Introduction to Birding in Guyana

A couple of years ago I was invited on a familiarization tour of Guyana. I was unable to go, but knew several of the people who DID go, including my wife Julie Zickefoose, and my British birding pal, and co-founder of The British Bird Fair, Tim Appleton. I'd heard plenty of stories about the birding, the climate, the vast expanses of rain forest, and the people of Guyana, so I eagerly agreed to be part of a trip in spring of 2010.

Guyana. Here in the United States the name Guyana does not generate immediate recognition. People ask where it is. "Is that in Africa or South America?" It's confused with its similarly named neighbors French Guiana and Suriname (formerly Dutch Guiana). If Americans do recognize the name Guyana, it's probably the country's association with Jim Jones and his cult of followers who committed mass suicide in 1978 by drinking poison-laced juice.

Guyana is located along the northern edge of South America. Map © Wikipedia.

Guyana would like to change all that. It is home to some of the largest expanses of virgin rain forest in the world and it is using this natural wealth to its advantage. Rather than timber and mine its way to prosperity, Guyana and its government are hoping to take a different path. By preserving the forest and other natural resources intact, Guyana hopes to generate revenue from ecotourism. On a larger scale, Guyana is hoping to become a sort of "bank" of lush, green, oxygen-producing rain forest, where the country would be being paid by already developed nations to help offset the effects of industrialization which contribute to global climate change.

I'll get more deeply into this aspect of the Guyana story as I go along. Over the next two months I hope to share some of my experiences from the Guyana trip. In the July/August 2010 issue of Bird Watcher's Digest a "Far Afield" article by Julie Zickefoose will recount her experiences in Guyana on a trip similar to mine. I hope to have some additional images, videos, and perhaps a podcast from Guyana to share...

For now, let me share the very start of my trip with you.

Our flight left JFK Airport in New York City just after midnight and flew south-southeast to the northern rim of South America. The dark and orange image above is dawn's early light over the Atlantic Ocean not too long before we landed.

Once on the ground, as we walked across the tarmac to the Cheddi Jagan International Airport outside of Georgetown, the heat was palpable—even at 7:30 am. Inside, while waiting for the luggage to arrive, I noticed signs that Guyana was already aware of its status as a bird-watching destination.

An advertisement aimed at birders in the Jagan Airport baggage claim area.

An advert for a cellular phone company featured the harpy eagle! And identified it properly! Bonus points!

Moments later we met our leaders: Michael McCrystal from Wilderness Explorers and Kirk Smock from Carana Corporation, two companies that work with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) to coordinate Guyana's tourism promotion. They whisked us onto the mini-bus and off to our hotel for breakfast and a welcome briefing.

Michael grabbed my camera and snapped a photo of our first morning's breakfast. It was the best we'd look for the next two weeks.

Since it had been a mostly sleepless night on the airplane, the bright sunshine, heavy heat and humid air made things seem quite dreamlike. As I dragged my far-too-heavy bags up to my room, the urge to collapse onto the bed was hard to resist. Instead, I grabbed my binocs and scanned the ocean from my window: black and turkey vulture, magnificent frigatebird, great egret, some sort of large raptor on the sandflats (later ID'd as a rufous crab hawk), osprey, great kiskadee, tropical mockingbird... not too bad for a three-minute scan.

Breakfast and buckets of coffee helped me shake the trance a bit. Little did I know that the sleep deprivation would only get worse over the next 12 days as we got up early morning after morning to beat the heat and get out birding. I think I'm still catching up on sleep a week later...

After breakfast we got back on the mini-bus and headed out for a boat ride on the Mahaica River. This trip, done in the late afternoon heat, had plenty of birds, but most of them we flushed as we drove along with the motors roaring. So the looks were a bit fleeting and the photography frustrating. Still, this was our first taste of Guyana's birds (second if you count the eggs we'd had for brekky) and it whetted our appetites.

Next post: Mahaica River highlights and Chinese Food.

This Birding Life, Episode #26

A male Guyanan cock-of-the-rock, one of the most exciting species in Guyana.

Episode #26 of my podcast "This Birding Life" was just pulled out of the Easy-Bake Oven and is now available for downloading. This episode is entitled "Voices of Guyana." It's available (free of charge) in the usual places—at Podcast Central on the BWD website and in the iTunes Store in the Podcast section (just search for "This Birding Life").


