The Antpitta Whisperer

For Bird Watcher's Digest column “After the Spark”
by Kenn Kaufman
July-August 2006 issue

THE ANTPITTA WHISPERER

After a lifetime of pursuing rare and wonderful birds on all seven continents, I have just had the strangest experience of my birding career. The following may sound like weird fiction, but it’s all true.

The story begins with the Andean cock-of-the-rock. It’s a bird as odd as its name, the size and shape of a football, living in mountain forests of western South America. Males are brilliant flaming orange-red, but in mating season they don’t rely on mere color. Groups of males, a dozen or more, gather at traditional dancing grounds called leks at mid-levels in the forest, and hop about while they make odd calls. At times, perhaps when a female is nearby, the lek erupts into a frenzy of bobbing and bowing, twanging and growling and squealing. This is a bird made for stardom, made for television, and the weirdest thing is that it’s not even the subject of this story. It’s just the catalyst.

Ecuador was the first nation in South America where ecotourism had a significant impact on the economy, with hordes of tourists visiting the Galapagos and the Amazon Basin. On the west slope of the Ecuadorian Andes, in the Mindo - Tandayapa area, a number of lodges cater specifically to traveling bird watchers, and several locals now make their living as birding guides. This news was not lost on a local farmer named Angel Paz, a man who loved nature. Of the 70 hectares that he owned, he farmed only 30 and had left the other 40 covered with its original growth of subtropical forest. On his property there was a lek of Andean cocks-of-the-rock, and Paz reasoned that tourists might pay to watch these birds, generating some extra income to help support his family.

So Mr. Paz set out to make a good trail through the forest from his house to the lek. He was by nature a quiet, gentle man, and one day as he was working on cutting the trail, he noticed a large, plump, gray-brown bird lurking nearby. He didn’t know its name but he knew it was a ground-dweller with a haunting, hooting voice, a shy bird, hard to approach. But this individual was only a few yards away. Paz’s shovel had just turned up an earthworm, and on a whim, he tossed the worm to the lurking bird. Instead of running away, the bird bounded forward on its long legs and swallowed the worm.

Intrigued, Paz took on the challenge of winning the trust of this shy forest bird. He would watch for it every day, and if he could approach closely enough, he would toss a worm to it. The bird learned to associate Paz with these morsels, and eventually it would come when he called - - he had named it “Manuel” - - to grab a handout before vanishing into the forest undergrowth. Paz began working to train other shy forest birds to take worms from him. For a quiet farmer who loved nature, this was just a way of getting closer to the wildlife on his land.
Paz had not abandoned his plan to bring birding tourists to see the Andean cocks-of-the-rock, and after he contacted the local birding lodges, he had his first group of visitors. The birders enjoyed watching the lek, and as they were on their way out, Paz thought they might be interested to see Manuel, his shy forest bird. But they were a lot more than merely interested. The visitors went berserk. Manuel, as it turned out, was one of the most legendary elusive birds in all of South America, a giant antpitta.

Antpittas live only in the American tropics, and they are unlike anything found in the United States. Round-bodied, short-necked, short-tailed, long-legged, an antpitta looks sort of like a dingy grapefruit perched atop two soda straws. Even their name is cobbled together: they bear a vague resemblance to birds called pittas in the Old World tropics, and they are distantly related to tropical American birds that habitually follow army ant swarms. To say that antpittas are heard more often than seen would be the grossest understatement. In my travels in Central and South America I have seen a few antpittas, but usually it has required an excruciating effort. Many types of antpittas are easy to imitate, and you can whistle an imitation, or play a tape recording, and the bird will call back to you for hours, approaching closely through the undergrowth, but most of the time you will never get a glimpse. Even the most numerous antpittas are exceedingly difficult to see. Those antpittas that are genuinely scarce are almost never seen by anyone. So it’s not hard to understand why the visiting birders went crazy at the sight of unassuming Mr. Paz feeding worms to one of the rarest and least-known of this whole tribe of elusive birds.

And it’s not hard to understand why Kim and I had to go see this phenomenon for ourselves. We had run into our friend Martin Reid at Guango Lodge on the east slope, and he had told us all about it, so as soon as we arrived at the Tandayapa Bird Lodge we had to ask: “What’s the deal with this guy who has the antpittas?” It’s easy, we were told. We’ll just make a phone call, and Mr. Paz will meet you in the morning and take you to his bird sanctuary.

