Some Venezuelan Birds

Please note that all bird photographs, including the male parrotlet on the previous page, have all been submitted to VIREO at the Academy of Natural Sciences, and fall under their joint copyright agreement.

I worked on the green-rumped parrotlet project for six months from June through November of 1996. Our study site was a ranch about 45 km south of Calabozo, in the state of Guarico. The ranch is owned by Cornell graduate Tomas Blohm, who has for some time allowed scientists to come and study the plants and animals of Hato Masaguaral.

The "main man" for the parrotlet project is Dr. Steve Beissinger, now at UC Berkeley. In the late '80's he started putting up PVC pipe nest boxes for the parrotlets along the fences of the ranch. There are now well over 100 of them, and over 4000 parrotlets have been banded.
My specific work was as a field assistant to Rodney Siegel, who is currently finishing up his doctoral dissertation at UC Davis. He is using field metabolic rate of nesting pairs to investigate the unusually large and asynchronous clutches that this species lay.

Now for some pictures of other Llaneran birds

Another bird that commonly used the parrotlet nest boxes, especially in the open pasture habitat, is the saffron finch. Much to our annoyance, they were also frequent inhabitants of our mist nets. Once one would get caught it would start making distress calls and pretty soon we would have more and more caught. Saffron finches were often the favorite of newcomers and visitors to the ranch, but most of us long-timers quickly lost that endearment after hours of plucking these little yellow hellions out of the net...

Next for a teeny tiny owl- the ferruginous pygmy-owl. A group of four or five of these cute little guys lived in a small patch of woods in the midst of the cow fields for much of the summer. I would be sitting, watching the parrotlets come and go from a nest box and I could hear these cute little guys trilling to each other.

The wackiest bird we ever caught would have to be the red-billed scythebill. This is one bird that is completely unlike anything we have in North America. We didn't see these guys very often, but when we did they would usually be climbing up tree trunks or branches. They make a dull thumping noise as they probe rotten wood for whatever invertebrate goodies they can dig up.

As soon as I can find a more memory efficient way to get these picutres on my web page, I'll throw up a whole bunch more of good bird shots. Then I can make the thumbnail photos a little bigger too!

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