Like most of the 25 episodes that preceded it, this one is available in two formats: audio only (mp3) and enhanced audio with still photos (m4a).


As you might surmise from the title, "Voices of Guyana," this episode is a series of interviews I conducted on my trip in March of 2010 to Guyana. I was there as a part of a familiarization tour for journalists and tour operators to sample bird watching in Guyana. The trip was amazing, the birds were as fabulous as they were numerous, and the people of Guyana were a complete pleasure to meet (with the possible exception of Mr. Dogg the somewhat cranky pick-up truck driver, but that's another story for another time...).

Asaph Wilson was our primary guide for the Guyana birding trip.

I've been writing some here on BOTB about my experience in Guyana. There's more coming, too, both here and in the pages of Bird Watcher's Digest, and on the BWD website, where we have created a special Guyana section.

Six of the participants in the Guyana fam tour in March 2010 and a termite mound (behind).

Guyana is a country that is only just emerging as a destination for ecotourists. If you'd like to know more about this amazingly birdy South American country, please take a stroll through some of the content we're offering in these various formats.

Thanks for reading, watching, listening.

Birding in Guyana Part 4: On the Road to Iwokrama

Channel-billed toucan

In part 3 of my series of posts about birding in Guyana, I promised to show you some of the birds we saw on our six-hour drive along the road from Rock View Lodge to the Iwokrama Forest Reserve and Ecolodge.

My mind is back on Guyana for a couple of reasons. First of all there is just so much to share about my trip there. Secondly, the upcoming issue (July/August 2010) of Bird Watcher's Digest features Guyana in our regular travel column "Far Afield." Julie Zickefoose writes about her trip to Guyana in an article entitled "Journey to the Lungs of the Earth."

Thirdly, I've just finished the rough edits on a podcast about Guyana for "This Birding Life." That should be ready for listening within a few days.

In our last Guyana blog post, we left off just after a flight from Georgetown to the Annai airstrip in the interior. We lunched at Rock View Lodge and climbed aboard three 4 x 4 trucks for transport along the lone road in the interior of Guyana to Iwokrama. The road bed was red clay and very dusty. I felt lucky to be in the lead vehicle, which was also the lone truck with air conditioning. The day was as hot as the hinges of Hades, but even the delicious comfort of the cool truck cab could not keep us from leaping out each time we spotted a new bird.

Red-throated caracara.

King vultures mixed with blacks and turkeys overhead. Several species of caracara added themselves to our list, including a screaming family group of red-throated caracaras. Small clusters of swallow-tailed kites skimmed the tree tops. The landscape was changing from open savanna scrub to forest edge and then to proper forest. As it changed, so did the bird life.

Swallow-winged puffbird

Swallow-winged puffbirds sallied forth from snags. Macaws and parakeets whirred across the roadway opening. Roadside hawks lived up to their names.

Roadside hawk

Strange bird shapes appeared everywhere, causing excited shouts from our truck.

We'd get out, optics swinging onto targets and shout out names, or more likely families of birds, or even MORE likely things like "I have a large dark raptor with a long tail." Or "I've got some sort of jacamar on that snag on the left."

Distant yet unmistakable paradise jacamars.

Or "Some tiny green thing is singing and hover-gleaning over here in this fruiting tree." Our guides helped call out the birds' names when they could.

The farther along the road we we, the deeper and older the forest got. Soon we passed through the gate into the Iwokrama Forest Reserve and it was here that we entered the true rain forest.

Sign at the Iwokrama gate

We continued driving and stopping for birds for the next few hours. When all the trucks in our convoy finally got together, our tour leaders told us we were running really behind schedule. Since we still had a long way to drive before reaching the Iwokrama River Lodge, we had to swear that we'd only stop for the rarest of the rare. Suggestions were made for what would qualify as a stop-worthy sighting: Jaguar, harpy eagle, and anaconda were all mentioned. I threw in "A Pittsburgh Pirates' World Championship" knowing full well that we'd be more likely to find the other three creatures together, playing poker in the middle of the road before I'd see the Pirates hoist the World Champion flag over their stadium.

