An animal tried to attack me on my last day in the forest. I was never in danger of actually getting bit, but this sort of thing is so rare that it really made me think. I was trying to remember if I had ever been attacked by something in the wild. In all the years spent lurking around in forests and grasslands and deserts I don’t think it had ever happened. It was a venomous snake that tried to bit me.
We had a big time birder in camp. He had 2500-something South American birds
on his list and the guy he was chasing had 2800-something birds. He was behind by
300 or so. We get our share of serious birders at the lodge. The reason is that we
have birds that are not easily located in other places. And it is Fernando that they
hire to find these rare and often very specialized birds for them—things like Ochre-
striped Antpitta, Fiery Topaz, Salvin’s Curassow, and Wing-banded Antbird. They
give Fernando a wish list and his job is to find the birds on the list. It sounds easy,
but in practice it can be quite difficult to find things in this very complicated place.
The species they want to see are often very secretive, and they are themselves living
complicated lives. Things move around; the weather changes. Resources shift and
trees fall. There are a lot of variables.
Fernando was busy with birders the entire time I was there. Since Fernando was
busy working and Ajuancamo, my normal Waoroni guide, was nowhere to be found,
I was free to wander around the forest on my own. I didn’t worry about being alone
in the forest, and in fact looked forward to it each day. I saw it as an opportunity to
do something different, an experiment of sorts. Instead of having a lot of goals and
destinations in mind, I decided to let the forest tell me what to do. It was an exciting
experiment.
Each trail in the Shiripuno is a universe unto itself; no two trails are remotely
similar. From above, the Amazon rainforest appears to be somewhat uniform.
But walking inside the forest one is quickly dismissed of this notion. The forest
constantly changes—that the bacteria and fungi in the soil change in response to
the minerals, the topography, and amount of water, which in turn cause the plants
to change, which in turn affect the mammals, insects and birds. Not to mention the
action of the river or the wind or the tremendous rainfall. I once rode into the forest
with an experienced naturist, who in mid trip, suddenly felt like he had been robbed.
“I thought you said this forest hadn’t been logged,” he said to me in an accusatory
tone.
He had a point. From above, the path of the Shiripuno looks like a pile of spaghetti.
The river swings back and forth the forest in tightly bunched hairpin turns.
The river is constantly cutting the land of the downhill side of the river and
simultaneously laying down silt on the opposite or uphill side of the river. In effect,
the Shiripuno acts a giant bulldozer, eating away at the riverbanks and tearing gaping holes in the primary forest lining the river. But the naturist needn’t have been so alarmed. Away from the violence of the stream he would find the wild and primary forest he paid to see.
It was interesting being in the forest alone. I would hear a sound and try to investigate it. Sometimes I would try to see what was making the sound by moving back and forth on the trail. At other times, I would go off trail and attempt to track down the source of the hidden sound. And in other instances, I would stand still and see if the animal would make itself known. If I heard something moving through the
forest such as a flock of birds, I would race ahead to try and intercept it. Hearing is important that seeing, in large part because seeing is so difficult.
But I didn’t always go alone; sometimes Fernando would invite me to go with his group. It depended upon how things were gong with the client and the type of mission they were on. For some animals, the number of people can be problematic, but for others it doesn’t matter as much. Float trips fall into the latter category.
The boat has plenty of room and it doesn’t hurt to an extra pair of eyes on board.
One day, I joined Fernando to look for the secretive birds that live in the dense
vegetation growing on the silty, newly formed, banks of the river. The idea was to
float down the river until we heard the Crake or Antpitta we were looking for, land
the canoe on the beach, cut a window in the dense growth, get into place, and play
the recording with the hope that the bird would investigate. The machete window
was a little crowded so I moved down a ways and just stuck my head into the
vegetation (after checking for ants first). I don’t know how this might have looked
to the birds, but I was happy with my little window. Once you were past the initial
layer of leaves, it opened up and you could see 2 or 3 meters deep into an absolute
maze of stems and branches no thicker than your thumb.
Everyone was in position and no one was making a sound if they could help it.
There was an air of excitement. We can hear the bird moving closer, louder and
louder until it sounded like it was right in front of us. Everyone is trying to be still,
but when the bird is right in front of you and you still cannot see it, it is natural to
bend your knees and crane your head this way and that. To one degree or another
everyone is dong this. I began wonder what the Waoroni must think about the
strange behavior of the people who visit their forest. The tension to see the bird is
high because he will only show himself for a brief moment and when he leaves he
will have seen enough and not bother to return. It’s a one shot deal. Suddenly I see
the bird. I can see where the bird is, but I can’t get onto the bird in all the tangles
with my binoculars. I am working the focus knob like a demon, trying to hit upon
the depth of field where the bird is sitting. Sometimes an inch or two one way or
another makes all the difference. Time was running out. And then boom there it was.
I could see a bright orange head on a chicken-like bird; I could even see his mouth
moving as he yelled back at Fernando. It was Chestnut–headed Crake and it was
much more beautiful in real life than I expected; my first Crake. I don’t know why it
is such a thrill to see a really cryptic animal, but it is.
On our last day in the forest, Fernando invited me to join his group to look for a
bird called Rio Suno Antwren. No doubt about it, this is a very rare bird, and one
our guest was very keen upon seeing. I was happy to go not only because I hadn’t
seen this particular antwren, but also because I hadn’t been on the trail where this
bird can be found for years and I remembered it as an exciting place. This trail is
called the Saladero, which roughly translated means: the salt trail. It’s the most
downstream of all our trails and is an old hunting trail of the Waoroni, which led to
a huge salt lick. As we crossed the first swamp, memories of the last time I was here
started coming back. All of our trails have a distinct personality and can feel very
different from one another. The Saldero has a dark and foreboding feel to it. The
trees here don’t seem to suffer as much tree fall as on other trails, and as such they
seem to grow taller and in more profusion—so thick that the sunlight barely seems
to make it down to ground level. The forest here feels close and dark and wild.
