an hour and plenty of questions requested, the scenario turned considerably clearer. In 2019, GOAG and the FCDS merged their concepts for a community-based tourism venture with ones associated to bird-watching and utilized for funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Territories of Opportunity program. They received the bid, and after the tip of the pandemic, they printed a bird-watching information for San José del Guaviare and a information to nonpasserine birds, those who don’t have the same old form of a bluebird or the standard perching hen (i.e., geese, turkeys, hummingbirds, parrots, eagles, pigeons, and many others.), for the whole division of Guaviare. They additionally evaluated the tourism potential for bird-watchers of about 20 trails and did carrying capability research for 4 of them.

Since a lot of the trails had been positioned on non-public farms, the teams approached the landowners with a proposal to work collectively. As a part of the venture, the landowners might cost the bird-watchers an entrance price, thus giving them an financial incentive to keep up the forests surrounding the paths and thereby keep away from additional deforestation in what has typically been one of many worst-hit departments in Colombia by the problem. Although the initiative doesn’t at the moment contain enormous tracts of land, the plan can function a highway map for future conservation tasks in Guaviare.

The plan for the following few days was to go to 2 of the paths with the intention to perceive the financial and environmental prospects of bird-watching in Guaviare. “It [birdwatching] is still in its infancy here,” Barros mentioned. Our mission was to seek out and {photograph} the male Guianan cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola rupicola), a hen with fiery orange plumage and a outstanding crest of the identical shade, in addition to the male Pipra filicauda, or wire-tailed manakin, a small hen with a black again, lemon-yellow breast and raspberry crown and neck, well-known for dancing for females by wagging its tail filaments. They are the preferred birds amongst vacationers, and it will take a couple of hours on every path to seek out them.

“The birds here are conchudos [shameless or brazen]. There is no hunting pressure. You can get within a couple of meters of them,” Carrillo mentioned, confidently. Lugo dodged his gaze and shrugged his shoulders.

The feathered tribe

Bird-watching is an exercise whose roots lie, partly, in Victorian hen gathering in nations like England. Previously, as an alternative of observing birds with binoculars or taking footage of them, they had been shot. Since there have been no dependable devices with which to view them from a distance, individuals would kill them after which examine them, dissect them and mount them in dioramas for museums or private collections. As John James Audubon, an American artist often called that nation’s first ornithologist, wrote: “I shot, I drew, I looked on nature only.” The drive to commerce the shotgun for one more instrument is a recent one, as Stephen Moss recounts in A Bird within the Bush: A Social History of Birdwatching. It was not till the late nineteenth century that those that killed birds, captured them or stole their eggs for his or her oological or egg collections started to be condemned regularly.

Photographs and lists — hallmarks of a birdwatcher — lastly changed bodily collections solely about 100 years in the past. Back then, lists had been recorded in notebooks, notepads, guidebooks, books and reminiscence. Today, they are often present in Excel paperwork, eBird (a Cornell Lab of Ornithology database that has develop into the world’s largest citizen science venture) and different digital instruments. Everyone has their very own approach of doing it (and, as with every part, some are reluctant to desert pen and paper). There are lists for the day’s sightings, for these on Global Big Day — an annual occasion promoted by the individuals accountable for eBird — on October Big Day and lists primarily based on time intervals (the week, month, yr), geographical areas (the realm, nation, continent) and lists for objectives and ambitions (birds seen over one’s lifetime; birds one hasn’t but seen or wish to see). Axorson Lugo, for instance, goals of seeing the Guatemalan quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno) and the roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus). It is a pursuit that brings collectively gathering, reminiscence, nostalgia, science and longing.

According to insiders — on this case, the members of the tribe themselves — there are not less than 4 forms of bird-watchers. There are the hardcore birdwatchers, who need to exit searching for birds all day and all evening, and who arrive at any given location with a listing of the species they need to see and even ship forward of time these they’ve but so as to add to their assortment by way of eBird. And there are the softcore birdwatchers, who’ve lists of their very own however who, however, won’t miss the chance to make different vacationer plans after they arrive at their vacation spot. Then there are the amateurs or newcomers, individuals who have solely lately found a love of birds; and at last, the photographers, a gaggle that usually cuts throughout all of the others. They are essentially the most tough, for not solely do they need to see engaging hen species, uncommon or not, however additionally they need the birds to pose for them. They want the birds, but additionally days of excellent gentle and ideal climate.