So an hour before first light, we were driving down the Tandayapa Valley to the main highway and turning west toward the town where Paz was to meet us. It was raining, and we wondered if he would show up after all; but right at the main intersection in the highway town of Nanegalito, under a streetlight, sat a motorcycle with three rain-jacketed figures. Mr. Paz had come through the rain by motorbike, and he had brought his wife and young son along. His wife climbed in the back seat of our rental jeep to make sure we didn’t get lost, and Mr. Paz and his boy went speeding up the highway ahead of us, then zooming off on a side road, muddy with the night’s rain, across a couple of rushing streams, through slick patches and deep patches, miles through the dark until we finally reached the humble home of the Paz family.

After the nerve-wracking drive, it was a relief just to take flashlights and walk the trail to the observation blind to watch the cocks-of-the-rock displaying and showing off at first light. Amazing and spectacular they were, a fitting warm-up act. For nearly an hour we watched them, and after they dispersed, Kim and I followed Mr. Paz deeper into the forest.

This was our first chance to really look at Angel Paz in daylight. His first name had the Spanish pronunciation of AHN-hel, of course, but it meant the same thing as the English word, and his last name translated to “peace.” As if his personality had been shaped by his name, he was an exceptionally gentle man, his voice soft but filled with conviction. He had named his land Refugio Paz De Las Aves, a nice play on words meaning both the Paz Bird Refuge and the refuge of the birds’ peace. He was at peace with the birds, all right. We would soon see that for ourselves.

His son had brought a dish of earthworms dug up elsewhere on the farm. Stopping by a stream, Paz explained that he had to wash these worms before offering them to the antpittas.

Wash them? He didn’t just wash the worms. He bathed them. He baptized them. The careful, intense washing of the worms went on for twenty minutes. It brought to mind a master chef preparing gourmet delicacies for the queen, not a farmer preparing bird food. But Paz was no ordinary farmer. Finally finishing the ritual of washing, he stood looking and listening intently for a minute, and then led us slowly down the trail.

My curiosity had reached a fever pitch now, wondering what would happen next. The forest had been relatively quiet in the rain this morning, with few bird calls, and even now that the rain had stopped I had not heard anything that sounded like an antpitta. Where we were standing now there was no sign of any bird. But apparently Paz was going to call the bird to come to us.

“Manuel!” Paz shouted suddenly, and I jumped; it was the first time we had heard him raise his voice. “Manuel! Venga, venga!” (Come, come!) “Venga, venga, venga, Manuel!” Yeah, right, I said to myself. This had to be some kind of practical joke. At any moment now, no doubt, Mr. Paz would laugh and start speaking English, and would tell us that he and our friend Martin had hatched this crazy stunt to see how gullible we were. But looking into his face, it was clear he was not joking. Paz was peering with a deep intensity at a spot in the dense undergrowth alongside the trail ahead. . . a spot where a hulking shape lurked among the foliage. It had come silently and it was barely visible, a darker shadow among shadows, and then it was gone again. But we knew something had been there. Paz knew it too. “Manuel,” he said, more quietly now. “Manuel! Venga.”

And before our unbelieving eyes, Manuel did come. The bird hopped out into the open, out into the center of the muddy trail.

Books describe the giant antpitta’s size by giving a total length of about ten inches from the tip of its bill to the end of its tail. That’s about the same as an American robin, but the robin is a slim bird and its tail accounts for about a third of its length. The giant antpitta, by contrast, is a bulky round-bodied bird with essentially no tail at all, and on its long legs it stands well over a foot tall. It’s a big bird, and a weird-looking one as well, with a punched-in bill, fat neck, big eyes, and squiggles of black on its rusty belly. Some might call it ugly. For us, it was beautiful.

We were frozen where we stood, but Paz crept forward a couple of steps and then gently tossed an earthworm out onto the trail. The giant antpitta cocked its head, bounded forward with great springy hops, grabbed the worm, and retreated into the undergrowth. A few moments later it reappeared, coming closer this time. Paz fed the antpitta three more times, and for one of these the bird came up to only a few inches away from his outstretched hand. But it never lost its furtive look, and after four worms it melted away silently into the forest.

During the next hour and a half, numb with disbelief, Kim and I followed Paz as he led us along the trails through his forest. He called out a smaller species, the yellow-breasted antpitta, and then a second one at another spot, and then a third. He tried calling another giant antpitta (“Maria”), but she didn’t come, and Paz explained that she might have been out of earshot. He called out a moustached antpitta, quite a rare bird in Ecuador, and he called a nervous little flock of dark-backed wood-quail.