We made better time the rest of the way, but still stopped a few times. Once for a long, bright green snake that had been killed in the road.

Stopping for a dead green snake.

And a few times for new bird species. We arrived at Iwokrama well after dusk, dusty, hot, hungry, and tired—but happy for a great day of birding along the only read road in Guyana's interior.

Our late dinner at the Iwokrama River Lodge and research station

Here are a few of the bird images I captured that day.

Spix's guan

Muscovy ducks in a roadside slough.

Red-billed toucans.

An immature rufescent tiger-heron.

Part 3 Birding Guyana: Flying to the Interior

Buff-necked ibis.

I like to start off my BOTB blog posts with a bird photograph if at all possible. So I am inserting this image of a buff-necked ibis here, even though it is out of order in the time line of this post. I believe the buff-necked ibis might be the second most beautiful ibis in the New World, right behind the scarlet ibis. Good thing there is not a Scarlett Johannson ibis, or that might take the crown. Now, where were we...

Oh yes! Guyana.

After a lovely (too short) morning of birding in the botanical gardens in Georgetown, we were herded to the small, in-town airport for a flight to the interior of Guyana. Because we were taking a small 12-seat plane on this flight, weight was an important factor. We had been warned about this in advance by our hosts and leaders, but that didn't stop us—well it didn't stop me—from bringing far too much stuff. We were weighed by our trip leaders at the hotel. Then weighed again at the airport. I won the avoirdupois prize as the heaviest traveler. Fully one-third of my things—mostly stuff I would not need immediately—was sent by bus overland, along with extras from my fellow travelers.

We were all caught between the pull of wanting to have all of our camera and birding gear with us, along with the proper clothing and footwear, and the necessity of packing the absolute minimum. We also had to send one of our leaders on the land bus. That alone saved us more than 300 pounds of humanity (sorry, just kidding Michael).

Negotiating the payload for our flight. Michael (black backpack, no hair) drew the short straw and had to ride the overnight chicken bus to Iwokrama.

Onto the plane we went and in moments we were in the air flying away from Georgetown. Below us stretched miles of housing, then the houses were replaced by a ring of cane fields.
Some of the cane fields were being burned off and we could see and smell the smoke rising from the earth.
Then we were away from all signs of human habitation and civilization. Below us lay unbroken rain forest, a vast carpet of green. It was a sight that did the heart some good. This is why we were here—to experience what is perhaps the last vast expanse of undisturbed rain forest in South America.

The Guyana rain forest from the air.

Our destination, the Annai landing strip, hove into sight. While flying we'd seen a few birds—turkey and black vultures mostly, with two distant king vultures for added spice. I strained my eyes hoping to catch sight of a harpy eagle perched on one of the emergent snags jutting above the forest canopy, but was unsuccessful.
The Annai landing strip is a dirt road next to Rock View Lodge, one of the largest eco-lodges in Guyana. Stepping from the plane we felt our knees buckle in the mid-day heat. Soon cold drinks and a nice lunch at Rock View Lodge helped revive us.

Dr. Steve Banner struggles to find just the right angle for a photo of the welcome sign while leader Kirk Smock looks on in wonder.

The plane! The plane! The plane we came in on.

After lunch we began birding the grounds. Palm and blue-gray tanagers were common. A white-necked thrush was building a nest under the thatched canopy of a benab. I caught a fleeting glimpse of a burnish-buff tanager in a fruiting tree. A horse corral held a number of southern lapwings and the aforementioned buff-necked ibis. I had the feeling that this place would be much birdier early in the morning.

Leon gives us the run-down at Rock View Lodge.

Leon, a guide at Rock View Lodge, gave us a tour of the grounds and facilities, which included very nice guest rooms, a bar and general store, a huge vegetable garden, and the stony promontory from which the lodge derives its name. I would have been content to stay right on that overlook for the rest of the day, conducting a Big Sit, perhaps with a run to the store for some munchies and a frosty cold beer, but our leaders needed to get us on the move. This would become a theme of the trip.

We boarded several 4x4 trucks and headed down a long, straight, red-clay road. Destination Iwokrama, a field station and eco-lodge owned and operated by the Makushi people in the heart of the vast Iwokrama Forest. If one were to drive directly, I suspect this trip would have taken about two hours. We birders found so much to look at that we stretched the drive until well after dark. Arriving at Iwokrama, we hauled our luggage to our rooms, splashed our faces with water and reconvened at the main building for a late dinner. By the time we finished eating and had a brief orientation meeting, I was so tired my eyes were crossing.

