Saturday 9 September 2017

Some mammals of the Peruvian Amazon: research for Mama Amazonica

Capybara on Tambopata river
There are other mammals in Mama Amazonica – a wolverine, a snow leopard and two giraffes – but it's the Amazonian ones that I'm obsessed with. I love wolverines, have read everything about them, and watch the two at Vincennes zoo in Paris every time I go there, snow leopards are special though the only ones I've seen are in zoos too, and the herd of giraffes at Vincennes fascinate, but nothing comes close to jaguars for me. They are the pitbulls of the cat world, muscular, with jaws that could crack the moon, yet otherworldly, with their coats of stars or giant hooker's green waterlily leaves slowly drifting across a sunlit lake. 

I knew I would probably not see one in the rainforest, or at its margins along the riverbank. So I teased the guide and he humoured me, scheduling extra rivertrips on both of my visits to Peru. We saw so many creatures, and here are just some of them, along the banks or up in the treetops. But no jaguar. Not even an ocelot. 

Until the journey back from the research lodge deep in Tambopata National Reserve, back to the lodge in the buffer zone hours downriver. Scroll down and you can see him, and I've written about him before in a previous post. I've also tried to write about him in the last poem in Mama Amazonica, struck by Pablo Neruda's line "like a river of buried jaguars" from The Heights of Macchu Picchu. 

Imagine seeing a jaguar in his vast home, the place that takes hours to cross by plane!  



Photos by Brian Fraser and Jungle Paul



Capybara with cowbird




we find a jaguar!




Paul F Condori our guide Jungle Paul's photo




White-lipped peccary lookout male watching us as his herd pass, clacking his teeth together to scare us away




peccary herd at the clay lick




Dusky titi monkey baby with mama, her back to us




Photo of giant river otter in oxbow lake, following our catamaran, by Paul F Condori



Red howler monkeys


 

Howler

Monday 4 September 2017

Some Birds of the Peruvian Amazon, research for Mama Amazonica

Great egret
To celebrate the publication of Mama Amazonica from Bloodaxe this September, here are just some of the birds I saw in the Peruvian Amazon, mostly on the Rio Tambopata banks, and in oxbows or around our lodge Tambopata Research Center. Such glory! The book may deal with trauma, but here is a counterbalance of beauty which I soaked up on my two trips to pristine rainforest. Here is what must be preserved, a world only partly visible, many species as yet undiscovered, unnnamed. Here is what I want to celebrate in my poems, along with the terror. 

Most of the photos were taken by Brian Fraser, a few by me with my iPhone, and our guide Jungle Paul took the super-sharp night-hawk.


crested oropendola



Rufescent tiger heron



Cormorant in Oxbow Lake



Black-tailed trogon



Roseate spoonbill



Red-capped cardinal



Azure gallinule



Blue-throated piping guan



Horned screamer



Mama hoatzin with chick in nest on fish pond in island



Night hawk on Tambopata photo credit Paul F Condori (Jungle Paul) our guide



Night hawks on the Tambopata, sleeping on driftwood