These were all birds I had never seen before, for all my travels in South America, and I went away with a profound respect for Mr. Angel Paz and his Refuge of the Birds’ Peace. My friends and I had always pursued these shy forest birds with our high-quality tape recorders and binoculars and maps and reference books and rented four-wheel-drives, and we usually struck out on actually seeing the birds. We were outclassed by a quiet man armed only with patience, love of the forest, and a dish of earthworms.

As naturalists, we value diversity, and we go to places like Ecuador because there are so many varieties of birds there. However, diversity among the naturalists is a good thing too. Our standard American / European approach to bird watching is fine, but it’s not the only one. No doubt many international birders will descend on the Paz Bird Refuge as its fame grows, and they will be thrilled to see their first giant antpitta. I hope they will all understand that the rarest creature there is not the antpitta, but the remarkable Mr. Paz himself.

---Copies of this issue of Bird Watcher's Digest are available online by clicking HERE.

Antarctica, Day Three: Carcass Characters

From home base in Ohio, Kenn and Kim write: Our first landing of the trip was on the morning of January 9, on Saunders Island in the Falklands (see previous post on "Punks and Saints" posted on Feb. 18). That afternoon we made a second landing, on nearby Carcass Island, also situated in the northwestern part of the Falklands archipelago. Carcass Island isn’t as grim a spot as its name might imply; it was named for a British ship, the HMS Carcass, that visited the region in the 1770s.

Today the island is mostly occupied by sheep farming, but it still has a lot of birdlife. Undoubtedly there’s the occasional real carcass around (sheep fall victim to a variety of mishaps, after all, and various sea creatures wash up dead on the beaches), so there’s an open niche for scavengers. A common scavenger here was the Striated Caracara. This bird also occurs in southern South America, but it’s easier to find on the Falklands than anywhere else.

The adult Striated Caracara always seems to have a disheveled look -- at least, in several trips to the Falklands, Kenn has yet to see one that looked clean and crisp. They’re always messy. Maybe it’s an occupational hazard.

The orange on the skin around the face indicates the adult. In a closeup view, it’s also easy to see the whitish streaks, or striations, responsible for the bird’s name. Incidentally, closeup views are easy to obtain; Striated Caracaras are ridiculously tame. The local name for the bird here on the Falklands is "Johnny Rook," and it’s not always used as an affectionate term. At one time there was a bounty on Johnny Rooks because they were considered pests around sheep farms, and their numbers were seriously depleted. Now the species has recovered somewhat.

Young Striated Caracaras (a.k.a. Johnny Rooklets) have duller skin on the face, browner plumage, and fewer white striations.

On Carcass Island we found what appeared to be a nest, with three large young Striated Caracaras, apparently just about full-grown. They were squabbling over some unmentionable scrap of carrion that one of the parents had brought, and they looked and acted just about as gross as the adults. Not all birds can be beautiful, you know, but they all can be interesting.

Much of Carcass Island (and the Falklands in general) was originally covered by thick clumps of tussock grass. On Carcass, the owners have fenced off some areas of this grass to keep out the sheep, and these grassy places are the domain of the Blackish Cinclodes, locally known as the Tussac Bird. Actually, like many island birds, this cinclodes is very adaptable, scavenging on the shorelines, around seabird colonies and seals on the beach. Sometimes it seems determined to come up and eat your shoelaces. No long lenses needed to photograph this bird.

South America has many species of cinclodes, all associated with open country, often on rocky open areas above treeline in the mountains or along shorelines. These birds belong to the ovenbird family (about which we wrote back in early January, in Buenos Aires), a large family restricted to the American tropics; no species has ever been found north of the Mexican border, so it’s hard to describe the group by reference to North American birds. The Blackish Cinclodes is one of the dullest cinclodes but it makes up for drabness with its cheeky personality.

A specialty that we sought here was the Cobb’s Wren. The first time that Kenn was in the Falklands, this was still considered just the local form of House Wren, and it may go back to that status any day now. Certainly it looks like a washed-out version of the familiar House Wren, although its bill is longer. We looked for Cobb’s Wren in the tussock grass and eventually found it out on the shoreline rocks, bouncing around on the kelp next to the tidepools. It makes sense for these island birds to take advantage of the rich food resources in these areas; a couple of years ago, we watched Yellow Warblers doing the same thing in the Galapagos.

Lest you think that Carcass Island’s birds were all drab brown things, of interest only to hardcore bird maniacs, we should mention that we also found more Magellanic Penguins nesting here. This cozy scene, with an adult and two young resting in the entrance of their nesting burrow, was not far from our landing site.

And here, because we can’t resist, is a closeup of one of the baby penguins!

