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Floodwaters Coninue to Rise

by Sarah Faegre

The macaws continue incubating their two eggs, high and dry in their nest box, while the people of the Bolivian lowlands do not fair quite so well.

January 29th
5:45 p.m.-- in the blind

The rain was dumping down all morning and the water rose to within inches of our tent. The vicious red ants are as desperate as we are for a dry spot to set up camp and are trying to colonize the walls and roof of our tent.

Earlier today an anaconda swam into the flooded yard and grabbed a big, white rooster. The kids came running towards their father, screaming “Sicurí! Sicurí!” (Anaconda). Steve got some amazing photos of the 5-foot snake, coiled around the rooster, before Rolando killed it with machete. The rooster survived, though it was squeezed so hard that it looked as though its eyes would pop out. I felt very sad for the snake, however I can not hold it against Rolando and Lurdes that they need to do all they can to protect their animals. They have six children to feed and one rooster is worth a lot.



The mosquitoes are driving me insane inside the blind right now. The eggs still haven’t hatched and I couldn’t feel any movement within the eggs when I checked them today. I am beginning to doubt that I ever did feel movement in one of the eggs. Maybe I was just feeling my own pulse in my fingertips and mistook it for the tiny movements of an embryo. We have been here for 9 days and it is known that the eggs were being incubated for at least one week (and probably 2 weeks) before we arrived. That means that the latest they could hatch would be two weeks from now. I suppose I had better stop being impatient and settle in for the wait.

One of the reasons for my impatient is that Steve and I have to get to town soon and I don’t want to leave the nest during this most vulnerable stage. Upon our arrival at Encanta, we thought it would be easy to travel to town for a day or two, just by riding a horse to Esperanza and then taking the daily public transportation to Trini. Now, boat is the only means of transportation. The current news is that someone from Esperanza will try to get a canoe from Trini. I just hope someone gets a canoe before February 15th, the current date for Steve’s departure flight, which he will change whenever we can get to a phone.



9:00 p.m.

I am now in the tent, having escaped from a ravenous cloud of mosquitoes that appeared and engulfed me when I decided to give myself an extravagant bucket bath on the chapapa. A chapapa is a makeshift, table-like structure, perhaps more accurately translated as “platform”. A chapapa, unlike most tables, often has spaces between the planks, sticks or logs that make up its surface and can be quite partial to falling down, even when used properly.

I dislike standing in the mud while I bathe, especially because there is something that always bites my toes—little painful pinches, as if there were aquatic ants. So, in preparation for my bath, I carried a bucket of water from the pond to the chapapa. The chapapa, near the well, is entirely surrounded by water and perhaps it seems a bit odd that I would carry a bucket of muddy water from across the yard, only to bathe, surrounded by the same, muddy water. However, I think the pond water smells less like cows and so I prefer it. Anyways, when I tried to stand on the chapapa so I could bathe without getting my feet muddy, I discovered that many other creatures had had the same idea and climbed up the chapapa to stay dry: mostly a bizarre variety of ants and spiders. I decided I could share the chapapa with these critters and began to soap up until, halfway through my bucket-bath, the chapapa fell down, dumping me, my clothes and my towel into the water. So I stood in the mud and continued my bath, lamenting my wet clothes and towel…and then the mosquitoes attacked, making me prance around naked, splashing around in the water and slapping at my body. Finally I ran, soaking wet, for cover in the tent. Now I am dry and the tent is damp. I hate bathing.

I hear great-horned owls, hooting faintly in the forest, across the pond. The frogs and bats are croaking and squeaking so loudly all around me and over head that the noise level is almost uncomfortable. I hear soft voices and laughter from the family in the house. A horse snorts. I hear Steve’s soggy footsteps as he returns from his anti-frustration walk. The three guys at Esperanza go to Trini tomorrow and John (a project employee who is working at Esperanza) will supposedly be back on Saturday.

