The earthquake that hit coastal Ecuador a month ago was felt on a deep
level. The initial shock of being on the
third floor balcony of our house and watching transfixed as power poles swung
back and forth violently like a giant pulling on the attached cables was
quickly gotten over.
As the true magnitude of the earthquake became known I felt sadness on a
visceral level for all the people including friends and families of workers
that are suffering the consequences.
Like many people throughout Ecuador we quickly moved to make a
collection of funds, clothing, canned goods and especially water to take to the
families of staff near the city of Manta in nearby Manabí Province.
Another blow was felt as the situation was taken advantage of to
implement increased taxes, docking wages, etc. in so-called solidarity for the
affected communities.
With all this in mind, things began to take a rather bleak and dreary
appearance. Taking advantage of a
stunningly hot and sunny day and a break from the office, I set out to take a
walk into the Cerro Blanco Protected Forest.
As I walked, I searched out the trees that had been planted in tidy rows
along the sides of the trail, the trees still fully leafed out before the
oncoming seasonal drought causes them to drop their leaves and go into a period
of dormancy. The black clay soils are
beginning to crack from the dryness, a few weeks ago this was muddy from the
last rain showers.
I paused at the overlook with a view of the forest below me. A group of Groove-billed Anis Crotophaga sulcrostris called in some
nearby bushes and suddenly, one flew to towards me, landing in a flurry of
disheveled feathers almost at my feet and eyed me expectantly. I had no food on me that would attract the
bird and have never had anis be so bold before as the bird flew back to the
flock that moved on. I continued my walk
and less than 10 paces away suddenly saw a flash of white on the ground near
some totem poles a artist has installed to invoke the gods and deities of the
ancient indigenous inhabitants of this place.
A juvenile Gray-backed Hawk Leucopternis
occidentalis flew up quickly with something grasped in its talons to a
nearby tree. Without binoculars I could
not make out what exactly it had but it seemed to be a large ameiva lizard. With a ruffling of its feathers it began to
pluck at its prey clenched in its talons.
In the same spot a few days earlier I had remarked to a student that it’s
been awhile since I have seen any Gray-backed Hawks. These beautiful raptors, gray above and white
below are apparently endemic to Ecuador.
A friend, Hernan Vargas had done his Master´s thesis on the species
focusing on Cerro Blanco and the Buenaventura cloud forest to the south of us
now protected as a nature reserve by the Jocotoco Foundation.
Gray-backed Hawks as I explained to the student are most commonly seen
flying over the wooded ravines loudly calling where they establish territories
and nest. Hernan had discovered a hawk
nest near the final bridge in the Quebrada Canoa or Canoa Ravine and had set up
a blind near the nest and with the help of our park guards, monitored the
nest. Hernan decided to climb up to the
nest to weigh the single laid egg and unfortunately fell. The bushes along the edge of the ravine
padded his fall. A few feet further and
he would have hit rock and the consequences much worse. In any case, I was given a scare as we hauled
Hernan out to a hospital where X rays confirmed nothing broken, but he suffered
some nasty bruises.
Since Herman’s pioneering study, we have tried repeatedly over the years
with different donors to obtain funding for a comprehensive study of the Gray-backed
Hawks in the Cordillera Chongon Colonche, but so far no one has shown
interest. We offer our park guards a
small economic incentive to find hawk nests, which we register with GPS
coordinates. The hawk chick featured at
the beginning of this blog entry was recorded with a park guard´s cell phone,
citizen science in action. Gray-backed
Hawks have been labeled ¨chicken hawks¨ and are often killed although my own
experience with raising chickens in the forest has shown that Collared Forest
Falcons Micrastur semitorquatus avidly
hunt chickens.
Funding failures aside, the sight of that young hawk, globally listed as
an endangered species, gave me hope that despite all the negativities that have
been thrown our way recently, Cerro Blanco is here to dazzle and amaze those of
us who are awake and watching.
Fundacion Pro
Bosque with the project "Restoration of dry forest in the Cerro Blanco
Protected Forest" won the prize in
the category ¨Forests and Flora¨ on August 25th in the Green Latin
America Prizes held in Guayaquil. A total of 1,407 projects were
submitted from twenty five countries including Costa Rica and the USA. Of
these, 500 projects were selected to be presented at the awards which was held
over three days and included conferences and other activities via posters and
oral presentations. Of the 500 projects thirty were selected as
finalists, three from each category. There were a total of 57 projects
submitted in our category and the three finalists included other projects from
Colombia and Peru. 
