The Macaw
Lick
Two pairs of blue and
gold macaws and a pair of green
We got out of the boat at a quarter to seven. The
first thing we saw was over a hundred scarlet, red and green and several pairs
of blue and yellow macaws flying around the trees, before settling high up,
eyeing the lick, more arriving in pairs all the time. The noise and colour
of these large macaws along the riverbank, in the Peruvian Amazon
must surely be one of the world's great wildlife spectacles. There we were
sitting on green plastic stools supplied care of Omar, who at eight o'clock
served us with tea or coffee, bread rolls which we had with cheese and jam,
boiled egg and biscuits, on the other side of the river was this real life that
would be incredible to watch on the television, let alone being there in the
flesh.
Macaw and parrot clay licks are special
deposits of clay along riverbanks or sometimes in the forest interior in the
Amazon rainforest. The birds flocks to the clay, usually in waves that start at
six-ish and finish around eleven, at breeding times sometimes seen a little
later, to eat thumb-sized lumps each day. There are many theories as to why the
parrots eat the clay, the long held theory was to detoxify the poisons in their
diets of seeds and fruits eaten in rainforest trees and vines. It is known
for sure that the parrots feed a lot of clay to their new-born
chicks.
We saw: Red-and-Green Macaw, Scarlet
Macaw, Blue-and-Gold Macaw, Red-bellied Macaw (only at the lick in the
upper Tambopata), Chestnut-fronted Macaw, Mealy Amazon Parrot,
Yellow-crowned Amazon Parrot, Dusky-headed Parakeet, White-eyed Parakeet,
Dusky-billed Parrotlet, Tui Parakeet, Cobalt-winged Parakeet, Red-shouldered
Parrotlet and the Amazonian Parrotlet. Along with several birds of prey, the
rarest being the King Vulture, we heard the Dusky Titi Monkey and the
Toucan.
While we were waiting for just one brave soldier to be the first to
settle on the "lick", we actually saw a couple doing
'ruddies' (centre left of picture). All in the name of entertainment, the
neighbours shouted encouragement and others were clearly thinking about it. Of
the one hundred and twenty known macaw and parrot clay licks in the Amazon, at
least a hundred of them are found in the Peruvian Amazon. Only seven of
these clay licks are offered to tourists and five of these seven are
found in Peru. The largest known macaw gatherings occurs at the large licks in
the upper Tambopata (January 1994 cover story in National Geographic
Magazine). The Madre de Dios River downstream from the mouth of the Manu
River, often referred to as the "Blanquillo Lick", because of the small stream
by that name, is currently the world's most visited large macaw clay lick, with
nearly three thousand tourists visiting here
annually.
We watched for ages as the birds got braver by settling in the lower palms, eventually Pathfinder was the first down to ground
level
 
Sadly we had a visitor that frightened the birds
into a real paddy. They are not afraid of Vultures
but Kites and this Black Hawk do
 
Flying in fear, the noise was colossal. We went to the
shade of the boat to allow time for the gang to settle once
more
Very skittish it took quite a time for the palms
to be settled in
Final look
round
Finally they settled in greater
numbers
And we got the sight we had waited patiently for (140
mm)
Pathfinder was joined by loads of friends (600
mm)
ALL IN ALL A
STUNNING DISPLAY OF
NATURE
A TRULY STUNNING AND NOISY SPECTACLE, DEEP IN THE
AMAZONIAN
JUNGLE
.
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