Mercury in Birds of Prey
Peruvian Amazon
Madre de Dios

Report to the National Birds of Prey Trust

25 August 2006

Hello to all of you from the beautiful tropical forests of the south-eastern Peruvian Amazon!  I want to start my report by again thanking you all for the faith you have placed in me by awarding me this grant.  I hope that you are pleased with the information I have for you.  I could not be happier with how things are going so far.  I will begin with an informal description of the happenings, then a more scientific account of the samples we have collected and what we intend to do with them.  We have ten birds so far, and have spent 23 days spent capturing.  I projected a count of 2 to 3 birds for every 7 days of capture, and we are slightly above my projections! Obviously we don’t have any lab results yet, and we will not until the beginning of 2007.

As I think you already know, Peru requires (and I fully support this program) that I split my project 50% with a Peruvian student or institution.  It had been my intention to find a student with an interest in either parasites or in raptors, in need of a worthwhile project but without the funds to pursue it, who would be capable of launching an investigation of the parasites that may be on the birds I would be capturing.  You may recall I asked for funds in my proposal for a student assistant, and I found the perfect match – a 5th year veterinary student from Lima with a background in raptors and a strong interest in raptor medicine and disease, especially in wild populations.  His name is Juan Carlos Galvez Aramburu, and he is now my Peruvian partner (and my assistant).  He is doing a full parasite investigation and health inspection of each bird we capture.  This is his doctoral thesis.  He is extremely bright, and every bit as enthusiastic about this project as I am.  I believe his sample count for ectoparasites is currently 27, and we have fecal (cloacal) swabs to go to his university for gastrointestinal parasite analysis, and also blood smears, which he will be investigating, but I will be taking to the US with me because at the veterinary hospital where I work we have a very high tech microscope connected to the internet and we can view the slides together, and instantly consult with hemoparasite specialists if needed. 

Juan Carlos has just returned to classes, and I had another volunteer lined up to help me in his absence, but after meeting him face to face he did not seem to be a good match for my project.  He was not at all conservation minded (which is a very common sentiment here in Peru) so I explained to him that it would not work out well, and I worked alone yesterday and today.  This afternoon my new assistant should arrive.  He is a paid assistant, but he has plenty of experience, and I know his work ethic: I have worked together with him on other projects.  He is a super nice guy, and the pay scale here is so low, (roughly equal to 10 dollars per day) that to pay him to help me for two weeks hardly affects my budget at all.

And now for the interesting part: the birds!  I have captured ten birds so far!  Ten birds in 23 days!   I am so pleased that my trapping methods work!  The reason I did not apply for the June deadline grant was because I wanted to ensure that my methods were sound before I asked you to invest more money in me.  I will be fine until the end of 2006, but I will be applying to do another two sessions (one more small grant) early 2007.  These ten birds are of three species so far: Buteo magnirostis (7), Micrastur semitorquatus (2), and Micrastur Gilvicolis (1).  You may recall that in an earlier abstract I mentioned that Micrasturs would be excluded from my study at the request of biologist Ursula Valdez.  Ms. Valdez has since then changed her mind and decided that since we are both working in the same area it is better if we share our efforts, and has agreed that it is best that I be able to use the Micrastur samples in my study (since I am indeed capturing them).  I will be saving small amounts of blood and feathers for her on any Micrastur I capture for use in her ongoing DNA and ecology study of Micrastur species.   I am very pleased that we were able to resolve that issue and work together to best utilize and information these birds can give us.  That is what we both want.

The Buteo magnirotris’ common name is Roadside Hawk, because it specializes in broken, edge, and de-forested habitat (goldmines are full of roadside hawks)!  They are beautiful birds with a call that will break your heart.  They are just about to make their nests in a few weeks!  They are not particularly timid, so their nests are easy to find and to observe.  Of course I plan to target other species, but this is a great bird to have and monitor long term, because one of the primary indicators of a sublethal mercury toxicity level in birds is a decreased reproductive effort, such as poor tending of the mate while on the nest, decreased or poor nestling care, and poor nest construction.   If this study should ever turn in to something that can be monitored long term, these birds return to the same place to re-nest. It would be great to re-sample the same pair each year and compare the mercury levels to their reproductive success and their fledgling’s success.    There is no baseline information here for any of this.

The pictures of the Micrasturs speak for themselves – the Gilvicolis is gorgeous with those blue eyes against that bright orange face!  They are deep forest birds, they never soar, they fly low, and they are shy and secretive.  They are fast and very aggressive hunters.  This Gilvicolis really wanted to hurt me.  I had to put the whole bird bag into my backpack, and then hold the pack away from my body… what a little fighter he was!  What a fantastic bird!

The raptors have so far not been trapped with any fake animals… they have responded to them, come in closer and watched them, and perhaps noticed a nearby live animal in a trap because of the mechanical animals, but all captures have been with live animals.  All of our bait animals are safe and well, we had one injury when we were in the field, an unknown hawk attacked our chicken cage and got a talon in one of our baby chickens, (isn’t that funny, while we were out trying to find hawks, they were here trying to get IN to our cages) but that little guy is fine.   We had one little chick die from diarrhea while under the care of a veterinarian, but no injury or death related to our traps.  We made our Bal Chatri traps with two layers of mesh to keep the animals from pecking at or chewing on the knots, and to keep the talons from getting to the animals!

The mining here has more than doubled since my first trip here a couple of years ago.  It is heartbreaking to see the destruction and the habitat loss, and I know that it will never re-grow.  I have some really nice pictures for you, and some video as well, but I will wait and send that as a cd so as not to clog your email.  I will send only bird pictures with this report.

Following will be a picture of each bird with some brief information, and then a MS Excel report with their biometric data.  Each bird has an ID number, which begins with a 4 letter species code such as Genus species = GeSp and the sequence, for example my first Gilvicolis was MiGi01-056 (the 056 is my permit #)

If there is additional information that I may have left out, or if anybody has any questions or just wants to communicate with me, please email me at any time!  Although Juan Carlos doesn’t speak English at all, I can translate for him if anyone has any parasite-specific questions, or questions to him about his role in our project. 

OK… picture time:  ENJOY!