On Sunday we might know if there will be a canoe to get us out of Encanta. Maybe the series of trucks and boats is up and running, to get people from Loreto to Trini. (Note: Loreto is a tiny town, 15 KM from Esperanza, which normally has daily transportation to the big city of Trinidad.) Or maybe one or all of the parts in this line of transport are not working. Maybe there is a motorboat that can go all the way from Loreto to Trini. Maybe not. Maybe there are planes flying from Loreto to Trini. Maybe Loreto’s airport is already flooded. Maybe it will rain more and boats will be the only option left. Maybe it’s done raining for a while and the water will go down enough that we can use horses.

Rolando says that probably the guy who might be looking for a canoe in Trini won’t find one because canoes are currently in high demand, but Rolando may be able to borrow a canoe from a neighboring estancia. No one knows any more than all of these maybes and probablys and probably nots, and the for sures that are never for sure, but it doesn’t matter—that’s just life in Bolivia.


January 31st

Yesterday we were finally flooded out of our tent— the little island on which the tent was perched is now underwater. I rescued all our stuff from the tent in the middle of the 4-hour downpour (while Steve was watching the nest) so that our sleeping bags were only marginally damp. By the time the rain stopped and we were able to move the tent it was filled with 6 inches of standing water. We are close enough to the river that with this flood we are now part of the river system. The water has a current, flowing along with the river Ibaré from South to North.

Even the water in the forest has a current. What was once a path leading to the nest is now a knee-deep stream with a current. The water I walk through to get to the nest was probably in Loreto a few hours earlier, and will be heading north towards Trini after passing through Encanta.

At 8km, we are far enough from the main river that the current is slow, but we are all grateful for the current because it keeps the water cleaner. It hardly seems like more rain will make much difference anymore, since we already moved our tent to a raised platform (chapapa) on higher ground and the water is so deep that our boots are flooded during the daily walk to the nest. Of course I wouldn’t wish more suffering on the people of Trini, thousands of whom are already flooded out of their houses and living in makeshift tents on higher ground.

The water is already higher than it got during last year’s flood, but Rolando says that it’s not really any worse because this year people had a little more time to prepare and knew just how bad it could get. Last year huge numbers of livestock died, as well as wild animals. Lurdes says that anytime now the armadillos should start arriving by the dozen to the higher ground at the house and yard. They even climbed up into the oven last year, she tells me, especially if it had been used recently because the thick, baked mud walls retain heat for a long time.

On the topic of ovens, the method of baking here is quite interesting. The oven is a mud-walled mound, very similar indeed to a Hornero’s mud nest (horno = oven in Spanish), only differing in that the real oven has 2 openings (one on each side) to facilitate making a fire and cleaning out the ash. To heat the oven, it is stuffed with wood and coals from the kitchen fire and stoked for at least an hour, until its blazing hot, and the entire oven (including the mud walls) are at the proper roasting temperature. Then all the wood and coals are removed, the food is put on a tray in the oven and the heavy doors are replaced and held shut by long wooden poles, braced against the ground. The structure holds heat so well that it will not need to be re-heated and can even cook a tray lined with huge chunks of meat…or an armadillo.


I am sitting in the blind where a cool breeze has just picked up. It feels like it might rain again. The female is on her nest, but I am worried about the fate of her two eggs. When I arrived here at 8:00 she was nowhere to be found and didn’t show up at the nest until 8:45. Now it is 9:30 and she is still in her nest, incubating, but it’s very odd that she would be gone for so long. The pair is definitely acting strange. The male entered twice in one hour, each time for less than a minute.

Our first signals of failure at the Vaca Muerta nest, in early December, was when the male repeatedly approached the nest (with incubating female inside) screaming, went in and out of the nest, and then sat near the entrance, screaming, as if trying to convince the female to abandon the dead, broken eggs. The male here at Encanta is still being silent near the nest, so hopefully everything is fine. Oh, please, please let the eggs hatch!

