Comments on: In the company of Capybaras

By: Roge

Roge — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:01:14 +0000

Winetr looks like a Freudian slip

By: Roge

Roge — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:59:24 +0000

Dear Tim,
I’m glad I asked. Your diary entries for that day – detailing the wildlife extravaganza we were treated to – show just how much a few individuals in the right place at the right time can contribute to the preservation of the natural world – not to mention the ruination of our waist lines.
And I certainly remember the road into Hato Pinero. You drove the car while I walked or pushed.
As you say, what memories to help us through English winetr evenings.
Happy New Year
Rog

By: Tim Key

Tim Key — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:00:04 +0000

Hi Rog

I turned to my notes after reading your blog, tucked away in a notebook smeared with beer, suncream and insect repellent (in that order). The day that capybara was eaten by the caiman was Saturday 9th April 1994 at Hato Pinero in Venzuela. The rest of my notes go like this:
Yellow knobbed curassow. We saw about 50 of them; the majority were female or young, but a few had large yellow knobs. For breakfast we had melon, “ceso blanco”, arepas (?), corn flour cakes, scrambled eggs and tomatoes.

Among other interesting birds seen that day were

white-bearded flycatcher; yellow-rumped cacique; yellow headed parrot; crane hawk; bat falcon; white ibis; cattle tyrant; slate-headed tody flycatcher; buff-breatsed wren; black-collared hawk; glittering throated emeralds; boat-billed heron and hoatzins. Jabirus soared above the pools.

100 caiman circled the pool. There were also yellow side necked turtles, and pecauri (peccary).

We saw a red-capped cardinal and were told that it used to be called (in Spanish if you see what I mean) “cardinal German flag” because it is red, white and black.

For lunch we had beef with peppers, corn cakes, and passion fruit steeped in sugar and cloves. We found ocelot and anteater tracks. A lesser yellow headed vulture was eating a piranha and we saw a huge ananconda mating under a bridge. We found a pauraque on a log, with chestnut cheeks and a grey crown. We found a turtle shell torn apart by a jaguar, and saw at night two ocelots and an oppossum.

Dinner that night was pollo and rice and a “delicious” coconut flan.

Do you remember how poor the road to Hato Pinero was after the town with the great name of “El sombrero”?

Not a bad day, really…

Cheers

Tim

By: Roge

Roge — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 12:48:09 +0000

Dear Tim,
Now you have reminded me, I remember it well. Perhaps like you with your Asda shopping lists, Capybara don’t have great memories either – otherwise they might give caimans a rather wider berth. Mind you, if the whole of the natural world had good memories, nature red in tooth and claw wouldn’t work and Darwin wouldn’t have achieved World renown.
For other blog readers, the caiman (of which there are several species) is a kind of South American alligator and is also one of the wildlife highlights of Cristalino Lodge.
Tim and I, as I recall, were staying, as eco-tourists, at Hato Pinero, a huge LLanos cattle ranch, owned by an enlightened, conservation conscious South American family (just like the owners of Cristalino Lodge – of whom much more in the pre-Christmas Cristalino blog). It was very much a working ranch but it also was home to abundant and spectacular wildlife.
And now you’ve jogged my memory! An amazing image comes back of a huge number of curassows materialising as if from nowhere in the late afternoon and feeding quietly along a levee between the surrounding wetlands. I don’t have my notebook to hand from the early 1990′s but perhaps you can remember the species. Another tribute, of course to far-sighting South American conservation pioneers!
By the way, wasn’t Otto worried about the fact that he couldn’t find himself a girlfriend. Hato Pinero was very remote.
Thankyou too for the delightful note about how the Harpy Eagle got its name. A touch of classical scholarship has raised the tone of the blog no end. And brought me a huge slice of luck at Alta Floresta with my fourth and far and away my best encounter with a Harpy Eagle – of which more in the blog.
All the best
Roge

By: Tim Key

Tim Key — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:29:01 +0000

Capybaras…funny how a single word triggers memories from way back. I find the same when I turn to a fieldguide; I can’t remember that I was meant to buy a litre of milk and a pot of peanut butter when I am in Asda, but each page of a fieldguide takes me to an exact location somewhere in the world, usually with memories of the weather and the company as well as the bird. A great way to spend winter evenings in England.

The word “capybara” did the same. I recall sitting on a log by a pool in the Llanos, the flooded grasslands of Venezuela. Sunning themselves on the banks were several spectacled caiman, while – partly submerged – a family party of capybaras was doing what capybaras do, grazing, swimming, socialising.

I was with a Venezuelan guide at the time, Otto, and I commmented on how calm the capybara were given the proximity of the caiman; Otto reassured me that caiman never took capybara. At that very moment a large caiman quietly slid in to the water and dived. Two jaws surfaced around a baby capybara, lagging behind the family party, and in slowmotion silence the caiman sunk beneath the surface with the baby, a trail of small bubbles in the brown water being the only reminder of the unhurried drama beneath the surface.

Otto wiped a tear from his eye…You might remember this Roger?

Cheers

Tim