An Expert Hacker in Amazonia

by Fyllis Hockman

I am a hiker.  But at home, no one uses a machete to blaze the trail prior to walking on it as Souza, our Amazon guide, did, creating a path in the overgrown rainforest step by step.  Slicing, swatting, swooping, chopping, no branch, bush, vine or twig was safe. 

The hike was one of four daily activities during an 8-day adventure exploring Amazonia. Calling the Tucano, a 16-passenger riverboat, home, my husband and I traveled more than 200 miles along Brazil's Rio Negro. For daily excursions, we clamored aboard a small power launch which took us hiking, bird-watching, and village hopping, and on night-time outings that dramatized the allure of the river not experienced in any other way. 

Souza demanded quiet during our launch rides, using all of his senses to read the forest, listening for the breaking of a branch or a flutter through the trees, sniffing for animal odors, scanning leaves above and below for motion, or the water for ripples… and alerting us at every junction of what he has discovered. On our own, we would have heard, felt and discerned nothing. 

Souza’s most amazing talent was his ability to identify the multitudes of birds traversing the river and forest, many of whose calls he could replicate precisely. He could imitate more birds than the most gifted comedian can impersonate celebrities. He carried on such intimate conversations, that halfway through a lengthy discussion with a blackish gray antshrike, I think they became engaged. Then Souza, fickle male that he is, romanced a colorful blue-beaked Trogan perched upon a dead branch high in a tree. As one of my travel companions observed, “If you don’t like birds, you might as well take the next flight home.”

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Wild Moose Chase

Story and Photos by Jean Kepler Ross

“Brake for Moose - it could save your life” - the road sign in Maine promised. My cousin Julie and I toured New England in the Fall and we were excited at the prospect of viewing moose.  Unfortunately, they were proving to be elusive.

The road signs were encouraging: “Moose - next 3,000 feet,” “Moose next 4,000 feet,” and “Moose - next 9 miles.” Finally, we saw a moose: a metal moose sculpture hiding in the grove of trees next to a scenic waterfall in Rumford, Maine. I began quizzing the locals to find out how we could maximize our chances of seeing the actual animal. 

Innkeepers in Bethel, Maine, reported once sighting a moose in their backyard. It was looking in their window at their son, who was watching television. So we gazed endlessly through our hotel window, but no luck. We saw a billboard in Bethel promoting a three-hour guided tour to search for moose at dawn. We were very motivated, and we were sure a guide would help us in our quest, but we wanted to do it without losing sleep and turning into zombies.

As time passed, we started to doubt the signs. “Moose Crossing - 2 Miles” - if only. We spotted a flock of wild turkeys and a road-killed red fox and got a whiff of a skunk. 

Our waitress at a cafe in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, told us, “You never know where or when you’ll see one. They’re not afraid of cars. If you see one on the road, stay back as far as you can to watch it; if you go close, they might charge you.” She told us that one had recently appeared right in front of her in the woods while she was riding a four-wheeler on trails. She added that she’s seen moose many times. This village is near Moose River, and the name made us hopeful, but although we looked everywhere, we didn’t see one.

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Gorillas in the Missed

by Fyllis Hockman

"It can be a difficult journey. If you have a cold, cough or sniffle, don’t even bother lining up. Good hiking boots and a walking stick are a must. Bring plenty of water. Be sure to stay at least 25 feet away. Remember these are wild animals. If we need to carry you out, that will cost an extra $300." 

I was already intimidated by the pre-trek briefing and we hadn’t even started on our mountain gorilla expedition, which was part of a 16-day tour to southwestern Uganda sponsored by ElderTreks. The 25-foot rule, I learned, was for both their protection and ours. Sharing 98.4 percent of our DNA, the gorillas are very susceptible to human-borne illnesses. We were carriers and they had to be protected from us. They were wild animals and we had to be protected from them. A fair quid pro quo. Thus, eight humans a day are allowed to visit a gorilla group for no longer than an hour. Works for us; works for them. 

Gorilla trekkers ascending one of many steep climbs.

This is not exactly a drive-by photo op. With a vigorous trek of 1-7 hours, depending upon where the gorillas are that day, you have to REALLY want to see them. But even with visitation restricted to an hour, it is usually well worth the effort.

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The Great Migration Outside My Window

by Kristine Mietzner

Eyelids closed, I postpone viewing the new day. I linger in dreamtime until a familiar honking breaks the morning stillness in Benicia, California, a waterside community thirty miles north of San Francisco. The world outside my window rests under the great Pacific flyway, the north-south path of North American migratory birds. 

