Toucan Play At That Game

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Day 13 - 18 September-Part 1

Aaaaah to sleep well is a blessing... except there is a bird that lives in a tree near our window and boy does it make a racket!, its call actually sounds like the noise a cat would make if you gave it L.S.D. told it that all dogs are out to get it, blindfolded, shaved, greased it up and then repeatedly threw it against a chalk board. So we only sleep well till about 8am which will have to do since Liz has told me I am not allowed a pellet gun.

On day 13 we woke up at 8 to our new alarm call, we’d agreed over our caiparinias the night before to go to the Bird Park and then Brazilian side of the falls in the afternoon, the bus that takes us there (the 120) stops literally just opposite the hostel which is pretty darn handy!

Before we left we had breakfast, none to my surprise all the ham and cheese are on the same dish... again. I would usually take the moral high ground and simply refuse to touch the dirty corpse meatfest however poor Liz is the one that has to put up with my hypo temperament when I’m hungry so I bit the bullet and took all the bits of cheese that were furthest from the ham pretended to myself that the cheese hadn’t touched anything dead, made some toast and got some juice, hopefully the juice does not have any meat in it but in south America it would not surprise me one bit.
Post breakfast we got our gear together, charged camera batteries and headed to the bus stop, for a place I have never heard of before coming here I was really rather excited and must have looked like a child that needs a wee while waiting for the bus to arrive. The buses here have supervised turnstiles on board where you pay, from off the bus it looks a bit like someone playing keyboard and I smiled inside while I imagined someone playing cheesy lounge music for the entertainment of the passengers as they went by.

We eventually got our bus and got to the bird park without any hitch, when we got in I was bit humpy as all the birds “although very beautiful” were in cages and I was expecting it to just be one big old Avery (obviously that would be silly as the birds would just eat each other) so we walked through a bit and to my delight we came across the first Avery, we went in and it contained mostly these giant turkey chicken things which were ok to look at but it also contained a bird that always had a comic appeal to me the Toucan! And what lovely birds they are, not as funny in the flesh but far more beautiful and really quite friendly, the pure white of their chests contrasted with the black wings and backs and the brightest orange beaks of the males was breathtaking, they have these intelligent blue rimmed eyes taking in everything around them and they look so soft it’s hard to resist the temptation to reach out and stroke them, obviously I didn’t reach out and try to stroke one as had I been bitten by one this entry would probably read rather differently, mostly for the lack of fingers. The females are a little duller in the beak with a hint of green but are just as pretty and far more willing to pose for me.

We got to the next Avery which had mostly Red Ibis and Toucan, the Ibis were a little smaller than I imagined but so much more vividly colored they were just like the ones you see in Egyptian hieroglyphs and it was hilarious when they all decided to move from the pool to the handrail of the walkway as Liz let out a shriek but it made for a pretty good photo, there were other birds in there too but I don’t know what they are, I would be researching the names of the birds as I write but unfortunately the internet connection here is not great so if I get time I may update the pictures, the only unknown bird from that Avery really worth mentioning is this large pure white crane looking thing, it didn’t really want to walk around strutting its stuff even though I waited for a bit so I got a picture of it lying down and moved on.

After that Avery there was a reptile area, most of the reptiles bite pretty hard and have teeth so they were not in any open plan areas, a good example of this would be the bloody great alligator that we saw lazing in the sun! From safe up on our path the alligator was actually quite boring I think in the five minutes we stood and watched it, it opened its mouth by about two inches and blinked about four times I’m sure it would be a different story if I jumped down there and tickled its feet but I’m sure I read somewhere that tickling alligators is not advisable unless you are Australian.
The turtles, Snakes and Iguana although cool to look at were again not particularly active so we didn’t hang around in that area too long.

We moved on to some more cages containing some really BIG carnivorous birds, first we saw a Harpy Eagle that was about 4 ½ foot tall, it is apparently the most powerful raptor, it was not an easy bird to photograph as it sat as far away as it could in the shade with its back to us, probably sulking at the lack of sheep to steal and villagers to terrorise.
Next we saw a king vulture, man he was cool! By cool I mean like the Fonze, he was what I’d imagine a Turkey would be like if you gave it a recording contract, no longer a dumb gobbling turkey but bigger, dressed better and well... cool. He sat there cleaning himself enjoying my paparazzi style admiration and was probably wondering when E! news would arrive to ask him some questions about his new record and being recently spotted at the Viper Lounge with Paris Hilton.