The taxonomy isn’t distinctive, but it surely have to be taken under consideration, because the destiny of billions of {dollars} and the tourism prospects of locations like San José del Guaviare, Colombia, partly depend upon it. Bird-watching is likely one of the fastest-growing journey industries on this planet, with round 3 million journeys a yr made in pursuit of birds. According to a recent evaluation by Future Market Insights, a U.S. consulting agency, the worth of the bird-watching market reached $59.7 billion in 2022, greater than twice the gross home product of a rustic like El Salvador, and is on observe to exceed $100 billion by 2032. The United States alone, the nation that gives the biggest variety of guests to Colombia every year, is a market price greater than $39 billion involving almost 45 million individuals. There aren’t any dependable worldwide statistics, however it’s recognized that the phenomenon has grown, particularly because the pandemic, primarily based on the data of sightings on platforms corresponding to eBird.

Colombia has been making an attempt to draw this tribe of bird-watchers for round 20 years. Records from 2023 present that the nation has the biggest variety of hen species on this planet, numbering not less than 1,966 species, almost 20% of all recorded species on Earth. Of these, not less than 83 are resident endemic species, which means they can’t be discovered anyplace else. A 2018 examine discovered that, following the peace cope with FARC guerrillas, bird-watching tourism has the potential to create greater than 7,500 jobs and contribute $9 million to the financial system. Colombia is, theoretically, a bird-watcher’s heaven.

In Guaviare, solely now are concerted efforts being made to spend money on the sector, although the division is home to greater than 680 species, a quantity that, for comparability, is greater than half of all those who exist within the United States. In San José, solely a few companies are devoted to specialised excursions. This is because of a number of difficulties, one in every of them being that Guaviare has no endemic species of its personal or birds which can be discovered solely there. “I wouldn’t go to Guaviare for one [single] species,” mentioned Guillermo Gómez, one in every of Colombia’s main nature photographers. All of the hen species in Guaviare may also be present in different departments of the nation, which regularly don’t have the unhealthy fame issues of violence that Guaviare has.

Guaviare, nonetheless, additionally has its benefits, Goméz pressured, saying it is rather simple to see wildlife up shut and, in contrast to different areas, the birds have a really calm perspective. In idea, you see lots of completely different species in simply a few days, together with a few of these which can be most tasty to photographers.

The hearth within the forest

One early morning in September, 5 of us crammed into Ramón Carrillo’s dusty old maroon Jeep, setting off from San José del Guaviare within the route of Villa Marcela, within the village of La Pizarra. Villa Marcela, a 200-hectare (494-acre) farm whose proprietor later transformed it right into a reserve, served as one of many bases for a 2018 examine carried out by the Field Museum of Chicago, probably the most vital pure historical past museums on this planet, with the assistance of FDCS and different organizations on the geological, ecological and social traits of a number of areas of Guaviare. The following yr, GOAG and FDCS selected a path on the farm, a number of kilometers lengthy with jungle surroundings and, most significantly, a Guianan cock-of-the-rock lek. A lek (a phrase of Swedish origin with no actual translation) is an enviornment through which the males of sure hen species carry out to draw females. In the case of the cock-of-the-rock, the males conceal the black feathers of their wings and tail and puff themselves up and soar on the bottom displaying off their outrageous ember-colored plumage.

We continued alongside a reddish filth highway as Carrillo reminisced about his early days as a bird-watcher. Like almost the entire 13 present GOAG members, Carrillo got here to bird-watching due to Parques Nacionales, the Colombian nationwide parks authority, and the pleased whim of a mom. Around 2009, Lourdes Peñuela, the director of Fundación Verde, a conservation NGO, visited Playa Güio, an space close to San José del Guaviare the place, years later, one other of the birding trails recognized by the GOAG can be positioned. Peñuela was shocked by the variety of birds. Her daughter, Natalia Ocampo, as we speak one of many nation’s most vital ornithologists, was a bird-watcher. Peñuela approached the National Training Service (SENA), a authorities entity devoted to free technical and technological coaching, with the thought of organizing a course within the space, and the SENA subsequently employed a biologist from Parques Nacionales as a instructor.

The course was held in 2009. The instructor started by inviting the scholars to make inventories. They discovered to establish birds by their songs and by minute variations within the completely different feathers that make up the birds’ winds, corresponding to their flight feathers, covert feathers, scapular feathers, and alula feathers. On weekends, they traveled to distant areas looking for lifers — the phrase utilized by bird-watchers to indicate the people of hen species they’ve seen for the primary time — and marked them of their subject guides. This is the place the GOAG was born.

The group progressively grew, attracting new members who primarily got here from the sector of biology but additionally others, corresponding to {an electrical} engineer. In 2013, they organized the nationwide ornithology assembly. Almost 150 individuals attended and, with the income they made, purchased 4 binoculars and two cameras and borrowed two bird-watching guides from Fundación ProfessionalAves, the primary NGO for bird-watchers in Colombia. It can be the place Carrillo and Lugo — who got here to San José after fleeing from violence in Tolima — met. At one time, they went out birding each Saturday. Today, they exit as soon as a month, Carrillo mentioned, as we turned down the driveway towards Villa Marcela.

