Images of a visit to Peru: fauna

Lots of birds in Peru, and without any particular effort, I saw about a hundred varieties, ranging from birds I see at home regularly to the weird hoatzin and the mighty condor.  Seeing, sadly, is not photographing, and the birds did not fare so well as the plants!  But in addition to the birds, there were fur seals, capybara and caiman (a very large rodent and a small alligator respectively), many insects and bugs of all sorts, and the inevitable lizards and geckos of warm climates.  There were also, of course, llamas and alpacas all over the place.  All in all, it was a very impressive experience of the natural world, especially as most of our encounters were incidental to our travelling.

Some of the most impressive of these were only seen at night, so my selection of photographs is very skewed, towards big birds, often coastal, and invertebrates.  Those I have chosen are:

·  A pair of Chilean flamingos, spotted high (at 15,000 feet or more) on the altiplano; my cry of “flamingos” caused the coach driver to do a near emergency stop, much to the discomfiture of a lady in the tiny lavatory at the back of the bus

·  A soaring condor; we watched a stationary one for a couple of hours before one came flying overhead, huge and graceful

·  Pair of Peruvian pelicans, on the coast south of Peru

·  A crashing, clumsy hoatzin, an odd looking leaf eating bird which we found on a freshwater lake in the Amazonian jungle

·  A group of Inca terns, elegantly made up for the party

·  Leaf cutter ants – there’s a great column of them, each carrying a carefully cut out piece of leaf, on which they will grow the fungus on which their larvae feed

·  Another Peruvian pelican

·  A tarantula, living in the roof of our guide’s house in the jungle – this is the pink toed variety, as you can see if you look carefully

·  Finally, a swallow-tailed kite, another bird we saw in the Amazon – great groups of them soaring gracefully above and around us, a relative of the red kite which is, praise be, increasing steadily in Britain once again.

 

 

 
 

 

Comments

[glo]

How cute is that tarantulla! I wished I could have a close look at the seals you photographed though. They are one of my favourite animal, with bears AND CATS, of course.

[Dark Puss]

Oh I forgot to say, the Black Kites are back (migration) in the Pays de Gex again this week so I hope to see them when I'm at CERN next week.

[Cornflower]

Better you than me, getting close to that pelican.