Fernando suddenly stops and motions us to be quiet. I scan with my binoculars the
narrow jungle stream ahead. I don’t see anything, but a weird trumpet sound is
coming from the tangled vegetation. I hear some heavy footsteps and it is clear that
some kind of a large animal is in there, but still I see nothing. And then there it is, a
Tapir! He’s huge. I can see his head and ears, and his broad chocolate-brown back
and he’s walking right toward us—unbelievable. The most surprising thing was that
when he wanted to disappear, he did so without a sound. Given its large size and the
fact that it was moving through mud and heavy plant growth makes this even more
impressive. Amazing feat really.
Initially, the trail is flat and swampy but later it gets hilly and thick with trees.
The forest was full of birds. After a couple of hours we come to a complicated
intersection of dark canyons, tiny streams, and towering trees. There is a flock.
Fernando plays the call for Rio Suno, and a beautiful blackish bird with an even
blacker throat magically appears out of the jungle ether. He put on a great show,
allowing everyone an excellent look. We started early at 5:00am but here it was
already noon; where the time goes I have no idea.
It was the last afternoon and Fernando still had birds to find for his tour. The
Antpittas had been a disaster. When they heard the call, instead of coming toward
the recording they turned and fled the other way. Fernando thought the problem
might be that they are nesting. The birders went into the forest for another Crake,
Black-banded this time, but no sooner did they leave than they returned. The crake
turned out to be on the other side of the river so into the boat they went. I decided
to join them. We landed the boat and played the tape but he wouldn’t come close.
As the sun got lower in the sky and the time began to run out, the birders shifted
focus: Army ants they cried and charged off into the forest in hopes of finding an
ant swarm and the rare birds that accompany them. This wasn’t for me. For one I
figured that I had already intruded enough on them for one day, and two, I had been
walking the trails near the lodge for the past two weeks and the odds seemed low
that they weren’t any ant swarms near by.
My whole body was sore from walking trails and I sat debating whether to go out
one last time. Walking on rain forest trails is hard work. For one thing, the ground
is uneven and there are many hard objects that bother your feet such as tree roots.
And there is mud and water and hills and standing for hours and hours in thick
rubber boots.
But no sooner had I put my binoculars down than I heard my name being called.
Hey Mike, come here quick. I grabbed my stuff and ran into the forest. The birders
had surprised a coral snake on the trial. It was absolutely beautiful with its narrow
bands of alternating black and red. The bands were clearly present, but at the same
time they were heavy fringed in such a way as to make them look like the colors all
ran together; a weird but beautiful effect. The whole pattern made the snake cryptic
and dusky like the night. Suddenly it wriggled into the leaf litter and was gone. This
was the only the second time I had never seen a coral snake in the wild.
So off they went in the fading light to find an ant swarm and I was again left to my
own devices in the forest. I decided to continue down the same trail albeit more
slowly. A hundred or so meters later, some movement beside the trail caught my
attention. I don’t know very much but I knew that the moment was too big for a
lizard, or frog, or insect. I stopped and leaned forward for a closer look. And Just as
I said to myself, it’s a fer-de-lance; it struck at me violently. Evidently, Fernando’s
group had made him angry and now he was fighting mad and striking at anything
that came by. Because Fer-de Lances are responsible for the vast majority of
snakebites in Central and South American, they are quite famous. Well easy enough,
I’ll just go around him. He’s on one side of the trail and I’ll just pass him by walking
on the far side of the trial. There appeared to be plenty of room. He wasn’t having
any of it. Just as I got opposite him, he struck at me for a second time, but then he did
something totally unexpected: he came after me. I remember seeing a very busy s-
shape scuttling across the trail toward me and then my rubber boots high stepping
the hell out of there. I didn’t think I could move my feet that fast. When I was about
3 meters away, and I stopped running and turned to look at this crazy animal. There
he was facing me in the middle of the trail. Boom he struck again. And then again
and again, the ferocity of each strike carrying him forward about six inches. It was
an astonishing and curious set of events.
It was getting dark and I didn’t have a flashlight. The problem was that I couldn’t
just leave this crazy snake in the middle trail, what if Fernando’s group decided
to use this trail to return to the lodge. Killing the snake wasn’t an option; we
don’t bother any life inside the forest. I could try to move the snake off the trail
with a stick, but there was no guarantee that he would stay put. Plus there was a
reasonable chance that he would go ape shit and become even more dangerous.
No, better to just wait it out. Fer-de Lance’s are primarily creatures of the night.
And I could see that he become progressively harder to distinguish among the
leaves on the trail as the light faded. It was very impressive to see its camouflage
increase as the sun set; the snake literally began to disappear. And then while I was
admiring the snake, a great crashing began all around me; two hundred squirrel
monkey’s were moving over my head through the canopy as the final light failed.
So there I was standing in a swamp with a pissed off Fer-de Lance in the trail, with
two hundred monkey’s crashing around over my head, my arms getting bit by tiny
mosquitoes, and I thought: What a forest this is. You never know what you are going
to find in here and this thought made me feel happy. Another end to the trip, too bad
we couldn’t do it all over again tomorrow.
Sincerely Mike
Shiripuno Lodge Blog 