A Link to the Falklands

From cyberspace, Kenn writes: If we're on schedule, today we'll be on the Falklands, those cold but beautiful rocky islands east of the southern tip of South America. We probably won't be able to post from out there. But for a taste of what we might be seeing, you can check out Alan Henry's blog, Birding in the Falkland Islands. Alan has lived in the Falklands since 1987 and is an expert on the birdlife there. Naturally, it's exciting for him to find birds that are rare on the islands -- including visitors that would be common for us in North America, like Barn Swallow and Lesser Yellowlegs. But he also includes photos of his everyday local birds, like Falkland Steamer Ducks and Rockhopper Penguins!

Endless Spring

Summer? Says who? For this White-rumped Sandpiper, this is still the season of spring migration.

From the middle of a flooded field in northern Ohio, Kenn writes: After a totally crazy month, the calendar has just clicked over from May -- we call it May-hem around here -- to June. So what season is it now? If you’re a White-rumped Sandpiper, it’s still spring, still the height of northward migration season.

Of course, if you’re a White-rumped Sandpiper, you’re probably not reading this blog.

If you’re a sandpiper, you’re too busy to read things like this. Especially if you’re a White-rumped. More than three dozen different species of sandpipers are found regularly in North America; all of them are at least somewhat migratory. None of them migrates north later in spring, on average, than the White-rump.

This bird has a lot of distance to cover. Its wintering sites are all in southern South America, including some as far south as the tip of the continent -- or even farther: this amazing migrant has even been recorded in Antarctica. Its nesting sites are all in high Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska, most of them north of the Arctic Circle. So when northbound birds get to the latitude of the lower 48 states, they still have some traveling ahead of them. It’s amazing how late in the spring they show up. When I was down in Texas at the beginning of May this year, I saw a few White-rumped Sandpipers, but they were among the earlier arrivals at that location, and most would be passing through in mid-May. Here in northern Ohio, White-rumps have just shown up within the last few days. Their peak passage through here will be during the first ten days of June. Their time on the Arctic tundra may be very brief: some adults, perhaps those that have failed at their nesting attempt, will be southbound before the middle of July.

See the obvious white rump on this bird? No, we can't see it either.

Birders often overlook the White-rumped Sandpiper. That may be partly because of its migration timing, slipping through after many birders have given up on spring. It’s also partly because it’s a subtle bird with few obvious field marks. Looking at the photos here, do you see any white rump patch? The bird’s namesake field mark is visible only in flight, or rarely while the bird is actively preening its feathers. Various field guides, from the second edition of Peterson’s western to some editions of the National Geographic, have illustrated this species with its wings drooped, showing off the white patch on the rump and uppertail coverts. In real life, the birds just don’t stand that way. When I see this species in spring, I usually pick it out first by its squeaky callnote, by the fine sharp streaks on the chest, and especially by the long-winged profile. Those long wings, incidentally, are a reflection of the bird’s long-distance migration.

I doubt that we can have the bird’s name changed to "Invisibly-white-rumped-and-uppertail-coverted Sandpiper," but if we called it "Long-winged Sandpiper," birders might overlook it less and appreciate it more.

Regardless, if you’re anywhere east of the Rockies, especially in the interior of the continent, early June is not too late to see the White-rumped Sandpiper in spring migration. Singles and small flocks are stopping over in all kinds of shallow wetlands, from the edges of grassy marshes to flooded farm fields. If you can find one of these subtle sandpipers, give it a salute of respect for the 8000-mile journey it has undertaken, and wish it success in getting to the tundra on time.

Antarctica: Outline of the trip

From home base in Ohio, Kenn writes: We traveled to the Antarctic on board the Clipper Adventurer from January 7 to 25, 2009, on a birding and wildlife expedition sponsored by Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. Before and after the voyage we were in Argentina, starting in the capital city of Buenos Aires and joining the ship in the southern outpost city of Ushuaia. The map below will help to put these points in a world perspective.

Points for reference: 1. Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2. Ushuaia, Argentina. 3. Antarctic Peninsula.

The vast majority of expedition cruises to Antarctica go from South America to the Antarctic Peninsula, and the map shows why. South America extends much farther south than Africa or Australia, and the Antarctic Peninsula is the northernmost point of the white continent, so the crossing is feasible for many kinds of ships. There are also some expedition cruises that go south from New Zealand and take in the subantarctic islands of that country, and a few cruises that go south through the bird-rich waters of South Africa to the continent's edge, and we would like to try those routes eventually. But so far, all five of my trips have originated in South America.

