Archive for the ‘Field Work’ Category
We are glad to inform that our proposal submitted to Idea Wild (http://www.ideawild.org/) was approved! Soon we will receive the donation of the following equipments: a digital scale to weight the nestlings (to replace the one we lost last year), a binocular 10×42 (to replace our old one!) and a equipment to measure the temperature and humidity in the nest cavities (will allow us to collect data from the nests). These equipments are important to the Project and the collaboration of Idea Wild is essential for the conservation of the blue-fronted amazon parrot and other psittacine species in Pantanal, Brazil. Our field team and the parrots deeply appreciate it!!! Thank you very much IDEA WILD!!!
During May, Glaucia, Vandir, and Thayane received Dr. Vivian Ribeiro Baptista-Maria, a biologist and PhD in Applied Ecology from ESALQ/Universidade de São Paulo, accompanied by Daniela Masumoto, a BS in Tourism. During the field trip, Dr. Vivian helped us to identify the plant species consumed by the parrots or used as nest cavity. Dr. Vivian is consultant of Fundação Neotrópica do Brasil and is responsible for the environmental consulting Bíon – Consultoria Ambiental (vrbmaria@gmail.com). Two days (and nights!) of hard work, rain, sun, mosquitoes, and ticks. Dr. Vivian’s voluntary collaboration was fundamental for this part of the project, when the data of 11 years of project are being analyzed for results compilation and publishing.
The end of the reproductive season of the Blue Fronted Parrot is approaching at Pantanal, MS – Brazil. Many nestlings have already done their first flight, while others are still in the nests and should be flying on the next couple of weeks. We (Glaucia, Vandir and the extern Jackson) are still in Pantanal. We have started filming the behavior of the nestlings, besides doing the biometry to verify their development.
Vandir and a nestling almost ready to do its first flight.
Glaucia is filming the behavior of the nestlings.
Glaucia doing biometry in a nestling.
These three guys are getting ready for their first flight. We have also installed a radio transmitter in some nestlings to accompany their dislodgement and survival after the flight.
Glaucia and a parrot with radio transmitter.
Nestling with radio transmitter.
This one had already done its first flight and has a radio transmitter.
Glaucia doing census of parrot population. Soon it will be completely flood! This is also the month when start raining, and Pantanal begins to flood. It is also the period when our field work starts to get harder, because we can only travel with a 4×4 car. But it is also a wonderful period for Pantanal and the animals that live here, because the drought of the last months also brought the wildfires.
This is Vandir Fernandes, 52 years old, the field technician of the Blue Fronted Amazon Parrot Project. He has been working with the Project since it started, in 1997; and has participated on every single field trip. He has several qualities and is a good friend of everybody. He is well known in all the farms, as “Seu Vandir”. He does the entire “hard job”, like to carry the stairs, and also the “risky job”, as go up to the parrot’s nests to monitor the eggs, or stay on a branch of a tree in a river’ margin. To have access to the parrot’s nests in the trees is several times necessary to use of rappel technique or stairs (used when the tree is dead).
He also helps on the training of extern college students, who have a lot to learn with his experience. He is always present when we try to aware children and “Pantaneiros” (people who live in Pantanal).
Glaucia Seixas began her career at a Wild Animal Rehabilitation Center, which every year receives, rehabilitees and find a destiny for hundreds of nestlings of Blue-fronted Parrot (Amazona aestiva). These birds are captured from their nests at Pantanal, Brazil for supply the national and international illegal animal trade. Concerned with the parrots, Glaucia Seixas begun your work for the species’ conservation on 1997, called “BLUE-FRONTED PARROT PROJECT”. Since then, Since 2004 she has dedicated herself exclusively for the BLUE-FRONTED PARROT PROJECT, trough a non-governmental organization, the Fundacao Neotropica do Brasil.
Gláucia conducts research and conservation to raise awareness and to protect the Blue-fronted Parrot (Amazona aestiva) which is threatened by the illegal capture of this parrot from their natural habitat.
This Project started in 1997 and the first results, referring to the survival rates of the rehabilitated and restocked young that were monitored by radio telemetry and direct observation, were published in 2000 at the Brazilian Ornithology Society Journal.
The increase in body weight and of the length of the wings of 86 wild nestlings and 123 captivity nestlings from the Wild Animals Rehabilitation Center (CRAS) were registered from 1997 to 1999. These results were published in 2003 at the Ornitologia Neotropical (14:295-305). The general objective of this study is to obtain, register and make available information about the Blue Fronted Amazon Parrot environmental requirements at Pantanal, Brazil, to propose conservation action for this specie. For that, the specific objectives are: CONSERVATION OUTCOMES EXPECTED FROM THIS PROJECT |
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