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 09/29 at 12:20 AM
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Waiting for the Eggs to Hatch

by Sarah Faegre

January 26th

All seems well with the incubating Blue-throats but still, the eggs have not hatched. Steve and I split each day doing morning and afternoon nest-watch at the blind and the rest of the day is free for spending time with the family, helping out with chores, reading and writing, or walking around, looking for birds and other animals. All this water is very confining, and at times I am less than enthusiastic that I must flood my boots and tromp around in the knee-to-waist deep swamp if I want to go for a walk.

The kids giggle at Steve and me as we walk carefully through the mud, trying not to fall when our boots get stuck. Lurdes, Rolando and the kids all go barefoot most of the time, and I must admit it is nice to feel the mud squish between my toes…but somehow I always find myself stepping on thorns or having my feet and legs bitten by the floating ant colonies. The water is rising steadily around the tent and has already surrounded the well, filling it with dirty, swamp water. The family is as bothered by this as I am but, as always, they remain good humored in the face of difficulties.

We are drinking rainwater, collected in buckets as it runs off the tiled roof of the main house. The walls of the house are made of baked mud bricks and the floor is packed dirt. It would be disastrous if the flood waters surrounded the house since the walls could turn to mud and fall down…but God willing, this will not happen.

Diesel-fueled lamps, made with jam jars and cloth wicks, softly illuminate the dinner and late night conversations at the table. The lamps flicker softly and throw reflections across the shallow water that surrounds the open kitchen. Frogs chorus from every direction.


January 28th

We woke up this morning and found that the kitchen has flooded and is full of muddy, standing water. I helped Lurdes set up a bunch of platforms to get into the kitchen from the house (so that kids can come to eat at the table without getting all muddy) and other platforms inside the kitchen so that she doesn’t have to stand in the water while cooking. It has been pouring on and off all morning and the meat from the calf that was butchered the day before yesterday is starting to go bad because there is no way to dry the slabs into charque without at least one day of strong sun. The piglets are grunting and shivering in a pile under my hammock. My hammock is strung up in the grass-roofed galpón, which keeps it dry during the rain. Unfortunately, the galpón also the shelter used to store meat until it can be dried or, if it goes bad, until it is fed it to the dogs.

Still, we are ever waiting for the eggs to hatch. Steve climbed yesterday afternoon and thought he could feel movement of a chick within one of them. They should hatch any day now—a week at the most. We continue watching, watching…recording the activities of the father, to and from the nest, and of the mother, incubating attentively and rarely leaving the nest for more than five minutes. The male spends at least 2 hours per day perched on top of the nest box, preening or sleeping. We’ve been getting a lot of great photos of the male, but the female is harder to get good shots of as she quickly enters and exits the nest box. With good photos of the facial lines on this pair we will be able to confirm with 100% certainty that this is the same pair that made a nesting attempt in this box in August but lost their eggs due to predation.

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 09/25 at 03:40 AM
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Life at Encanta

by Sarah Faegre

Steve and I take shifts so that the nest is under observation for most of the day--the female is incubating and the male makes frequent visits to feed her, so all seems well. On our way through the jungle, walking to and from the nest, we have been lucky enough to observe all sorts of amazing wildlife.

January 23rd

It has been raining on and off with bursts of torrential downpour interspersed with an enduring drizzle. The water is already approaching disconcertingly close to our tent, inspiring us to put up an overhead tarp and dig canals to drain the pools that are forming at the back corners of the tent.

Yesterday evening I watched the nest from 5 to 7 p.m., the last hour of which I was worried by the long absence of the female. She seems to be extraordinarily sensitive and is frightened off her eggs by any sudden noise. She seems to particularly hate sneezes.


January 24th

Sitting in the open and derelict escondite (blind) here at Encanta where we haven’t been able to improve the temporary blind (built before they knew that the nest was active) for fear of disturbing Señora Barba Azul, who is extremely sensitive to disruption. The tiger herons are mooing repetitively beyond the nest box, sounding to the inexperienced ear like a jaguar in heat (according to the locals that is—I have not personally heard the calls of a jaguar in heat).

When I arrive, all is still and silent in the nest box and I assume that mom is in there, keeping her eggs warm in the cool, damp morning air. Frogs are chorusing from the flooded pampas and the Thrush-like Wren is making its strange sci-fi shooting noises, which everyone says sounds like the space guns in star wars. This morning, when I put on my rubber boots to get out of the tent, I felt something at the bottom, which luckily moved to the side as I stood up. It wriggled a few times and then, as I stood there, out jumped a little frog and with one hop was back in the water that is now only 2 feet from the tent vestibule, and away it swam. I laughed and said that I supposed that too-big boots served some purpose after all: more room for the frogs to jump out, rather than getting squished. Later, as I was sitting in the outhouse, I felt something else in my boot and I reached in a pulled out a toad—also quite alive. Not surprising, the boot that the frogs and toads prefer is the one with a leak that is always wet inside.

I am very happy to report that all is well in Parabalandía (Macawland). The female is inside her box and only left for 5 minutes since I arrived at 7. I am anxious to climb again and find out if the chicks have hatched, but these days it seems too risky to disturb her.

On the 22nd, on my way back from the evening nest watch, I was amazed and thrilled to see a troop of flying monkeys. Of course they were not quite like the evil, flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz (luckily) but they jumped from tree to tree just like flying squirrels, with amazing distance and agility, flying through the air with all 4 limbs extended for distances as great as 10 meters. They were extremely quick, agile little creatures, hitting their destination branch and immediately scurrying up the tree, stopping in the high branches to peer down at me briefly: round little faces with big, round, black eyes and striking, white markings above the eyes, giving them their Spanish name: Mono Cuatro-ojos (Four-eyed Monkey). They have dark, soft brown fur on their backs and tails contrasting with rufus bellies that fade to a yellow-white color on their sides. Their tails are about twice the length of their bodies and may or may not have be prehensile (I did not see it used as such). The group consisted of 4-6 individuals, which made funny, birdlike blipping noises as they moved through the trees. Are these the night-monkeys I have wanted to see for so long? Their presence at dusk and the appearance of their big, round, black eyes make me suspect that I did indeed see a troop of nocturnal flying monkeys! Aside from monkeys, there is a baby caiman living next to my tent, plenty of frogs, two foxes and a raccoon that come around at night and giant black and yellow anacondas and false water-pythons that steal half-grown ducklings. The snakes I have not yet seen.



Back at the house, I am sharing mate with Lucy and Lurdes and watching as they make a crunchy bread called bizcocho: equal parts flour and lard, eggs, yeast, water, salt. Ten-year-old Rolando just finished plucking all the tail feathers out of a young chicken. When I asked why, he and Lurdes (his mom) explained that you have to puck the tail so that its body will grow bigger. The tail stunts its growth otherwise, they claim, and it will grow to be a tiny, skinny chicken with no meat on its bones, and a long, useless tail.
“But the tail will just grow back,” I said.
“And we’ll pluck it again,” said Lurdes. They laughed at my raised eyebrows and laughed even harder when I said I didn’t believe it was true. “It’s true,” they assured me. "Haven't you seen those tiny little chickens with huge tails? The tail doesn’t let the meat grow." I then jokingly suggested, perhaps a bit unkindly, that the reason Yusara was fat was because she has short hair. Lurdes, Rolando and Lucy laughed uproariously at this comment. “Yes, it’s true!” said Lucy. "If you let her hair grow long she will get thin, like me and Sarah.” Yusara was good-natured about the joke, since being chubby in Bolivia isn’t seen as something to be terribly ashamed of the way it often is here in the U.S.

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 09/10 at 07:00 PM
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New Nest at Encanta

by Sarah Faegre

Steve and I arrive at Encanta, where a nest has just been found: The pair of Blue-throated Macaws who lost their eggs earlier this season are now incubating two eggs. We are very excited to watch over this new nest and do all we can to ensure success for this pair on their second nesting attempt of the year.



