This week we started to cut the trees we marked for the thinning last week. We marked about 16 trees which stay to close to the "future trees" and need to be removed. After the tree felt down we cut them in 1m pieces, clean the trunk from branches and the crown and stock them in Taricaya. Until now we just cut 8 trees with a diameter of 30-70cm. In total we got nearly 100m of wood pieces.
I had the possibility to cut them down, thanks to Diego. Unfortunately for me that the chainsaw was stuck in a branch and when I tried to remove it I "broke" my back. So the rest of the week had to take many painkillers, massages and to do easy jobs. Therefore my jobs this week were Animal feeding, Bird observation and painting cages.
Furthermore the situation of the volunteers in Taricaya: We had to say good bye to Bridget, Veerle and Kerry.
For the moment there are girls from 2x UK, 2x Australia, 2x Germany, 1x Netherlands, 1x Japan, 1x USA, 1x New Zealand
Twitch Twitch
At the end of the week I started to feel better. So we started to put up nets in a swamp which is closer to Taricaya.
The story to get to the ringing place sounds like a nightmare: We started early in the morning (4.30). One hour ago it was raining in the jungle and because of the night everybody had to wear torches. We walked in a line, one behind each other. The only part you can see is the emblazed area with your headlight. There was nothing to see around you, everything was dark and you can only see your feeds walking on a wet trail behind another person. The floor was moving. Frogs came out to search food in the wet jungle. Big spider nets which had a diameter over two meters closed our trail. After an half hour, we almost reached our destination, the first person (Rachel) stopped. She started to stutter. She talked strange words, I thought one of them was "Jaguar". I tried to find the eyes of the Jaguar in the jungle with my torch but there was nothing. She moved back and pointed on the ground. On the middle of our way was a Bushmaster, the most dangerous snake of Peru. The snake was huge and lay down on the ground, coiled up and ready to attack if someone comes closer. It's my second snake here in the jungle.
We had to cut a new trail in jungle to get to our ringing place.
The ringing activity afterwards were more relaxed. We just got interrupt by a lizard who felt down from a tree and landed almost at our birdringing table. In total we had about 27 birds and 20 species.
The highlights for me: Lemon-throated Barbet, Anttilas, Schiffronis and Manakin.