After we left the meat eating birds we arrived at the endangered and rescued parrots, again not in an Avery but in cages, we saw these very friendly parrots called golden paradise birds or something to that effect and they were these lovely yellow parrots that had been rescued from traffickers who were keeping them in appalling condition and plucking the feathers of the males to make them look like juveniles, they are now healthy and breeding and were excited to see people so a couple came right up to greet Liz as I was taking pictures.

After that we went to another area that contained some cages holding some endangered species of medium sized parrots, these parrots were very sad looking but nevertheless breeding in captivity so it can’t be all bad, Liz noticed one trying to get his ankle tag off and told it that he was in the cage for his own safety. I tried to teach it a swear word as that usually makes me feel better when I’m down but I fear we needed more counselling time with the little chap.

We happened across another Avery “Butterflies” aah we thought, should be some pretty good photo opportunities here! In we went, there were big... I mean really big beautiful Blue ones, not flapping around aimlessly like the dopy British cabbage white looking like its blind and trying to find a cabbage in the air but these things flap once or twice and glide the rest of the way they are as big as if I put both my hands together to make a butterfly shaped shadow, these guys however did not seem to want to land anywhere so we did not get any pictures. Whilst admiring these big old blue butterflies I heard a loud brrrrrrr sound whizz past my head rather like a small R.C. helicopter, I actually kind of ducked and said “what the $#@! Was that!?!? I certainly didn’t want to be stuck in an Avery with Baby Mothra, Liz pointed out that it was probably a Humming Bird, yep a Humming Bird, I had heard of these mythological creatures but never thought I’d ever actually see one as they are not only reasonably rare but bloody fast and absolutely tiny, even if you were lucky enough to hear one in the wild you’d be pretty lucky to actually see it! Well sod the butterflies I thought, I know what I want to see in here and being in an Avery full of the things I reckon I’ll be in with a chance, I started looking around and then I started to notice them, they really are very tiny birds, most are smaller than a sparrow and well camouflaged even though many of them are these amazing iridescent colours, the kind that blend in with the bush and trees but they are chirpy little fellers and I absolutely fell in love with them, they are my new favourite animal next to the platypus. we managed to get some pictures on both camera’s, the point and shoot that Liz had was a bit better suited at capturing them as it has automatic flash and adjusts the shutter speed automatically, I got very jealous and pootled around with the SLR but couldn’t find a setting that worked ok and Liz was getting itchy to go to the Falls as we’d been in the Bird Park for some time now all my pictures of the Humming Birds were dark and I had a face like a smacked arse and got a bit snappy about being rushed although I had actually been in that Avery for about half an hour.

As we left the Butterfly Avery I noticed I had a passenger on my camera bag making a bid for freedom, I felt terrible for my carelessness and slowly walked back into the Avery, luckily the stowaway didn’t fly off and I got it back, I tried to blow it to make it fly off but it was too busy licking the bag, it crawled on to my finger and I tried to transfer it on to a leaf, by now I’m getting quite an audience and some smiling old lady tried to help by blowing it, the butterfly then flew on to her hand and the old bat shrieked and swatted it I couldn’t believe it!!! I was furious I’m not sure if she killed it but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was at least damaged in some way.

After that traumatic experience we went and got some food expecting to get ripped off but were pleasantly surprised to find very reasonably priced food that was pretty darn tasty, I had an Egg and Cheese burger bap type thing and Liz got a hotdog burger bap type thing, we both got a can of coke each and that only came to R$14. Once we’d finished our food and were sat supping our drinks we were getting hassled by honeybees so moved, a bee climbed into my can of coke so promptly found his thieving arse in a bin, in a can.

Liz saw that I was upset by the fact I wasn’t happy with my humming bird picas and the butterfly incident and agreed to go back to that enclosure for a short time while I tried again to get some pics *Thanks sweetheart xx* we were in there maybe ten more minutes, I tried a setting that makes brighter pictures, I didn’t manage to find one that can get their wings in (un-blurred) but did manage to get some where you can see the colours and just as we were leaving a little brown stripy one was licking some moss mushroom type stuff off the bark of a tree which made a pretty cool picture.

We then left for the falls as that was the last enclosure and we’d been there for so long I hope you enjoy the pictures x... over to you Liz :D part 2 to follow.....

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Photos

Parrot
This is one of the endangered parrots

Scarlet Ibis
taken just after they all perched up onthe handrail scaring us half to death

Toucan
taken by Liz, this fella took a bit of a shine to her and she got some awesome snaps of him

Female Toucan
to say femail is actually an assumption on my part, it could be another breed but just as beatiful

Hummingbird
eating the mold on the tree

Harpy eagle
moody looking bird