The sky was just clearing up and the sun about to rise when we got on board our boat and started sailing to the nearby islands. The boat rocking at the rhythm of the ocean waves that came crashing against the rocky shores of Isla Despensa and Isla Juanilla. We sat there, observing through our binoculars for about two hours before the Yellow-naped amazon parrots roosting nearby started flying out to begin their days.
The Yellow-naped amazon, or Amazona auropalliata, is one of the 17 parrot species native to Costa Rica, and sadly, they’re also one of the most threatened parrots in our country; their charismatic personalities and their ability to speak simple phrases make them very sought after as pets in households all across their natural range. At Macaw Recovery Network we’ve made a commitment to aid diminishing parrot populations in the Neotropics and today we’re excited to start working closely with a new endangered species.
After the long process of fine-tuning the necessary details to jump into new waters, our team found a suitable spot to launch a new project to work with the Yellow-naped amazon parrot. In the coastal town of El Jobo, these amazons fly free around the mainland, and back and forth to a few rocky islands near the shores where they tend to roost and nest in. Our Community Outreach team visited the area and met with people from the community, as well as different organizations working on environmentally focused initiatives that, added to the parrot population density, confirm the idea that El Jobo is a perfect place to start this program.
On top of that, we established a great partnership to work with local conservation organization Equipo Tora Carey (ETC) to monitor Yellow-naped amazons during the breeding season. The team at ETC had been leading parrot counts from the beach and have also worked extensively to preserve the local Carey turtle population.
And so, at the start of April, I visited El Jobo to meet and train the team at ETC on parrot nest monitoring, as well as general fieldwork. During four days, we worked hard on climbing training for trees and rocky walls, plus the use of tools like GPS and binoculars, databases, and other useful tools. There I met Maike, who’s leading ETC, and Ricardo and Denilson, a pair of fishermen whose love for nature involved them with ETC and who are now eager to continue monitoring the Yellow-naped amazon nests we found during the climbing sessions of our trip.
Fieldwork and nest monitoring are always strenuous, but there’s something about the rugged, uninhabited, and overgrown islands off the coast that makes it harder to trek and climb looking for nests! This is also a good thing if you stop and think about poaching and the illegal trade of this species.
After a 5-hour climbing session on the island, you’re guaranteed to be exhausted and scratched all over by the dry, dense vegetation, but you’re also guaranteed sights of this impressive bird and the satisfaction of seeing them nest and breed in their natural roosting areas. We even found 4 active nests with a total of 9 grown chicks in them, probably just a month short from fledging!
The team in El Jobo will continue to monitor these nests and chicks, recording all new findings and adding them to our databases. Hopefully, as we gather data and the project continues to grow, we can come to understand this species better, as well as impacting their populations in a positive way so that we can see the Yellow-naped amazon parrot thrive again!
Mario Jiménez Segura
Habitat and Restoration Field Team Leader