Everyone hurried back to their cabins to get ready for bed before the generator was switched off. This was our first night sleeping without air-conditioning under the very necessary mosquito netting. I tried to recall the life birds I'd seen that day but did not get far before dropping into slumberland.

At each stop we made, new tropical delights were discovered.

In my next post, I'll share some of the special sightings from the road to Iwokrama.

Mahaica River Boat Trip

Mere hours after landing, bleary-eyed from an all-night flight at Cheddi Jagan International Airport in Georgetown, Guyana I found myself stepping gingerly over some rotted wooden dock boards into an aluminum (or "al-you-min-ee-yum" as my British fellow travelers would say) pair of boats for a short afternoon boat trip on the Mahaica River.

The sun beat down on everything—living, barely living, clearly not living—equally and I felt that sort of dizzy-in-the-head sensation that comes from too much of anything hitting your body all at once. Soon the boats (really, two skiffs lashed together) or boat complex was moving through the cocoa water, but the oppressive heat was barely reduced, but it was reduced some, and that counted for something. Then, just as I was feeling the urge to rid myself suddenly of the remaining airplane food in my stomach....birds.

Rising from the thick mangrove-lined banks, a blizzard of white—cattle and snowy egrets fled downstream and brought the day to life. They caught our collective attention and a half-dozen cameras swung into action to capture the spectacle.
What had I brought with me as preconceived notions about Guyana, packed tightly in my brain just as surely as the clothes in my suitcase? I'd brought the comments of my wife, Julie, who'd visited 18 months earlier, and of a handful of friends who'd been here. Hot as the hinges of hell was the dominant notion. Buggy. Birdy as anywhere in the world. Basic. Hot. Birdy.

Snowy egret (left) and a breeding-plumage cattle egret (right)

I could deal with all the rest, as long as things were birdy. But this cloud of white wading birds fleeing before our boats with their 15 horsepower motors–they were all snowy and cattle egrets. When would we start seeing some real South American species?

Just as that rather greedy thought crossed my burbling brain, I saw that there was a bright red bird in the midst of the snow-white flocks. It was a young scarlet ibis. Then, as if my eye were suddenly gifted with the ability to see thing s other than white, I spied several other, darker birds as our guides called them out.

Great black hawk, adult..

Pied water-tyrant, great black hawk, and the national bird of Guyana, the taxonomic anomaly known as the hoatzin (pronounced "wat-sin.").

What a freaky bird the hoatzin is!

I tried my level best to capture a few images with my big camera rig, but the rocking, moving boat and the huge contrast between the milky afternoons sky and the dark shadowy leaves of the mangroves made the task difficult.

Each time a hoatzin would be perched in the open, the lenses would swing up and the bird, with uncanny timing, would amble off its perch and into deep cover.

The hoatzins were difficult to capture on camera.

Tropical kingbird and kiskadees made themselves known by vocalizing. Snail kites and swallow-tailed kites notched the sky with their dark forms. We heard more birds call than we saw. And our guides called out more birds than we saw. But we had dipped out toes into the vast river of birding in Guyana—a river massively larger than the one upon which we were currently navigating.

Finally, a relatively decent photo of a hoatzin.

Birding in Guyana Part 6: Down from Turtle Mountain

Red-and-green macaw.

This post is a continuation of Part 5: Trekking Up Turtle Mountain. Walking back down from Turtle Mountain, one might think, would be easier than walking up. However we took a different forest trail—one that was a tad rootier and rockier—winding through more giant trees and deeper shade. As it was already afternoon, the forest was growing quieter. The first recognizable sound I heard was a grunt, quickly followed by a bad word, emanating from my own mouth as a result of stepping awkwardly on a root and twisting my ankle.

This was to be the first solid evidence than I had made bad footwear choices for this trip. Feeling the pressure of the trip's weight limitations, I took the minimum footwear I thought necessary. I packed light hiking boots (Merrills, which always seem to be too small once you leave the shoe store), some Keen flip-flops, and a new pair of rugged Crocs. I was wearing the Merrills when I stumbled, and the ankle support was not enough, apparently. I did not break anything, but the ankle would remain tender throughout the trip.

