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Jocotocos Antpittas at Your Feet |
 A little over a year ago the electrifying news started to spread amongst birders in Ecuador that a farmer in the Mindo area, Angel Paz by name ("Angel of Peace," appropriately enough), had been able to "tame" several species of antpittas by calling them from the forest and feeding them earthworms (cf. Winging It,Feb 2006). It was an extraordinary development. By going out with Angel you could be assured of obtaining point-blank looks at some of the shyest and hardest to see birds in the tropics; he now brings in three antpitta species on a regular basis - Giant, Moustached, and Yellow-breasted - and on about 50% of the mornings, a covey of the rare Dark-backed Wood-Quail also come in. All four of these species are Choco endemics, and all four used to be incredibly tough to see - but not any more!
All of us being birders (some decidedly hard-core), staff and board of the Quito-based conservation organization Fundacion Jocotoco had to go see for ourselves, and like everyone else, we were blown away by the experience. But unlike most others, we immediately began to wonder, could this also be done with "our" Jocotoco Antpitta? It was the discovery of the Jocotoco Antpitta in November 1997 that sparked the establishment of Fundacion Jocotoco as an organization devoted to the purchase and management of the habitats of Ecuador's most endangered bird species. ("Jocotoco" refers to a local name for the bird, and is derived from its song.) We now have a system of eight private reserves in various parts of the country, and are protecting a variety of extremely rare birds, but our showcase remains the first, now named Tapichalaca Reserve, where the Jocotoco was found. The problem is that Jocotocos are extremely difficult to see, as they inhabit exceptionally dense and wet montane forest on steep mountain slopes. And of course everyone who came to Tapichalaca was eager to see it! The only possible way was through tape playback, but that too presented serious problems: not only was the bird shy and often not very responsive, but we feared that the over-use of tape playback was going to affect the behavior (and possibly the reproduction) of one of the world's rarest birds.
We knew that Jocotocos ate worms, and so eventually a solution occurred to me, why not build a "worm feeder" and see if we could attract one? So we did - it's no more than a glorified compost pile, with lights also rigged up so as to attract insects - and the worm feeder still works, bringing in a variety of species, including some antpittas. But our much-coveted Jocotocos have never deigned to come on a regular basis, so it was never considered to be much of a success. Meanwhile studies of the Jocotoco population at Tapichalaca were rev,ealing that it was even rarer than we thought. Something had to be done, but what?
Then Angel Paz came on the scene. It took a couple visits to gain his confidence, but gradually we did, and late last year he agreed to work with us and teach one of our Tapichalaca guardaparques his training "secrets." The process started in January 2007, with our guard Franco Mendoza spending almost a month with Angel on his farm. Franco then returned to Tapichalaca in February, and began to work on one of the pairs that we were usually most successful at showing to birders. And it started to work, and amazingly fast! Within a few weeks the birds had begun to respond to Franco's voice - by now they had been named "Pancho" and "Vivi" - and within a month they had begun to come in pretty regularly. And soon the first groups of birders were reporting success. It was all almost beyond belief.
To visit the Jocotoco reserves and do visit www.fjocotoco.org. Fundación Jocotoco is an Ecuadorian organization established to protect land of critical importance to the conservation of Ecuador's endangered birds and associated biodiversity. The Fundación achieves this by purchasing lands and managing them as private ecological reserves.
Text by: Robert S. Ridgely and Mercedes Rivadeneira, Fundación Jocotoco
Article © by This is Ecuador Magazine
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