Above: Adult BTMs at Encanta

January 21st

Yesterday Steve and I arrived at Encanta, an isolated estancia which will be our home for the remainder of our time with the project. Encanta is 5 km from Esperanza (the closest estancia which can be accessed by road), although with the current flooded condition, a 7-8 km roundabout route must be taken when traveling between to two estancias. Even the roundabout route has enough water that I had to lift my legs up, above the horse’s back, when navigating the deeper parts. With another foot of water, the horses would have been swimming. Much of our path wove through the jungle, bordering the flooded wetlands (savannah in the dry season)—and even here, in the lush, dense forest there are several feet of standing water in most places, giving our journey a particularly adventurous feel. We spent much time flattened against our horses’ necks to slip beneath low hanging branches. Steve was nearly hung from a tree by his backpack when the top of the pack hooked onto a branch and the horse panicked at the sudden resistance and tried to bolt. Then there was a hornet nest we had to run the horses away from and more branches to duck under and plenty palo diablo (a poisonous tree) to avoid brushing against.

The jungle here is beautiful—very distinct from the forest islands of Tres Palmeras and the Campamento, about 250 km from here. I love the place and the family we’re living with. Steve and I both feel lucky, getting to spend time here, at the isolated Encanta. The only other active nest (and the 2 other project employees) are at Esperanza, where the nest is so close to the house and the chicks so big that there is no quiet time in the forest and very little work.



Above photos: The kids of Encanta looking at our bird book and me serving mate to the kids from my hammock

Yesterday afternoon Steve and I set out to climb the Encanta nest tree, to assure ourselves of the status of the nest. Nine and ten-year-old Yusara and Rolando, the two oldest kids, tagged along to watch us climb the nest. Unfortunately this meant that the three dogs trotted along behind us as well. We were about 100 meters into the jungle when the dogs ran ahead, yipping and squealing and thrashing about in a way that I knew could only mean they were killing something. We ran to where they were gathered in a frenzy in time to see one of the dogs violently shaking a tiny, baby coati (tejón) as the mother and her other baby watch helplessly from a tree. I screamed at the dogs and kicked them, yelling “Fuera, fuera de aqui, perro basura” (Out, get out of here, bad dog). This incited riotous giggles from the children, for whom the killing scene was quite normal. “I hate it when dogs kill wild animals,” I explained to them. “Because there are lots and lots of dogs in the world and very few tejón. If the dogs are always killing, killing, killing, someday there will be no more tejón.”

The dogs were certainly shocked by my reaction and it took a few more hard kicks before they went back home. That is the last time I will let the dogs follow me into the forest. After successfully chasing away the dogs and taking a few photos of the distressed mother coati we continued to the nest tree, where the female BTM flew out of the box upon our arrival. Just as Steve began to climb the rain began—big fat drops that soaked us immediately and we had to abort the mission.

This morning we went again to the nest, this time without dogs or rain, and were very pleased to find that all is well in the nest box. I reached in and set two fingers gently over one of the warm eggs, trying to feel any movement within. How exciting it will be to see the tiny, newly hatched barba azul chicks and to look out for them during this most sensitive stage.

I am now sitting at the table in the open-air, grass-roofed kitchen and 4 of the 6 kids are watching me write while they eat/play with the guineo bananas that are tiny and very sweet—picked fresh from the chaco (Bolivian word for orchard or garden) about 1 km from here. In the chaco they grow guineo, corn, watermelon, squash, and yuca.



Above images: Riding back from the chaco with guineo and Senor Rolando with his son, also named Rolando


January 22nd

The road between Loreto and Trini is flooded and unusable until the dry season, despite Igor’s assurances that the road stays dry year round, regardless of rain and flooding in surrounding areas. His assurances were based on the average rainy season here, assuming that last year's flood would not make a re-appearance and wreck havok on the Beni yet again. Unfortunately it looks to be a big flood year again and Trini is filling with water and dengue fever—the radio made an announcement this morning, cautioning residents to keep their windows and doors closed to protect themselves from the potential upcoming epidemic. The classes in Trini, which are supposed to start on February 11, will be delayed, as they were last year, because when the outer neighborhoods of Trini flood, the people from the flooded houses move into the schools until the water goes down.

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 08/27 at 04:03 PM
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