Our jeep pulled up by the farmhouse of Villa Marcela. Colorful murals that includes various completely different birds adorned the partitions of the home. In entrance, ready for us, binoculars in hand, was Wilmer Ramírez, 34, a specialist in environmental useful resource administration and tour information who has been president of GOAG for various years. With an unemotional face, he’s recognized by Wikipedia for his information of birds. He grew up in Guaviare however was not interested in birds till the SENA course. Ramírez had grown up within the countryside, so he didn’t suppose they might train him a lot; nonetheless, within the course, he found dozens of various species that he had thought had been the identical, and his world was modified. Upon our arrival, he instructed us he had simply seen a Pteroglossus azara, or the Ivory-billed aracari, a toucanet with a serrated-looking invoice, he mentioned quite matter-of-factly.

After a short while, we set off into the bush. We crossed a pasture the place cattle had been grazing and arrived on the entrance to the forest. The three bird-watchers had been carrying suitcases and fanny packs filled with the necessities. These included bird-watching guides with the scientific names of the birds in Latin (various guides are available, with every bird-watcher having his or her personal desire), specialised cameras with magnification for birdwatchers (Canon Powershot 65X, Nikon P1000), binoculars (Nikon 8×42, Vortex Diamondback 8×42) and their cellphones, which had been outfitted with apps corresponding to eBird and Merlin Bird ID, an software from the identical Cornell group, which helps establish birds by their shapes, colours and distribution. Merlin additionally serves as a form of Shazam for birds: It acknowledges their calls and songs and, in flip, permits bird-watchers to make use of the playback possibility to draw birds with the voices of their species.

We stopped in a clearing with rocky floor to take heed to the birds.

“That’s a bright-rumped attila [Attila spadiceus] singing,” Ramírez mentioned. He fell silent, then talked about a number of species that he might additionally establish by their chirps.

His means to acknowledge and establish hen calls was harking back to a musician who is ready to establish every instrument in a symphony. There had been feels like guffaws, whistles, hisses, giggles, farts, moans, whimpers, whines, rattles, violins, shattering glass, flutes, whistles, sneezes. Paying consideration to the birdsong was like taking off a pair of headphones. “Bird-watching is a three-way relationship between the birds, the light and the observer,” wrote British naturalist and author Mark Cocker, in his ebook Birders: Tales of a Tribe. He also needs to have added the fourth level of sound to the connection.

There was silence, adopted by new sounds.

“And what’s that, singing now?” the others requested Ramírez.

“Those are monkeys,” he mentioned.

Ramirez and Carrillo additionally had their very own sounds. Sometimes they used Merlin’s playback to draw the birds that they had recognized. At different occasions, they imitated the music of the ferruginous pygmy owl (Glaucidium brasilianum), one of many high predators within the space — a high-pitched uh, uh, uh — or the decision of a chick in misery, which feels like an try at whistling from somebody who doesn’t know methods to whistle, to arouse the curiosity of close by birds.

After Di Doménico took images, we continued on our approach, our gaze fastened on the cover. Upon passing a small hole within the path, the bird-watchers all of a sudden stopped. Right in the course of the path, a coiled-up widespread lancehead (Bothrops atrox) was trying straight at us. A chew from this venomous viper would have, at greatest, despatched us to the hospital. Carrillo’s bootprint had been marked about 20 centimeters (8 inches) from the snake. Domenico pulled out the flash and took an image of it earlier than shooing it away.

In the forest, creepers grew amid a labyrinth of stones of the Araracuara formation, a geological unit of sedimentary Paleozoic rocks that appeared scattered amongst palms and bushes. The path was flanked by partitions lined with mosses, ferns, lichens, bromeliads and roots, whereas fungi species consumed the trunks of fallen bushes. Occasionally, the leaves larger up within the foliage had been stirred by the motion of a hen. Less birdsong could possibly be heard than within the clearing. The gentle filtered laboriously by way of the cover and reached our toes with inexperienced glimpses.

“What sound is that now?” one of many bird-watchers requested.

“Cicadas [Cicadoidea],” Ramírez answered.

We walked about 45 minutes to the realm the place the cock-of-the-rock often appeared. Ahead, in a gap between the stone partitions, Carrillo and Lugo had been telling jokes and laughing loudly. Farther again, Ramírez watched the treetops. Carrillo pulled out his cellphone and performed the hen’s name. He continued speaking loudly whereas Ramirez remained silent.

“This is where the cock-of-the-rock used to come,” Ramírez mentioned after some time, with an air of resignation. He defined that the path was not solely utilized by bird-watchers; quite, the proprietor of the land, Shirley Mejía, charged 28,000 pesos ($7.07) to vacationers and locals alike for entry to the realm. This has meant that the forest has been preserved however has additionally seen households include their pets, which is a surefire method to scare off the birds, Ramírez defined. “So many people come here to just sit down and talk …”

“Come! Come!” Carrillo all of a sudden shouted.