Most world maps (like the one above) show Antarctica as an ill-defined mass along the lower edge, so it's hard for most people to get an idea of the continent's size. Antarctica is huge -- near the size of Australia and Europe combined. It is roughly centered on the South Pole, and the interior of the continent is the coldest region on earth. We confess that, as naturalists, we're not very interested in visiting the South Pole; nothing lives there except a few dedicated scientists. Remarkably, the South Polar Skua has occurred there as a stray, having flown many hundreds of miles across lifeless ice and rock, but we'd rather watch birds like this out at the Antarctic coastline where they belong.

The majority of expedition cruises from Ushuia go straight across the Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula and back. But our trip was focused on birds and wildlife, so we took the longer route northeast to the Falkland Islands, farther east to remote South Georgia Island, then southwest to the Antarctic Peninsula and back north across the Drake Passage. On the voyage we spent eight full days at sea (enjoying fabulous seabirds, whales, and dolphins), and during the other ten days we made landings at no fewer than 18 sites. This was Kim's first trip to the region and I can say without hesitation that it was my best trip ever. In subsequent posts we'll be describing the experiences of the voyage in detail.

Antarctica: Day One, Pre-trip Birding in Ushuaia

From home base in Ohio, Kim and Kenn write: In terms of overall bird diversity, there tend to be fewer species as you go from the Equator toward the poles, and fewer species on islands than on equivalent mainland areas. Because of these basic trends, a trip to islands of the Antarctic region won't produce a huge list of bird species ... huge numbers of individuals, yes, and fascinating creatures to watch, but not a huge amount of variety. So birders headed for the Antarctic usually take advantage of South American stopovers to add more birds to their total trip lists.

We've already written about some of the birds we saw around Buenos Aires, and we saw more on the official pre-trip to Otamendi on January 5, but things really got underway on January 7th in Ushuaia. This city, located on the Beagle Channel in southernmost Argentina, prides itself on being at the "end of the Earth" -- or "Fin Del Mundo," as the signs say on the edge of town. Ushuaia has become a major stopover point for tourists, as almost all the cruises going to Antarctica make their turnarounds here.

Here's a distant view of the harbor at Ushuaia with a few of the cruise ships tied up at the dock. But on this day we took most of the group (from Victor Emanuel Nature Tours) out to the Tierra Del Fuego National Park to see some of the specialty birds of South America's southern tip.

Here's part of our group birding the edge of the marsh in

Tierra Del Fuego National Park.

Our friend, your friend, heck, it's everybody's friend, the Rufous-collared Sparrow.

We've seen these birds all over South America, but the ones here in the extreme south are slightly different, with a plainer gray look to the head. Plainer, yes. But, still kinda cute.

The local American Robin look alike--the Austral Thrush. Kim loves the name of this bird. This is obviously a juvenile, all decked out and bedazzled with spots galore.

One of many species of caracara (which is a really fun word to type, btw) the Chimango Caracara was the first life bird for Kim in Argentina, spotted from the plane as we landed in Buenos Aires back on January 1st.

The act is getting classier. This beautiful bird is the Patagonian Sierra-Finch. It was all over the National Park, frequenting camp sites, looking for scraps left behind by campers. It reminded Kim of a Mourning Warbler at first glance.

This bird was, without a doubt, a highlight for everyone in the group! The Magellanic Woodpecker is a glorious looking bird. In the genus Campephilus (yes, the same genus as the Ivory-billed) one thing that's particularly fun about this species is that the female is the really gorgeous one in the pair. She sports this amazing top-knot with a forward-curving crest of slightly curled feathers. The photo is of the male, but we had stunning looks at the female too. A hell of a time for one's camera battery to go dead. Wouldn't you say?! [Kim's screams of frustration echo through the night...]

On the way back into town we stopped the bus in the middle of the street to enjoy watching a small group of Austral Parakeets. Clambering about and performing impressive acrobatic manuevers among the branches of the Southern Beech Trees, they were a blast to watch. Even if we had to perform our own acrobatic manuevers in the bus seats to get in position to take this photo.

Back into Ushuaia, we birded a series of ponds and coastal lagoons on the edge of the city. This Crested Duck was one of several species of waterfowl that we saw.

The lovely Dolphin Gulls were a nice change of pace from looking at Ohio's rather drab and homely Ring-bills and Herring Gulls. [Kim's thought...Kenn asks for a disclaimer here.] Not quite as sharp as Heermann's Gulls, but close.

You are one day closer to BABY PENGUIN PICTURES!