Hey Bird Lovers!
My name is Claire Vredenbregt, I am from the Netherlands, 25 years old and freshly out of university. I am working at the Sarapiqui field station of MRN as a field team manager. At this site we work towards conserving the Great Green Macaw (GGM). The field station is located in the GGM breeding area, we even have a nest tree right in our backyard, which means we are often woken up by the majestic (well more or less majestic) screaming of the macaws that nest there.
With the current global health crisis, we are seeing a lot of chances in our work. You might be wondering “but I thought the field team would be in the middle of the jungle, how can they possible be affected by this?”. Well yes, we do live in the middle of nowhere, which provides us personally with a greater sense of security and freedom than a lot of other people will be feeling right now. However, we do interact with people every day, the landowners, locals who are wondering about our work and just people in the shops where we do groceries. This can obviously pose problems for our own health, but also for that of the people we interact with. For example, one of the farm managers of a farm we frequent because there are macaws’ nests on it, is afraid of us coming to his farm right now because his son has asthma and he is afraid we might carry the COVID-19 virus. This resulted in us deciding not to go to this farm anymore in order to keep good relations with this manager for next breeding seasons. Another problem is that a lot of people out here do not take the whole social distancing very seriously. Landowners are always excited to see us and hear stories about “their” macaws. Usually this means that they will walk towards you and start shacking your hand or even hug you, which right now none of the team is really happy about. But it might be considered as impolite if we decline this interaction, and that might harm the relationship between the landowner and MRN. Obviously, we take safety very seriously and thus try to avoid this contact even when it is considered rude to decline a handshake. In the situation that one of the team accidentally does have physical contact with someone from outside the team, the rest of the team is usually standing ready with alcohol spray to disinfect the unfortunate one. The most dangerous moment of the week though, is when we have to do grocery shopping. Since last week the restrictions are more severe here in the shops. Meaning that now in most shops only 25 people are allowed in at one time and everyone is advised to keep 1-meter distance from each other. However, this is not very strictly enforced and thus it comes down to each individual to ensure their own safety and keep a distance.
The part that affects our work the most though, is the vehicle restrictions. Certain number plates are not allowed out on certain days, but others are. Since we only have one humble little car for our fieldwork (although soon to be joined by a second one), not being able to go out with it means that we get less work done. Of course, there are always things to do at the research station, but right now, at the end of the breeding season when the chicks are fledging, we should be out at the nests for as much time as possible.
Part of the whole “being secluded” thing is that we hardly have any phone and internet signal where we live and, in the places, where we work. This can already be hard at normal times, but when we are all unsure about the health and safety of friends and family this becomes a lot more difficult. For me personally, I usually very much enjoy being away from everything and living in a more basic way. This is the only time that I wished I was back home to be able to be closer to my friends and family who are having a hard time with the quarantine measures. In the end the best thing we can do it to provide more moments for our team to have some WIFI or signal to be able to contact loved ones back home. And, of course, to be there for each other in these difficult times.
When I am writing this, end of April, we are closing in on the end of the breeding season. This means that of all the 42 nests that we have been observing and climbing this season, almost all of the chicks are getting ready to fledge! It is a very exciting time. On the one hand we all want to see more Great Greens in the wild and there is nothing more adorable than a chick that sticks its head out of the cavity for the first time, or when it flies for the first time and does not know how to use its wings or how to land properly. On the other hand, each stage of the development of the chicks has its own risk. Earlier on in the development the risk is more related to predation or poaching, but this late in the season the risk is related to the fledging and whether the chicks will be able to fly or will land on the ground and need help to get back into the tree or whether it might need medical attention. There are many factors that can play into whether a chick will fledge properly or not. It might just be having a bad day, it might not develop far enough, it might be sick and weak, it might be that there are no trees nearby for it to land in.
