Parrot Blogger - Peter Cowen

Back from the wilderness!

by Peter Cowen

After spending two weeks at another lodge to study some more, i am back and have now finished all of my data collection! It also explains the lack of posts for two weeks as i didn´t have any Internet access! The new site was perfect for my study as the majority of the trails and even the area surrounding the lodge was all secondary forest. Many a morning i was awoken by numerous parakeets and Chestnut Fronted Macaws feeding on the plants and fruits!

At this site i had 5kms worth of trails to study. One of the trails meandered through one of the local communities of "La Torre", so on my first day i was shown around the trails and introduced to all the families. All was going well until we came across a new family who was not native to the area, after chatting for a while i was aggressively attacked by the families local herd of jungle dogs! After coming out of the attack fairly unscathed i later realised that i had a gash in the back of my leg which was fairly painful! I have never liked dogs and this just increased this! Below is a picture of the gash, i apologise for the quality as it was hard to take a picture of the back of my leg!



Also while visiting these families, many of them practiced farming! This experience changed my perspective of the causes of deforestation, as i witnessed large of tracts of forest that had been deforested for farming. When people talk about the causes it is never the small farms that have a large effect, i now disagree with this!