I am not a “bird nerd.” So, why in the world would I go on an educational trip to the Amazon rain forest where one of the study topics was birds? That’s a question I often asked myself as I tromped through the forest looking for birds. The answer? Well, I like adventure. I like to learn new things. I needed college credit hours, and so all those things brought me to the forest to study birds. I learned a lot about birds in just a week...more than I ever thought I could.
On the first day of the trip, my group and I dove right into our learning activities, and one of the first things we did was to set up mist nets. A mist net is a long net that is used to catch birds in the wild. The birds can't see the nets, so they fly right into them. It doesn't hurt the birds to be in mist nets, but the person removing the birds has to be careful. Only our professors, Ursula and Jose removed birds from the nets.
Once the nets were set up, we checked them about every 45 minutes. Once a bird was caught in a net, it was removed and placed into a special bag. Ursula assured us that the bags did not harm the birds and that being in the bags helped to calm them. We then took the birds back up to the main lodge to be tagged.
The tagging process involved several tasks because one of our goals was to identify the types of birds we caught. So, all the birds were weighed and measured. Measuring involved the length of the beaks, legs, and wings. The colors and markings of the birds were also observed. Sometimes it was difficult to identify the birds because many of them looked similar. Ursula and Jose identified quite a few of the birds, but the rest of us typically had to look them up in a book, such as The Birds of Peru. After all the observations were made and noted, tags were placed on the bird's legs. The tags were tiny because birds don't weigh much. To place heavy tags on birds would greatly interfere with their ability perform needed tasks.
On the first day of the trip, my group and I dove right into our learning activities, and one of the first things we did was to set up mist nets. A mist net is a long net that is used to catch birds in the wild. The birds can't see the nets, so they fly right into them. It doesn't hurt the birds to be in mist nets, but the person removing the birds has to be careful. Only our professors, Ursula and Jose removed birds from the nets.
Once the nets were set up, we checked them about every 45 minutes. Once a bird was caught in a net, it was removed and placed into a special bag. Ursula assured us that the bags did not harm the birds and that being in the bags helped to calm them. We then took the birds back up to the main lodge to be tagged.
The tagging process involved several tasks because one of our goals was to identify the types of birds we caught. So, all the birds were weighed and measured. Measuring involved the length of the beaks, legs, and wings. The colors and markings of the birds were also observed. Sometimes it was difficult to identify the birds because many of them looked similar. Ursula and Jose identified quite a few of the birds, but the rest of us typically had to look them up in a book, such as The Birds of Peru. After all the observations were made and noted, tags were placed on the bird's legs. The tags were tiny because birds don't weigh much. To place heavy tags on birds would greatly interfere with their ability perform needed tasks.
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| I'm in my gear and watching birds! |
After the tags were on, the birds were ready to be released. The birds were held in such a way that they could simply fly away when they were ready. We were told not to give the birds a toss or a push because the ones who had been struggling during the tagging process might be weakened. If we tossed them, they could fall to the ground and be injured. Most of the birds we tagged were happy to get away from us, though.
Another learning activity during the trip was listening to birds and identifying them by their calls. I would like to say that I got really good at doing it, but that would be an exaggeration. By the end of the trip I could pick out about five birds every time by their calls. At the start of the trip, I couldn't do any, so I felt successful in this venture.
Another learning activity during the trip was listening to birds and identifying them by their calls. I would like to say that I got really good at doing it, but that would be an exaggeration. By the end of the trip I could pick out about five birds every time by their calls. At the start of the trip, I couldn't do any, so I felt successful in this venture.
Up until I went on this trip, I thought being an animal researcher was all excitement and danger. In some cases, I’m sure it is. However, I also learned that it can be mundane. This became evident on the day my group sat at the bird researcher’s station at the clay lick.
The clay lick is where birds come to eat clay, which helps aid in their digestion. Our task was to spend three hours watching the clay lick and making notes about the activity we saw there. Well, as our luck would have it, just about the time that we took over the duties, there weren’t any birds at the clay lick. For three hours we sat and waited, but we didn’t see anything. Then the bugs descended on us and decided we were good for a snack. It got so bad at one point that we all resorted to wearing mosquito net hats. We looked ridiculous and had a great laugh about it. However, it didn’t change the fact that we had no birds to observe. On occasion, we studied birds in nearby trees. We saw some excellent blue and gold macaws, but they didn’t go back to the clay lick.
I was relieved when the regular researchers returned, and we got to relinquish our bird researching duties. I concluded that patience is one of the key attributes of a good bird watcher. Patience and a lot of bug spray.
This article ran in the local newspaper on 3/28/2011.
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