Amazonian Expeditions OR Why I could never be a biologist

Journey of the Pink Dolphins - Sy Montgomery
A Parrot without a Name - Don Stap

At one point in Sy Montgomery’s expedition in the Amazon it seems as if every other hut on the river is inhabited by a grad student. Scary. Some tag turtles, some count fish, some get bored out of their mind and others get sick (has a ring to it, doesn’t it?).

Montgomery’s journey to find the Amazonian pink dolphins was not ‘scientific’ but rather a voyage lead by the imagination and emotion. That’s what makes her book so appealing even though, the pink dolphin itself, is so often elusive. After all, as the author says in the book (in a passage, I can’t for the life of me find right now): “to follow” doesn’t only mean to pursue in a linear fashion; it also means “to be guided by”, “to grasp the meaning”, “to engage”, “to take as model”. Her pursuit of these primitive dolphins is more telepathic and poetic. When the author borrows radio antennae to track dolphins that have been tagged, she comes up with nothing. Almost as if the animals were trying to tell her “that’s not the way to get in touch with us”. Yet her dreams are filled with dolphins. When she finally gets a chance to swim with them – to engage them on their own terms, on their own realm, that’s when a real interspecies conversation takes place. This is a beautiful book for all who dream of following their own familiar – a journey mapped by little else than a humble intuition of an ancient bond.

“A Parrot without a Name” also speaks of something ancient: human obsession with naming, cataloguing and “understanding”. That which is unnamed is nonexistent. Surely some Greek philosopher said something along those lines. Just as the verb “to follow” has many meanings so too does “to understand”. In a biology dictionary, though, I’m afraid it mostly means “to take apart in order to catalogue and name” rather than the actual meaning of “to have sympathy or tolerance”.

For those of us ignorant of what goes on in an actual ornithological expedition (to Peru near the Brazilian border) these days, this will be something of a shocker. Yup, they kill birds. Loads of birds. Scientists will set up mist nets (the kind I grew up watching in nature documentaries as being the fare of evil bird smugglers) to catch birds, including many that may not be of interest in that particular case. If they are of interest, the scientist will perform a maneuver called “squeezing” where force is applied by the fingers to the bird’s thorax until he stops breathing. If the specimen is large a pentobarbital shot is given. They also shoot them right from the trees. Since the obvious purpose is to conserve plumage and shape (although sometimes also internal organs), ornithologists will have to kill numerous birds, since some are damaged by the bird shot.

Author Don Stap makes a proficient enunciation of all the reasons killing birds is important to science. Guess what? I didn’t think even one was reasonable. And the way he felt compelled to go through them, tells me he probably wasn’t either. Anyways, the holy grail of ornithologists today is to discover a new species (yup, that’ll really make you a superstar, apparently). But to get your discovery approved by the scientific establishment (who resemble Kang & Kodos, or so I’m told) you Must Bring Proof. Dead Proof. Many Dead.

Stap followed an expedition in 1985 that hit the mother load: on his last day on camp, someone shot a couple of small green birds, that didn’t exactly fit any of the described species of the area. They ended up shooting 18 birds. In 1991 the Amazonian Parrotlet (Nannopsittaca dachilleae) finally became a recognized species. It’s such a rare species that for awhile it was believed they had gone extinct. But what the hell – there are 18 specimens stacked up in a university somewhere.
We can all breathe a sigh of relief. Where would we be without Science after all?

My advice? Take a picture. Seeing as museum specimens are taken care of, it will definitely last longer.

Mira Tweti - "Of Parrots and People"

Of Parrots and People - The Sometimes Funny, Always Fascinating, and Often Catastrophic Collision of Two Intelligent Species
Mira Tweti

This is a wonderful book for anyone who is interested in parrots – their future as wild animals and pets.

Mira Tweti is a journalist and her straight-to-the-point style is very readable. “Of Parrots and People” is filled with testimonials from all sorts of people: ornithologists, conservationists, pet owners, people who run bird rescues, even people who (used to) trap parrots for a living, as well fact and figure research on the issues of conservation and the pet business.
There is much here to make the reader cringe and all the more so if you happen to keep birds. Make no mistake about it, Tweti’s final position is radical. As she urges in her conclusion:
“don’t buy wild animals as pets, whether they are caught from the wild or bred in captivity.”

and

“It is pitiful that our society still condones keeping millions of parrots and other wild birds as pets – wild animals that should be free to fly and instead are languishing in cages, with more being bred every day. It’s an issue of supply and demand and it’s also an issue of right and wrong. Animals suffer in confinement, and we have a moral obligation to spare them from needless suffering.”

