PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

Recent entries july 4, 2018 - 2018-07-04 the triangle continues of courtney, boobear, & nyota - 2018-07-03 Cookie so cute telling, "Hello" to sparrows - 2018-07-01 lovebirb in love - 2018-06-30 wren with fluffffff - 2018-06-24 Read my new book, The 10 Best Things You Can Do For Your Bird at Amazon or at many other fine distributors like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and more. By public demand, and after a delay of an embarrassing number of years, I've finally put my notorious essay, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman, free on the fabulous internets. A bibliography of my published books and stories. Here's a simple card-counting FAQ to get you up to speed on the basics. Here's the true story of the notorious DD' blackjack team, told for the first time on the fabulous internets. No other team went from a starting investor's bankroll of zero to winning millions of dollars. A Sadean take on Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics can be found in Roger Williams' NOW REVIEWED ON SLASHDOT!!! The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Adult readers only please -- explicit sex and violence. For updates on the "Dead Tree Project" and other topics, you may visit the official fan site, Passages in the Void.. My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List. HEY! What happened to the Peachfront Conure Files? The world's only OFFICIAL Peachfront Conure site now features free peachfront conure coverage, including a magazine length Intro to Conures previously published in American Cage-Bird Magazine, now free on the web. I offer the best free Peachfront Conure information on the internet. If you have great Peachfront Conure info, stories, or photos to share, contact me so I can publicize your pet, your breeding success, your great photograph, etc. on my site. Thanks.

part 7 of the great bolivian parrot tour: hyacinth macaws get freaky with it 2011-05-01 - 7:44 a.m. all photos � 2011 by elaine radford Sunday, April 17, 2011, San Matias Reserve, Bolivia You have reached Part 7 of the incredible Bolivian parrot tour. To start at the beginning, you may want to follow these links: Part #1: Peach-Front Conure Joins the Bird List Part #2: Blockades Can't Block Us Part #3: I Am the Seed-Eater King Part #4: Blue-Throated Macaw with photos, Can Your Bird List Do That? Part #5: Sand Dunes of Bolivia Part #6: The One Where I Lease a Cessna and Find the Hyacinth Macaw So, the Bolivian Pantanal is 80 or 90% flooded -- I forget which. Let's just say that it's mostly flooded. Here at the end of rainy season, the marsh is quite high. Forget about splashing around in rubber boots like we did in Beni to find the Blue-Throated Macaw. Here, if you want to get away from the ranch, you've got to ride a horse. Well, horses are not hard to find, since the park is also a working cattle ranch. I don't remember the last time I was on a horse, but maybe when I was 10? I assured everyone involved that I remembered nothing about it. "Give me the oldest, slowest horse," I said. They also put my horse on a string, after the lead horse. In that way, I didn't have to figure out how to steer the horse. He just followed the leader. However, my horse was just a teensy bit passive-aggressive. He knew very well that I was a noob to horseback riding, and he would somehow find a way to stroll through the forest in such a way that I'd be running smack-dab into various ill-placed branches if I didn't watch out. Good thing I was wearing my hat and sunglasses! A large flock of Snail Kites set out in the morning. Parrot Guy said that once he'd seen a flock of 500 though, right at his house, so I guess we can't touch that. I was pretty impressed with what we had, though. I forgot to note how many, but it was a lot. We found some Black Howler Monkeys, but they were not howling, and perhaps it was just as well. Plenty of tapir footprints but we never saw the Tapir. I had to settle on taking the tapir's footprint for proof of life. We'd been completely stiffed on Hummingbirds this trip, but finally we broke the ice. There was some kind of parasitic plant, with long tubular red flowers, that was clinging to tree-tops around eye level or a little higher all over the place. These flowers were the bait that drew in large numbers of Gilded Hummingbirds, a life bird for me. I was interested to see that, very often, we saw two Gilded Hummingbirds to a tree -- and they weren't fighting. They were perched. Must be the male and female, we decided, and what else can it be? Not that male and female hummingbirds sit around tolerating