Eyes wide open; I peer through the bedroom window in time to see Canada geese, a trio in flight, noisily bound elsewhere, calling to one another, beaks pointed, necks stretched; chests lifted upward, wings flapping hard. I track their flight over Southampton Bay, the cove on Benicia’s west end. The pale gray clouds of the marine layer blanket the opposite shore of the Carquinez Strait. This wide watery ribbon funnels fully half of California’s water drainage through a deep channel on its way to the Pacific Ocean.   

Cuddling under a soft, embroidered, cotton quilt, while I marvel at the waterfowl, Franz Kafka’s translated words come to mind.  

You do not need to leave your room.

Remain sitting at your table and listen.

Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, and solitary.

The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, 

it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

The universe blesses Benicia with a significant year-round presence of waterfowl—mallards, coots, the great blue heron, and snowy egret. Spring brings an upswing in activity: nesting and the annual migration of some birds to points north. 

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The Bosque Is For The Birds

words + photos by Laurie Gilberg Vander Velde

“Maybe I will go to the car and get my tripod,” I said to my husband.  We were at the edge of a mostly frozen pond, standing on snowpack, bundled up against the 19 degree cold in the pre-dawn dark.  A glimmer of light was starting to show in the sky.  We had staked out a spot in the line of tripod-wielding photographers with their mega-humongous lenses  We were all waiting for the awakening snow geese and sandhill cranes to perform their morning “fly out.”  We were at Bosque del Apache, a National Wildlife Refuge near San Antonio, New Mexico about an hour south of Albuquerque.  It’s a place known to many serious bird watchers who throng to the area in the winter to watch thousands and thousands -- and thousands of snow geese and sandhill cranes come and go.

We are not avid birders, nor am I a zealous photographer.  How could I be?  I love taking pictures and dabble in PhotoShop, but I tote a point-and-shoot camera.  It’s top of the line and somewhat flexible, but it’s still a point-and-shoot, and the SLR crowd look at me with some disdain.  Much as I would love to use a digital SLR and be able to change lenses, my body just can’t schlepp that much weight.  And my husband, despite my batting my eyelids at him, has turned me down flat.  It was hard not to be intimidated by the very serious looking phalanx of expensive equipment lined up on tripods waiting for “the moment.”

Our home is now in Santa Fe, so we made the easy two plus hour drive to the Bosque (means “forest” in Spanish) the night before, aiming to get there in late afternoon in hopes of seeing the “fly in.”  This is the time during the golden hour before the sun sets and the moments after sunset when tens of thousands of snow geese and sandhill cranes fly in.  A foot of snow had closed the refuge a couple of days before, but the plows had sort of cleared the roads.  The observation decks were still snow covered.  The big problem was that there were limited areas of open, unfrozen water in the ponds, and the birds want to land on open water where they are safer from predators.  The helpful folks at the visitors’ center can tell you where the birds landed the night before, but the birds don’t file a flight plan, so we can only guess where they might land tonight.

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Peru: A feather for any birder’s life list

by Rachel Dickinson

You might characterize me as a casual birder, which is one-step up from an armchair birder. I am married to a man who once headed the Sapsucker team for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in the World Series of Birding so just through sheer osmosis I should be a much better birder than I am. But that would mean I’d have to pay attention.

© Rachel DickinsonSeveral years ago my husband Tim and I were invited – along with a couple dozen other people – to look for birds in Northern Peru. This was the not the part of Peru you always read about – the Peru of sexy Machu Picchu – this was a trip to the Northern Andes, a wonderful and wild place where new species of birds were still being discovered.

We traveled in a funny red bus that was really a Volvo flatbed truck with something like a container welded to the bed that served as the bus part. As a result there was no communication between the passengers and the driver, especially since the intercom system didn’t seem to work. There was a loo in the back that got increasingly stinky as the week progressed. We bounced and bumped our way along the one-lane road that was carved into the side of the mountains. The bus didn’t seem to have much power so it chugged and ground its gears as it headed up the switchbacks toward the narrow passes and then made liberal use of air brakes on the downward climbs.

Every now and then we’d pass a one-story house adobe house perched on the side of the cliff. They usually had two small windows in the front with vertical bars on them but no glass in them and when we passed the houses at night there was never candle or lamplight coming from within. Often a family would be sitting outside in front of the house and they’d turn on a little flashlight as we passed, perhaps to see us better.

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