But even bird owners must take pause reading these sentences in the last page of the book. Because by page 300 you will have been told countless tales of neglect, abandonment, parrot mills (as in puppy mills and just as inhumane), smuggling, illegal trapping, mega-pet store’s cruel policies regarding birds, and also of a few selfless individuals who have basically stopped having any semblance of a normal life and turned their homes into bird rescues.

The American bird breeding lobby is portrayed as little more than a ruthless crime syndicate. These are people who apparently have no qualms at physically threatening those (and their birds) who speak out against the cruel line breeding operations destined at churning baby birds out like hot cakes, while breeding parents languish in dark, filthy cages for decades, only to be put down when their good years are gone. If you even hint at pet bird overpopulation – these guys will descend upon you like a pack of vultures. Truly scary.

Still more incomprehensible is the fact that, despite the staggering numbers of birds being bred for the pet trade, despite the numbers of bird rescues filled to maximum capacity, parrots are still being hunted down in their native lands and smuggled across borders.

Surprisingly (or not) it was Mira Tweti's love for her pet parrot ( a lorikeet) that got her curious about the lives of these intelligent birds in our midst and the politics and money trail behind them. What she found, travelling around the USA to bird rescues, finding birds in appalling conditions in Mexican pet stores and being sold out of car trunks, and visiting the dwindling numbers of macaws in their Brazilian habitat, made her stay up at night. I have had some nightmares while reading this book and I can't even imagine some of the things she witnessed.

Yet I believe anyone who cares about birds should read "Of Parrots and People". It's an up-to-date, behind the scenes, look at the current situation, that reads like a great piece of investigative journalism.

“Of Parrots and people” is also serious food for thought. It reminds every well-meaning bird keeper that this is a multi-million dollar business – and that the people cashing in will keep assuring everyone that their baby parrots are bred in “loving homes” and that “there are plenty more where these came from”. And while Tweti’s overall argument is slanted towards big birds with big life spans (that will more often than not survive their owners) such as macaws, african grey parrots and amazons, those of us keeping budgerigars or even canaries are not left off the hook. If birds evolved over millions of years to fly, flock and breed at their will, even a pair of tiny zebra finches in a big cage are, for all purposes, living an unnatural life.

That humans have always been fascinated by birds is a well established fact. That we snatch them from their families, clip their wings and stick them in cages because we love them and find them beautiful – even as they disappear in the wild – says more about human kind than about birds.

Clara, Zamba & Sharon

"Clara's Grand Tour - travels with a rhinoceros in eighteenth century Europe" - Glynys Ridley
"Zamba - the true story of the greatest lion that ever lived" - Ralph Helfer
"The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw - one woman's fight to save the world's most beautiful bird" - Bruce Barcott

“Clara’s Grand Tour” suffers from the plight of the history writer: lack of personal documentation.

It’s all very well to know the baby rhino was bought by a Dutch sail man and brought home to the Dutch Republic and to have some documentation proving her appearance in public in the European Continent, some references in letters or books about her passage and many famous paintings. But at the end of the day Glynys Ridley had to base Clara’s story on very little hard evidence and the reader will surely feel it.

For starters there are many “he must have thought/remembered/planned” sort of constructions that merely highlight the fact that we don’t know what happened. We don’t know for sure Clara was transported by water in some portions of her journey (though Ridley makes a good argument), we don’t know for sure all the places she might have travelled to, or how many made up her entourage, and what kind of difficulties beset her path. If Michael Allin, author of “Zarafa” was able to draw on the extensive correspondence between Ètienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and the Mayor of Marseilles as the giraffe made her way to Paris, Douwemout Van der Meer, the Dutch who bought the rhino was obviously not the journal keeping or letter writing sort and it’s a darn pity. I mean, really, if you’re going to bring home an animal no-one’s ever seen and parade it across the land, isn’t the least you could do to drop a few lines about the whole thing? Maybe it’s the lack of documentation but Van der Meer struck me as a cold fish. I figure if he truly loved Clara he would have written a book about her.

Like Ralph Helfer did, about his beloved lion Zamba. “The true story of the greatest lion that ever lived” might be pegged as a light read (a weekend or long afternoon will definitely kill the beast) if it wasn’t for the fact that you keep getting a headache from all the moments when you hold back the tears.