If I were going back to Guyana today, I would take better, more supportive hikers, plus a pair of beater tennis shoes (ones I could leave behind at the end of the trip), and some regular Keen sandals. In the heat, humidity, rain, and rivers your feet are damp a lot of the time in Guyana. Blisters and sore spots make it necessary to give your feet a break by changing into alternative footwear. Once my hikers became uncomfy, my choices were the Crocs (which raised immediate blisters), and the Keen flip-flops, which were neither safe nor rugged enough for the trails we hiked.

Just as I was regaining my composure after a litany of whispered, banned-from-the-radio words, we began seeing birds. Simultaneously it began to rain buckets. We stepped in lively fashion down the trail to a clearing where some open-sided buildings gave us shelter from the storm. When the rain quit, the bird activity resumed. Parrots, macaws, toucans, tanagers, woodcreepers, and a range of other feathered wonders caught our eyes.

Asaph and Tim scanning from the shelters.

We scanned the treetops on the forest edge identifying the parrots and macaws that were preening after the shower. We shook the rain off our "plumage" too, and wiped lenses dry. Then back on the trail en route to the boat landing.

Waved woodpecker, male.

We did not get very far. One of our most interesting encounters was with a pair of waved woodpeckers. One of which—the male—stayed long enough for scope looks and photos. It was picking something off the bark of a huge tree and wiping it through its feathers. We could not tell if it was sap or ants or something else. But the bird was sufficiently engrossed in its ablutions that we got very close to it.

A small flock of painted parrots (above) was foraging in fruit trees next to the path and a pair of yellow-billed jacamars (below) was hawking insects in an adjacent clearing. We all stopped to admire these cooperative birds and our reverie was broken, not by the rain re-starting (which it did), but by the prodding voices of our leaders admonishing us to finish the hike back to the boats (which we did).

Yellow-billed jacamar.

The boat ride back to Iwokrama gave us a chance to cool off after the intensely humid hike. The cooling air actually made the sun enjoyable. Had we been stationary, it would have been another story altogether.

Cooling off on the boat ride back.

Back on the friendly grounds of Iwokrama, we split into groups—some heading off for a siesta, some hoping the solar-powered wireless would be working, and the rest of us off for—what else—birding. Wally lead us along the Screaming Piha Trail in search of Guyana's weirdest bird: the capuchinbird, or calf bird. We heard them on their lek, high in the canopy, and we got modestly good looks at these cartoony creatures, but the daylight was fleeing and the show was soon over for the day. I'll tell more about a subsequent encounter with the capuchinbirds in a later post.

I wish I could remember the name of that trail we hiked...it was a really cool name, too...

Moments after emerging from the trail, we took to the boats again, motoring across the river to a small island where there is a family-run bar.

Pelin, Michael, Andrew, and Steve are all cuckoo for coconuts.

We drank rum poured into cut coconuts, which is mandatory on any trip to the tropics, apparently.
When the coconuts were all gone, we had cold Banks Beer and watched the sun kiss the sky goodnight. Funny, my ankle felt fine at this point.

Guyana Part 3: Botanical Gardens

Yellow-crowned (Amazon) parrot in the botanical gardens of Georgetown.

After a restful night's sleep in the air-conditioned comfort of the Hotel Pegasus in Georgetown, we staggered downstairs with all of our gear for our first full day of birding in Guyana.

And when I say "staggered downstairs" I mean it literally—at least for myself. The evening before I had gotten stuck in one of the hotel's two elevators for about 15 minutes, trying to descend from the fifth floor to the lobby. The doors closed, I pushed the L button and nothing happened. I pushed the button again—nada. I pushed the OPEN button. Nope. Within another three minutes I was trying to attract the attention of the hotel employee I'd seen cleaning the room opposite the elevators by pounding on the doors and screaming (politely) for help. She could not hear me. So I waited.

I figured someone would eventually notice that I was missing and would come looking. I purposely felt in my pocket for food, just in case. The granola bar I'd had with me since Ohio was some small comfort. After a period of minutes that seemed longer than it probably was, the elevator woke up and took me down to the lobby where exasperated looks from my fellow travelers greeted me.

