In the summer of 2012, I spent two months in Peru. I lived in Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire, where I took a Spanish course and from where I took excursions nearly every weekend to different parts of that amazing country. One excursion was into the Peruvian Amazon. I went with to friends by train to our point of departure, Puerto Moldonado , and from there took a boat down the Tambopata River into the jungle. Our guide showed us many wonderful places in that jungle. We saw animals we had only ever seen before on TV or in zoos. Among them were hundreds of parrots first gathered in trees and then, from a hillside, licking clay to obtain the nutrients in it that their bodies needed.
The last morning we were in the jungle, we had a 3:30 wake up call so that we could ride up the river some two hours to see hundreds of parrots gather in the trees above the hillside. They seemed to tease those of us who had gotten up at such an ungodly hour to come to see them by staying high in the trees off in the distance, occasionally taking off in swarms to fly over the river only to return to the tree tops. Without binoculars and without much sunlight to pick up their colors, they looked just like big birds. It was hard to determine even that they were parrots. Our guide came equipped with a couple of sets of good binoculars and even a small telescope set up on the hill.
After about an hour of the ho hum and whining, (But they don't even look like parrots from here! It's too dark to see any colors! Look! Did you see some green in the wing span of was it just my imagination!?), I was beginning to wonder if this early morning visit would turn out just to be a wild goose chase with no parrots at all.
Suddenly, the parrots began swarming again, this time to land by the dozens on the side of a hill several hundred yards off in the distance from the embankment where we had gathered hoping to see them in their full majesty of color. The hill contains clay, and in a morning ritual that goes on for eons into their distant evolutionary past, they gather at just about the same time to lick the clay and get nutrients their bodies need. Yes, once again, just as we were beginning to doubt the expertise of our guide, the snake, tarantula and bird whisperer extraordinaire, Jose Guillermo Moran Valer, the parrots had finally come home to roost by the dozens on the side of a clay lick several hundred yards from us.
The clay lick, or colpa, as its more commonly called in the local Quechua language, is indeed a source of food for these beautiful creatures that most people have only ever seen in in zoos or cages in their homes. Geophagy, the intentional consumption of soil by vertebrates, has long been documented in a number of bird and mammal species, which consume soil to increase absorption of certain minerals not naturally in their diet. It was hard to make the parrots out as they alighted on the clay lick, but with the aid of binoculars, it was easy to see that they were indeed parrots, and it was easy to pick up their green bodies with blue heads. When they spread their wings, we could also see red and yellow hues.
Even with a good lens, the pictures I took are clear only when they are enlarged. I hope you are able to do that, because enlarging them does bring out the full colors of the parrots. They seemed to stay on the hillside for five minutes or so at a time, then take off in flight to return to the tree tops and then once again to descend to the colpas. They entertained us this for way over an hour, and then they took off for deeper parts of the jungle. I am happy report that it was not for naught that we had risen at 3:30 a.m. and traveled nearly two hours up the river on a very chilly morning. We were indeed rewarded with a ritual of color and pageantry as old as the species itself. Next summer, I'll have to book a tour that goes even four more hours farther up the river to watch macaws perform the same ritual, and I'll bring along an even more powerful lens!
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