Helfer was one of those little boys who dreamt of having a lion (they are not the stuff of fiction; I live with one; a grown up one) but he actually made good on his dream. And after his absolute nightmare of a childhood he deserved it. An entrepreneurial young man if there ever was one, he started his animal rental business/ pet store barely out of high-school, and pretty soon got his own ranch where he amassed hundreds of animals used on Hollywood productions.

One day he got a call and a few weeks later a crate: inside was a lion cub that would become the most accomplished show-piece of his ground-breaking “affection training”. Zamba would be able to play with children and lay among lambs but his most incredible trait was the deep friendship (for there is no other name for it) he formed with Helfer in the 18 years he lived. In those years I think they must have been apart few times.

More and more I am awe of people who can have such a bond with wild animals. Our domesticated animals are awesome of course, but, like ourselves they have strayed a little from the deep voice of Nature. A wild animal magnifies that sound within us with every breath.

Of course, if we keep going this way we might just eradicate most wild animals in a few centuries (certainly we seem to be on the way to killing off every large predator around). “The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw” documents what happens when a woman stands up between profit and nature. It isn’t pretty.

Bruce Barcott’s book is a gem and I hope he gets some sort of award (or several). In his real life “Pelican Brief” he tells the story of a corrupt government (in Belize) a greedy Canadian company (Fortis) and the outsider: Sharon Matola an American who arrived in the country in the eighties, and despite having built single handedly its first zoo is still about a hundred years short of being considered anything other than an outsider. Especially when she starts meddling with a proposed dam, to be built on the last nesting site of the endangered scarlet macaw.

Look, I’m not even giving you a summary. Everyone should read this to understand what greedy corporations and governments are doing everywhere: destroying the environment for a quick buck. Oh, and be particularly suspicious when they start shouting “public interest!” because in most cases, such as this one, the general public reaps absolutely no reward. Only a tax hike and more poverty.

Barcott doen’st just stick to the story at hand but digresses into nearby themes which is the way I like it. I know I got a much needed lesson on the workings, history and pros and cons of dams. We should all be more educated about this stuff. So go ahead and read it. I’d be absolutely shocked if you didn’t love it. But be prepared: you will get very, very angry.

A slight detour

The Parrot Who Owns Me – Joanna Burger
The Philosopher and the Wolf – Mark Rowlands

I got slightly off track with these too, but I could hardly help myself. When “The Parrot Who Owns Me” arrived I just had to start immediately, and then it seemed natural to read “The Philosopher and the Wolf” right after.

Actually, the two books have a lot more in common than I could have guessed: both tell of strong relationships with wild animals kept as pets; both writers are academicians (Burger an ornithologist, Rowlands a philosopher) and both found their theoretical work very much influenced and changed through the vicissitudes of sharing their days with a parrot and a wolf.

Large parrots and wolves (the latter much more so, of course) are unusual pets and with good reason. Most people are simply not able to accommodate the needs of such animals, nor are they willing to. The result where vanity and stubbornness persist, are bald parrots who pick their own feathers out frustration and boredom, and big, aggressive dogs tied away in backyards.

Rather, as both authors soon discover it is you who must provide the company for your wild pet, sacrificing many things as you go along. Rowlands turns himself into a marathoner in order to keep Brenin, the wolf, satisfied in terms of exercise and stimulation, while Burger has to warn hapless dinner guests not to open the fridge if they want to avoid the attack of Tiko, the parrot. (Only she was allowed to open the fridge).

In fact, the bite of Tiko the amazon parrot, though infrequent is painful and scarring. Everything must be negotiated, and the amazon can never be pushed, only persuaded. And yet what clearly shines through Joanna Burger’s book is the absolute joy, the privilege of being trusted, respected and loved by such a magnificent wild animal.

For the privilege of Tiko’s affection the scientist must cut frequent research trips to a minimum absence of three weeks (the amazon will get aggressive with the sitter after that time), forfeit any other animals in the house (as Hester the chicken found out, Tiko will not stand any rivals around), and curb any demonstrations of affection from her husband (they send Tiko into a jealous rage). On the other hand observing his behavior sends Burger’s research into new and exciting paths, into vigilance, mating rituals and habitat conservation.

