Peru: Scarlet Macaws, Paraponera Ants, and the Andean Condor

An excerpt from Peter Alden's memoir: My Wild Life, Chapter 8

Macaws in Peru's Manu National Park lick and eat clay from riverbank "collpas" primarily to detoxify their diet of poisonous seeds and to obtain essential sodium, which is scarce in their diet.

My first book, Finding Birds in Western Mexico, was published in 1969. The illustrator was a young ornithologist and artist from Louisiana State University named John O’Neill. Working on that project together, I got to know John and learned that his area of expertise was discovering new bird species in Peru’s eastern Andes and Amazon region. John had discovered half a dozen new species of birds in Peru.

I was already well established as a naturalist and guide in Mexico and Central America by the early 1970s, and I knew that no one was leading guided birding tours in Peru at that time, so I suggested to John that we try to organize something together.

He warned me that conditions throughout the country were still quite rugged. Knowing that he typically camped in the jungle while in Peru, I asked him what he feared most in that situation: poisonous snakes? Jaguars? Mosquito-borne diseases? Getting lost? Starving?

“None of the above,” he replied.

“Then what?” I insisted.

“A poison arrow shot by a native in the jungle,” he said, and then explained.

Over the decades, an increasing number of Westerners—ranging from Christian missionaries to loggers and gold miners—had made their way into these Amazonian regions, which for millennia had been the undisturbed home of Indigenous people, and very little good had come of it. The loggers and miners destroyed rivers, rainforests, and the ecosystems of the fish that the native people depended upon, whereas even the peaceful missionaries brought viruses that sickened the natives, who had no immunity to diseases from the outside world, even seemingly minor ones. John O’Neill felt that the greatest danger to him in those regions was being an outsider if the locals were not inclined to be welcoming.

Nonetheless, we decided to start planning an itinerary in Peru. Like everywhere that had not yet been explored for tourism, there were no guidebooks, no illustrated birding books, and no network of local English-speaking guides, so we had much to learn on our first scouting trip in 1972. We rented a couple of vehicles and made our way all over the country, seeking out places that would be both interesting and accessible to American tourists. For part of the trip, two famous birders joined us: Stuart Keith of the American Museum of Natural History and Arnold Small, a UCLA-based ornithologist and expert on California birds.

It was a fascinating trip, and though we did not encounter hostility from Indigenous people, we had our challenges with the rugged and unfamiliar territory. One afternoon, I decided to take one of the cars and go off on my own into the Amazon rainforest. I parked on a remote dirt road and walked about a half-mile into the forest, following the sounds of flocks of birds. The afternoon passed as I walked, and I decided I’d better head back. But when I turned around, I realized I was lost. The canopy in the rainforest is so thick that it blocks out nearly all sunlight, so I could neither see very well nor use the sun as a compass. I walked fruitlessly in all directions, finding nothing that looked at all familiar from my walk in.

A year or so earlier, I’d heard a story about the daughter of one of Peru’s few ornithologists whose plane had crashed into the Amazon rainforest. The young woman was unhurt but disoriented as she tried to find her way out of the forest. Then she heard the distant cry of a kingfisher. Because she had been raised learning about birds, she knew that kingfishers always live near water. She followed the sound of the kingfisher and reached a river, where she made a primitive raft that transported her to a village. She was saved because she knew how to use the sounds of birds to navigate.

I was able to rescue myself using a very different method. I always carry a roll of toilet paper. I began deliberately walking in large concentric circles, leaving squares of toilet paper to mark my steps. Finally, one of those concentric circles brought me back to where I’d started. It was an alarming situation, and it reminded me of the importance of keeping your bearings—or of knowing some techniques for finding your way when you become disoriented.

Following that first scouting trip in 1972, I co-led tours to Peru every July for the next twelve years for Mass Audubon. We’d land in Lima and drive south along the Pacific coast to the Paracas Peninsula. That region is almost always foggy and overcast. You rarely see the sun break through the coastal fog in the southern winter months there, and the water is ice-cold. However, because the water is so cold, it is teeming with fish and marine life. We’d overnight near Pisco and, the next morning, board a boat to the offshore islands, which are home to Humboldt Penguins, Peruvian Boobies, Peruvian Pelicans by the thousands, and all sorts of other seabirds.

In the 1970s, there was so little guest lodging in Peru that we had to base ourselves in any city or town that had a hotel and plan our day excursions from there, usually taking boat trips up various rivers and waterways. In later years, as eco-lodges began cropping up, I opted to use an eco-lodge called the Explorers Inn, located in Tambopata National Reserve. We stayed in thatched bungalows and walked the many surrounding trails into the forest, spotting Harpy Eagles, tinamous, and many macaws. Upstream from the Explorers Inn, there were “macaw licks” in Manu National Park, where hundreds of colorful macaws and parrots would take in minerals from steep riverbanks.

Peter Matthiessen

During one stay at the Explorers Inn, I ran into a familiar face: the writer and explorer Peter Matthiessen, author of The Snow Leopard. We struck up a conversation that led to a friendship that lasted long after the trip. Matthiessen liked to explore and document “wild places” before they were destroyed, trekking through the Andes and deep into the Amazon Basin. A number of years later, I was able to convince him to come speak at the Roger Tory Peterson Memorial Lecture Series, for which E. O. Wilson and I were committee members at Harvard.

Traveling in the Amazon is always an adventure. On one trip, I wanted to show my group the Blue-capped Manakin performing its unique mating dance, which is called a lek. I sneaked through the underbrush until I spotted a flock of these manakins bouncing along a low, bare branch. I set up my telescope on its tripod and beckoned my travelers over to look. As each traveler approached the telescope and bent over to peer through the lens, I took a step backward and found my foot in a hole about a foot deep. I ignored it, not wanting to distract my clients as they watched the manakin mating dance.

Paraponera (bullet ant) stings are dangerous because their venom, poneratoxin, can cause severe pain, temporary paralysis, and intense, radiating discomfort throughout the body.

All of a sudden, I felt a searing pain run through my ankle, like an electric shock. Leaping away, I looked for what I thought was a snake. Instead, I spotted no fewer than eight Paraponera ants crawling on my ankle, their long pincers still embedded in my skin. My leg was already starting to swell as I frantically tried to brush them off. Finally, I managed to detach each Paraponera ant from my skin and hobbled back to our boat, my leg swelling dramatically. We hurriedly brought our travelers back to the hotel so that I could get to a hospital several hours away. By the time I reached the hospital, I was losing consciousness and was saved by injections administered throughout the night. It was one of my closest calls with disaster, as Paraponera ant bites can be deadly.

The site most non–bird-watching visitors to Peru want to see is, of course, the ancient Incan archaeological site of Machu Picchu. That’s where I helped bird artist Arthur Singer, who had fading eyesight, see his last life bird: an Andean Condor. A “life bird” is a significant milestone for bird watchers, as it represents the first time they observe a particular species. Peru is one of my favorite countries because of its fascinating cultures, varied topography, and stunning birds, including the fanciest hummingbird in the world, the Marvelous Spatuletail.

On one such visit to Machu Picchu, my group had toured the ruins and was having lunch at the outdoor restaurant by the site. This was in late summer. The site was quite crowded with tourists, many of whom were French. Suddenly, I spotted a rare Andean Condor flying toward us. Excited, I clinked a piece of silverware against a glass to get everyone’s attention and announced—first in English and then in Spanish—that this was a prime opportunity to walk outside to see the world’s largest flying bird up close and at eye level.

To my disappointment, several of the French tourists grumbled that I was just trying to trick them into stepping out of the buffet line, and not one person seated at a table so much as rose to their feet to see this rare sight.

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