Just last week we encountered a chick sitting on the ground underneath its nest tree. We had just set up our climbing gear to do a routine check of the nest, when we were wondering why we were hearing the chick so well. Was the acoustic of this nest just really good, no it really sounded too close by for that to be the case. After some looking around, we found the little chick hiding underneath a fallen over tree near the trail, he hadn’t made it very far. Luckily, we were prepared for just such a situation. We had our examination gloves, a blanket to put the bird on so he does not have to sit on the ground (insects and maybe even parasites would not do this guy any good) and scales to weigh him. As soon as we started looking him over, we could see that there was something strange with his wings. He was missing a lot of primary feather on both wings and his right wing seemed underdeveloped compared to his left one. After consulting with Brittany Decker, the manager of the Islita breeding site, we came to the conclusion that this chick would not be able to make it in the wild in this condition. He obviously had tried to fledge and would likely try to do so again if we put him back in the nest. In order for him to survive we had to bring him to a nearby rescue center where they could care for him. It is heart breaking when you have to take an animal out of its natural habitat, knowing that it is unlikely to return. It makes it even harder when the parents of this chick are sitting in the tree above you screaming at you. At the end of the day, after bringing the chick to the rescue center and making sure the vet was giving him the proper attention (we had all gotten quite attached to the little guy at this point), we knew we had made the right decision. The chick would survive, and even if he might never be able to fly hopefully his offspring can rejoin his family in the wild again.
On the other hand, there are the chicks that have fledged without a problem. The super chicks that are the next generation of wild macaws! Another thing that happened in the last two weeks is that we have been doing early morning observations on a certain nest of which we knew the chicks were going to fledge soon. Every morning we would get up at 4am in order to be at this nest at 5am, set up our camera and wait for the chick to maybe fledge this day. We had been doing this for a full week and you can imagine that the excitement we felt at doing it for the first time quickly turned into frustration with these chicks that just wouldn’t fledge and kept us from getting a good night’s rest. On the eighth day of our vigil we arrived at the nest at 5am again and set up to wait there for two hours until the time window of fledging had passed. However, after being there for about 20 minutes (and not having seen anything poke out of the nest) we started hearing faint noises that sounded a lot like a chick…but they were not coming from the nest. The team set out in order to find where this mysterious noise was coming from, and of course what we found was the chick, already in a tree away from the nest tree, accompanied by its parents in a nearby tree. It was clumsily trying to sit in a tree and looked very proud of itself. It probably speaks for itself that we were more than a little (selfishly) disappointed to have missed the fledging after so many days of getting up early. But seeing this beautiful chick sitting here, safe and sound, and starting to explore life outside the cavity made that we could not stay angry at it for fledging without us there (well maybe still a little angry).
Another happy story is of some camera trap footage that we were looking through. Most of our active nests have camera traps on them in order to gather more data on the behavior of the Great Green Macaws during their nesting. This one camera was positioned in such a way that it looked into the nest and could thus capture the chicks moving around in there. It was funny to see the shenanigans that these chicks would get up to, typical sibling fights where the one will start pecking their sibling and the sibling will, what seems like, start screaming for mom to come and tell the first one off. Followed by a video of the two preening each other and falling asleep together. However, the funniest thing of these two was when they started to climb towards the cavity entrance. For this particular nest that meant a straight climb up a wooden wall of one meter and a half. Long story short: they were struggling. Short story long: we could make some popcorn and watch how these two chicks struggled again and again to climb up the cavity wall. Finally, they would reach the top, sit in the entrance for a while, and then try to descend down again…. Often resulting in them falling down to the cavity flour with a sad little scream, followed by them sitting up and puffing themselves up to show that that was exactly how they meant for that to go. I think we have a couple of hours of footage of them doing this over and over again. Learning is difficult, especially when you don’t have thumbs.
In other news, our team has found several new nests this breeding season and there are still new areas that need to be explore! Most nests have been found by Tom Lewis, who is a PhD student who does his research with MRN. For his study he searches for new nests in the breeding area. This breeding season he found five new nests, with in total 12 chicks! The more nests we find the better our understanding of the Great Greens Macaws breeding behavior will be. We will know more about their nesting preference, the survival rate of their chicks, the feeding habits of the chicks, the blood relations of macaws that nest near to each other, or even of the parents. There is still so much to find out about this amazing species, and everything we find out can help determine how to conserve them better.
Our team works hard every day to gather more data on this beautiful species, to keep an eye on the chicks as best we can and to discover new nest sites. Even though things are more difficult than they were a couple of months ago, we keep going with our work. We keep each other motivated and we keep each other safe. We hope you do the same for yourself and your loved ones.
CLAIRE VREDENBREGT
Sarapiqui Field Station Project Manager
PS: Check out my video on Parrot TV Channel to see what a day in my life is like!