The saddest thing about large parrots, to my mind, is how they generally outlive their owners (they can live into their seventies). As the book closes, Tiko is approaching fifty and still fit as a fiddle (Tiko had been previously owned by two elderly sisters). Can parrots understand death?

And can we? That is more the type of question Mark Rowlands poses himself in “The Philosopher and the Wolf”. Professional deformation, and all that, but it’s understandable since after all, it was Brenin who turned Rowlands into a published author. Sort of.

I loved Brenin’s story as will anyone with a love of animals, Rowlands tone however, is another story. I nearly fell off my chair laughing when by page 85, he states “If people don’t think of me as arrogant – perhaps they do – that’s only because I’m good at hiding it.” Weeelll, have I got news for you…!

Brenin was a big teddy bear who quickly grew into a big, nice wolf. However, since he could not be left alone for more than a minute (his powers of house wrecking were truly prodigious), Rowlands soon begun to take him everywhere with him, including university lecture halls and rugby matches. Slowly it was Brenin’s company (although I would argue it was also the author’s move from rowdy, happy-go-lucky Alabama to sullen Ireland, plus the six months mandatory quarantine for Brenin) turned him into something of a misanthrope, ergo, a prolific philosophy writer.

I disagreed with a lot in this book, but hey, philosophy as far as I can understand it (not much taking from my grades in high-school) is nothing but a matter of opinion and of how elegantly or forcefully you can state your theory. There is no scientific method to it, at least not when you’re talking life, love and death. Rowlands has this whole theory about how apes are deceitful, ungraceful and simply mean creatures and that we as their descendants are just about the same, no matter how much we try to hide it. Wolves on the other hand are loyal, graceful and know no fear – they are pure.

Yes, I can just about hear Konrad Lorenz’s applause coming from the hell to which are consigned scientists who jumped on the nazi bandwagon. He too preferred dogs with wolf blood because they were braver (you meant more Aryan didn’t you, you old coot?) while the dogs descending from coyotes were submissive, even false.

As shamanic and spiritual as it is to equate certain qualities or defects with certain animals I don’t think it stands any real chance as serious theory, philosophical or otherwise (A great book on the subject is Boria Sax’s “Animals in the Third Reich”). Anyone who lives closely with animals knows that personality is an important factor.

If animals are not just archetypes who can only live fulfilling lives by living exactly as they have always done; if, on the contrary they can adapt and enjoy new experiences, including sharing their lives with respectful humans, as Rowlands states, and I agree, then it hardly seems possible to ascribe to them an immutable nature or temperament.

I did enjoy his discussion on evil, which ran closely with my own opinions, but I really wish he didn’t take so much pleasure in frightening dog owners with Brenin off leash all the time.

Both are great books on animals. I preferred Burger’s because right now birds and parrots are more fascinating to me than wolves, but also because the steady drip of hemingway-like machismo (now there’s a guy that should have owned a wolf…) was a bit tiresome in Rowland’s (though I did feel like crying in the end which means…that I’m a submissive, morally bankrupt ape, I guess).

If I wanted to get all philosophical I’d say this: while Rowlands takes pride in the way he successfully trained Brenin to walk in our world, Burger takes pride in the way Tiko allowed her to enter his world. And that, friends, to quote one of our great simian poets, made all the difference.

Joanna Burger & Tiko

Mark Rowlands & Brenin

Julian Barnes - Flaubert's Parrot and The Pedant in the Kitchen

Since “An Expert in Murder” is turning out to be a disappointment I stopped reading it and picked up Julian Barnes’ “Flaubert’s Parrot” (1984) and liked it so much I immediately started “The Pedant in the Kitchen” (2003) which I just finished.

“Parrot” and “pedant” are two very different books – the first a novel that, until about half way through reads like pure non-fiction, and the second a collection of columns on food, cooking, recipe books etc.

“Parrot” delves into the life of Flaubert in various ways as our protagonist attempts to solve a biographical puzzle: which one of two surviving stuffed Amazon parrots is the actual one which sat at Flaubert’s desk while he wrote “Un coeur simple”?

A bit pedantic, do you think? To spend so much time around a tiny bit of trivia regarding a book not even considered one of the author’s most important? But then Barnes is a self-proclaimed pedant – in the kitchen and elsewhere.

“Pedant” is much lighter and funnier in tone – maybe because as Flaubert himself affirmed each subject calls for a specific style – and makes much of the ways in which cookbooks toy with our amateur aspirations, providing unrealistic photos, vague quantities and plain crazy instructions.