Crouching down, he pointed his digicam at an orange dot in the course of the branches past the rocks. Two cock-of-the-rock chicks had been trying to find the supply of the music amid a tangle of leaves. For a few minutes, we watched their actions by way of cameras and binoculars. At one level, a beam illuminated the topknot of one in every of them: It appeared like a fan of fireplace surrounded by a maroon line.

A crimson dot

The subsequent morning, the identical 5 males crossed a bridge close to the lagoons that stream into the Guaviare River, simply over 20 minutes from San José. Dozens of oropendolas had been consuming the fruits of a yarumo tree. One of them approached to present a chunk of fruit to a chick that appeared like an grownup. Carrillo pointed it out, shaking his head.

“Hey, but this one is more than 35 years old and living with his parents. He’s a parasite,” he mentioned with a chuckle that quickly took maintain of Lugo.

A couple of meters from the start of the Buenavista path, one other of the paths marked by the GOAG and the FCDS, Wilmer Ramírez waited for the group in absolute silence together with his spouse, Diana Lucena Gavilán — Diana Hawk, as one vacationer known as her — a 39-year-old geographer from the University of Cauca. A tinamou, a brown hen formed like a hen that was hardly ever seen, could possibly be heard singing not distant. Other sounds may be heard.

“What was that?” somebody requested.

“That was the turquoise tanager [Tangara mexicana],” Ramírez mentioned in his customary flat tone.

It was Ramírez who opened up the world of birds to Lucena Gavilán. They each labored with Parques Nacionales. On Global Big Day in 2017, she requested him to accompany her on the rely. They continued to exit bird-watching now and again and, on Love and Friendship Day that yr, he proposed to her. She didn’t anticipate it, however they fell in love quickly after. They continued to go bird-watching, acquired married and purchased a farm they known as Vida Feliz — Happy Life. During the pandemic, he watched birds from his mattress.

In 2021, they created Happy Life, a journey company specializing in bird-watching. It took them awhile to get it up and working, however the first few months of this yr had been packed, with visits from many foreigners and Colombian teams. They have tried to prepare a bird-watching honest, however no one within the authorities “has copied,” he mentioned. In March, they themselves organized a visit to which they invited a number of the primary nature-focused tourism companies within the nation, touring a few of GOAG’s chosen trails with them.

“The white-eared jacamar [Galbalcyrhynchus leucotis],” Ramírez mentioned, pointing to a kingfisher-like hen in a tree on the path entrance. “It’s one of the targets; this is the best place in the country to see it.”

While the compulsory images had been being taken, a Mexican documentary movie crew handed us. They had been additionally coming to see the courtship dance of the wire-tailed manakin. We allow them to go forward of us and took a break in an deserted wood home subsequent to the highway. Shortly after, we entered a forest full of an awesome number of bushes, such because the caimito (Chrysophyllum cainito), vara santa (Triplaris americana), guamo (Inga spuria), ceiba (Malvaceae household), yarumo (Cecropia peltata) and palma de sejes (Oenocarpus bataua).

We walked for a number of hours below an enclosed cover interspersed with gaps on both aspect of the path that allowed us to see the cover and branches, whereas the bird-watchers reeled off the names of the birds that perched on them: the nice antshrike (Taraba main), “because of its red eyes,” the white-bearded hermit hummingbird (Phaethornis hispidus) and the pink-throated becard (Pachyramphus minor). Enormous tabby, orange, maroon, brown, white and morpho butterflies flew irregularly below the leaves. Next to the wire-tailed manakin lek, the documentarians waited impatiently. Carrillo and Lugo laughed and chatted amongst themselves whereas Ramírez and Lucena Gavilán superior, imitating a chick at risk. A honey bear all of a sudden climbed a tree. A collared trogon (Trogon collaris), a relative of the quetzal that Lugo sooner or later hopes to see, perched on a department a couple of meters away. In simply the 2 days of the journey, the group was capable of see almost 100 hen species, in line with Ramírez’s lists.

On our approach again, weary from the walk, we picked up the tempo to flee the mosquitos. Carrillo went forward, towards the manakin’s lek. The documentary movie crew had already left. It was almost midday, at which period the birds have a tendency to cover away to flee the warmth of the day.

Carrillo made his approach noisily by way of the bushes, swatting away the mosquitos as he did so. Next to a horizontal department about 10 meters (33 toes) from the trail, he took out his cellphone and performed the manakin’s music at full quantity, letting out an anguished squawk that appeared to demand the presence of the opposite.

A crimson dot moved by way of the foliage.

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This publish was previously published on news.mongabay.com and below a Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.

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Photo credit score: iStockPhoto.com