Hence, on the following morning I (and all my gear) took the stairs.

Our morning destination was the Georgetown Botanical Gardens and Zoo, a place nearly everyone mentions when talking about birding in Guyana. The large trees of the gardens lure parrots, woodpeckers, toucans, and raptors while the various ponds and marshy areas host water birds. It's mostly open beneath the trees so it's easy to see the birds. And believe me there were birds in every direction we looked, including a distant peregrine falcon on a radio tower.

The central road through the botanical gardens.

We spent a few hours (but clearly not long enough) birding along the central road through the botanical gardens.

Great kiskadees screamed and whined from everywhere as they tussled with one another and hawked insects over the ponds.

Cinereous becard, male.

One of the first true life birds for me was the cinereous becard, a small pale gray bird with a stout bill and a black cap. I got a good look and a decent digiscope shot of the male.

Immature snail kite.

Snail kites are so numerous are Georgetown that we began saying things like "Oh it's just another snail kite..." This struck me as weird since it took me three special trips in the early 1990s to add this species to my life list in Florida. Of course once I saw one, the species no longer vexed me. No such worries in Georgetown, where every single citizen could add this species to their yard list every day of the year. Bad place to be a snail.

Little cuckoo.

Just as the morning was beginning to get noticeably hot (which starts as soon as the sun rises above the trees) we had a run of great birds, starting with a very cooperative pair of little cuckoos in the brush along a wet ditch. Such neat little cinnamon birds with bright yellow bills! I struggled to find a vantage point for my scope so I could get a photo. And once I got the scope on the birds, I nearly missed the shot because my exclamation of "Holy mackerel!" formed an instant line of people behind me wanting a scope look. When that happens I cannot hog the scope to get my shots, so we all got good scope views, AND I got my shot of one of the cuckoos just before it jumped back into deep cover.



Lemon-chested greenlet, gray-breasted martin, southern house wren, tropical gnatcatcher, white-lined, blue-gray, and palm tanagers, yellow oriole, limpkin, spotted sandpiper, wattled jaçana, ruddy ground dove, pale-vented pigeon, golden-winged parakeet, smooth-billed ani, green kingfisher, and yellow-chinned spinetail are just some of the birds I remember seeing that morning in the botanical gardens.

Striated heron.

The photographers among us got their first truly cooperative subject: a striated heron that walked calmly just a few feet away from a collection of whirring, beeping, clicking lenses.

Black-collared hawk.

I worked on my camera's settings for digiscoping on a black-collared hawk perched on the far side of a pond. What a handsome bird!

Yellow-crowned parrots.

Parrots, macaws, and their ilk filled the morning air with raucous cries. Flocks zoomed by overhead. Our guides called out IDs but I confess I did not get good looks at all of them. We did get great looks at several yellow-crowned parrots (called yellow-crowned amazon in the field guide)

A quartet of lineated woodpeckers was trying to work out territorial boundaries in the large trees of the gardens, which gave us thoroughly pleasing looks.

Aside from its great birding, the botanical gardens is also famous for its tame pod of manatees in the lake. Grab an handful of grass from the lawn and waggle it in the water and a manatee or two will come up to eat it from your hand. One of our leaders, Kirk, demonstrated this for us, but the water was a bit too shallow for the large aquatic mammal to get all the way to shore. For a breathless account of a more exciting manatee encounter from this spot, slip over to Julie Zickefoose's blog post from fall of 2008.

Toco toucan.

The final bit of birding excitement from out botanical garden adventure happened when one of our target birds, the toco toucan swooped across the blue sky and landed atop a palm tree. Kiskadees swarmed and swooped at the toucan (they are well-known nest robbers) but the giant-billed bird just sat there and looked around. So did we, except that our attention was focused solely on the toucan.

This moment of birding reverie was broken with the soon to be all-too-familiar cry of "OK folks, back on the bus! We've gotta move out!" I could have spent an entire day in this park, and at the end of our tour two of our most avid photographers did just that in order to take advantage of the photo ops offered by the acclimated birds.

For now we were off to the small airport to fly to the interior of Guyana where more wonders surely waited.

Next post: Puddle Jumper Over Rainforest.