each other in America. But maybe it was their day to be in the mood...I didn't see any display dances or mating though. Perhaps they preferred to wait until the spying eyes of birders were otherwise occupied. A favorite lifer of the day was Pale-Crested Woodpecker, with its notable blonde crest. The Scaly-Headed Pionus/Parrot, with its bright red vent, was a lifer that provided more of a humor note. When I first looked in the scope, my eye didn't make out the five Scaly-Heads sitting there, because their colorful patterns actually created an illusion that the bright red vents were flowers in the trees. Of course, once I realized what I was seeing, I had a very nice look. We rode back for lunch and a siesta. It was hot, hot, hot! I got my life Red-Billed Scythebill from the porch, an impressive bird with a bill that did look very much indeed like a long bright red scythe. It was using it to dig well into a dark hole in the big tree nearest the ranch-house, and once I saw it withdraw quite a large insect, maybe a moth of some kind, judging from the shape of the wings. The Cattle Tyrants back in Beni department mostly tyrannized the empty roadways, but these Cattle Tyrants often road piggyback on their choice of cows. I don't know what made one cow particularly choice, but most cows held no Cattle Tyrants, and yet some held three on their backs, and more at their heels. I saw my first Cattle Tyrant riding a pig, which for some reason struck me as absolutely hilarious. There were two juvenile Rufescent Tiger-Herons hanging around the place. Simply charming. Their striped backs made them look more like "tigers" than their parents. In the afternoon, S. and I birded on foot, while PG tried again to make some sound recordings that didn't have mooing cattle in the background. I enjoyed the cuteness of two different White-Wedged Piculet pairs working on small, ropy tree branches or vines, hammering away as intently as a bigger woodpecker would on a "real" branch or trunk. We added Plain-Crowned Spinetail to my life list. I tried to photograph some Monk Parakeets on their colony nests. However, the afternoon truly belonged to the Hyacinth Macaws. We observed two pairs, at least, because part of the time we could actually see both pairs at one time. I was again struck by the affection these birds have for their mates. If one bird flies, the mate will soon follow. One of the pairs was mostly eating the palm nuts that they like, although they stayed close together. The second pair was out-and-out petting and courting each other. They chased a bit, but flirtatiously, and not very far. Soon, they found a bare branch where they could do the usual bird dance of one bird squats and begs, and the other bird feeds the one begging, and pretty soon they're play-kissing each other, and it's just too adorable. Eventually, they flew to a higher branch, that was also bare, and they began to dance, play-kiss, and then to actually mate. Wow. That's right. I was watching Hyacinth Macaws do the dirty deed in public. You just can't top that. The List--lifers in bold Blue-Throated Piping-Guan Southern Screamed Black-Bellied Whistling-DuckRufescent Tiger-Heron Black-Crowned Night-Heron Striated Heron Cocoi Heron Great Egret Plumbeous Ibis Buff-Necked Ibis Jabiru Wood Stork Limpkin Turkey Vulture Black Vulture Snail Kite Crane Hawk -- alas, a Better View Desired for this one Savanna Hawk Black-Collared Hawk Southern Caracara Wattled Jacana Southern Lapwing Pale-Vented Pigeon Ruddy Ground-Dove Picui Ground-Dove Scaled Ground-Dove Gray-Fronted Dove Hyacinth Macaw -- obvious courtship/mating behavior seen Golden-Collared Macaw Peach-Fronted Parakeet Monk Parrot Yellow-Chevroned Parakeet Scaly-Headed Parrot Squirrel Cuckoo Greater Ani Smooth-Billed Ani Guira CUckoo Gilded Hummingbird Blue-Crowned Trogon White-Wedged Piculet White Woodpecker Campo Flicker Pale-Crested Woodpecker Red-Billed Scythebill Rufous Hornero Chotoy Spinetail Plain-Crowned Spinetail Common Tody-Flycatcher Vermilion Flycatcher Cattle Tyrant Great Kiskadee Tropical Kingbird Dusky-Capped Flycatcher Black-Tailed Tityra Rufous-Browed Peppershrike Thrushlike Wren Masked Gnatcatcher Rufous-Bellied Thrush Chalk-Browed Mockingbird Hooded Tanager--both male and female seen Sayaca Tanager Purple-Throated Euphonia Grassland Yellow-Finch Red-Crested Finch Red-Crested Cardinal Yellow-Billed Cardinal Crested Oropendula Troupial Epaulet Oriole Chopi Blackbird Bay-Winged Cowbird You have just read part 7 of my great Bolivian macaw adventure, Hyacinth Macaws go wild! And, wait, there's more...coming right up in part 8. back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford