Birding Without Borders

by Noah Strycker

  No wonder most birders who visit this spot opt to hike the last five miles, I thought—but I couldn’t have done that. It wouldn’t have left enough time to come up here.

  “Well, I guess we’ll look for it on the way down,” Gunnar said, scratching his head. “And we can push the van out of the mud later, when it gets light. Let’s go for the birds first.”

  Without much discussion, the three of us grabbed our binoculars for the short walk up to the forest. Suddenly, I was glad for the early wakeup: we still had to find this tanager, get the van unstuck, and drive back down the mountain in time to catch an afternoon flight from Huánuco. Thanks to Gunnar’s unwillingness to sleep past 2:30, we still had plenty of time.

  Golden-backed Mountain-Tanagers have been seen in only a couple of places in central Peru, where the species is restricted to high elevations in the eastern Cordillera. Even apart from its rarity, the bird is a real stunner: vivid yellow and black, with a shining blue cap and fine reddish streaks. Locals call it the Ave de Oro—literally, the Golden Bird—and, given a good view, you can’t mistake one for anything else. Not many birders have had the chance because it lives in such remote terrain, and I was one of these lucky few.

  The Golden-backed Mountain-Tanager also has an interesting history. The first person to describe one for science was the legendary Neotropical bird expert Ted Parker, who is widely regarded to have known more bird vocalizations than any other human (he died in 1993 in Ecuador, in a plane crash, during a bird survey). Parker’s report of finding the bird, on his very first trip to South America, was published decades later from handwritten notes, and it’s a gripping account of hiking up this same mountain with camping gear. It took him three days to see it, upon which he wrote, “In the early morning light its intense golds, blues, and velvety black colors against the lichen-covered limbs melted in to create a memory that will always be with me.” This discovery was one of Parker’s first and most lasting ornithological achievements.

  Here, I was walking in Parker’s footsteps. As Gunnar, Glenn, and I hiked up to 11,500 feet in the cloud forest, my body sensed the thin air; a cool mist rose, and birds started to become active with daylight.

  Gradually, our list of sightings grew. A hummingbird called a Blue-mantled Thornbill, flashing its iridescent green and purple gorget, buzzed around some low vegetation next to the trail. Brown-backed Chat-Tyrants, little bigger than poofy Ping-Pong balls, called noisily from exposed perches, and Gunnar spotted a lethargic Barred Fruiteater, patterned in dark shades of green and black, sitting inconspicuously in the canopy. Then a fast-moving flock of small birds swept through, and the pace picked up: Pearled Treerunners and noisy Citrine Warblers joined a brilliant Yellow-scarfed Tanager, endemic to Peru. I almost missed a couple of tiny, drab, brown birds skulking in the undergrowth—the enigmatic Pardusco, a super-local species, known only from these highlands, classified in its own genus.

  All of it was marvelous—the fresh air, new birds, beautiful landscape. Even if we didn’t find the marquis mountain-tanager, just being in this place was worth the hassle. On top of the eastern Cordillera, in the mists of the cloud forest, the bustle of Peru’s chaotic cities felt very far away.

  The trail crested a ridge and dipped down the other side, plunging into a steep set of switchbacks. Gunnar bushwhacked confidently across a meadow to stay high, traversing at right angles to the trail, until we reached an isolated stand of gnarled, wind-sculpted trees. The vegetation here was stunted in the face of harsh elements, just above tree line—hence the name “elfin” forest. This was the realm of the Golden-backed Mountain-Tanager, and Gunnar, Glenn, and I settled in to wait.

  I was prepared for a long vigil, but this morning the birding gods decided otherwise. I’d been standing quietly for less than ten minutes, overlooking the patch of trees, when Gunnar whisper-shouted: “There, right below you! In the big tree at three o’clock!”

  Sure enough, something moved within the foliage and hopped into plain sight. Even with my naked eye, the black-and-yellow body was strikingly obvious, and through binoculars the view was simply magnificent: I could see the bird’s little blue cap and even the fine red streaks on its underparts as it foraged from limb to limb, at one point approaching close enough for a photo op. We watched for several minutes in complete silence, each enjoying the experience on his own terms. For me, the combination of rarity, good looks, inaccessibility, and beautiful surroundings would rate this Golden-backed Mountain-Tanager, species number 1,112, as one of the best sightings of the year.

  We lingered for a while, sifting through other birds in the area, before calling it a morning. As always, I could practically hear the clock ticking, and we had a long journey to reach Lima by evening. Someday, I thought, it would be nice to return here with a little more time to explore and relax—a feeling that was starting to seem familiar during my travels.

  Three weeks is a criminally short amount of time to spend birding in Peru, and this abbreviated timeframe meant that I was rushed at every stop, always running from one place to the next without any rest. Might as well get used to it. I still had to cover the northern part of the country, the Amazon, the white sand forests near Iquitos, and the southeast, not to mention the rest of South America and the wide world.

  First, though, our stuck van had to be extricated. When we walked out of the forest an hour later, Gunnar climbed confidently into the driver’s seat while Glenn and I positioned ourselves at the bumperless back end to push.

  “I hope this doesn’t spray mud all over us,” I said, “or we won’t be very popular when we get to the airport.”

  But when Gunnar turned the key, the engine wouldn’t start. He leaned out the window and smiled.

  “Guys, I think we have another dead battery!”

  Our van must have developed some kind of electrical problem that drained off the power. This was worrying, especially on a remote mountaintop.

  Then I walked around the passenger side and noticed something else: both right tires were flat! Rock punctures hissed from the front and back, and we had only one spare.

  “Uh,” I said, “I don’t think we’re driving out of here.”

  We stood for a moment and contemplated the situation: stuck in the mud with a missing bumper, a dead battery, and two flat tires, in the middle of nowhere, with a flight to catch in a couple of hours.

  What to do?

  “We start walking,” Gunnar said.

  The three of us gathered our things—I picked up my backpack, Glenn carried a more unwieldy suitcase, and Gunnar had two big bags, one in each hand—and started briskly hiking down the mountain, unsure what lay ahead.

  At least a few birds were around. We paused to admire a Many-striped Canastero singing from a tuft of grass, its streaky brown-and-white plumage blending in with the habitat. A little farther down, a Red-crested Cotinga watched us pass. But I was anxious; hiking all the way down this road would take all day if we couldn’t find help, and then we’d miss our flight out of Huánuco. All I could think about was the wasted hours, the missed flight, the lost birds.

  “Maybe we’ll find our bumper,” Glenn said.

  In the clear light of day, I could see just how rough this road was that we’d ascended in the dark; jagged rocks and potholes presented a fearsome surface even to walk on. We had been lucky to make it to the top and see the Golden-backed Mountain-Tanager before running into trouble.

  After a couple of miles with no signs of civilization, the three of us rounded a corner to discover about a dozen Quechua farmers sitting in the shade, eating potatoes for lunch. Most were kids, and they looked up with the expressions one might expect upon the sudden appearance of three gringos heading toward them with airport luggage—kind of like, say, a meteorite flying into their potato field.

  Gunnar didn’t miss a beat.

  “Hola,” he said, walking right into the group. “Alguien quiere una naranja?”

  He set down his bags and zipped one open to show that it was comple
tely stuffed with dozens of fresh, ripe oranges, and he started handing them out. The kids’ expressions changed from surprise to delight: it wasn’t a meteorite that had crashed into their midst, it was a fruit stand.

  “Gunnar, were you going to carry those oranges all the way down the mountain?” asked Glenn, looking incredulous.

  We had bought a large bag of them at a roadside stall a couple of days ago, and I’d been wondering what Gunnar meant to do with the fruit, as he had way too many for us to eat. They must have weighed twenty-five pounds.

  “You never know when a few oranges will come in handy!” said Gunnar, looking pleased.

  The farmers invited us to join them for lunch. We sat down and ate boiled potatoes and oranges while they stared at us, whispering to each other and giggling. I could imagine that this visit would provide entertainment long after we had gone. The potatoes were delicious.

  After a while, Gunnar explained our predicament and pointed to several dirt bikes parked nearby. Could we get a ride down the hill? This request sparked a fresh round of giggles, but soon enough three kids volunteered to take us far enough for a taxi transfer. Our bags were carefully tied to the dirt bikes and we climbed on, two to a saddle.

  My driver was a quiet seventeen-year-old named Rolando who had seven siblings and lived next to a potato field. I rode right behind him, crotch to crotch. On a dirt bike, there is no such thing as personal space—it was common in Peru to see four or five bodies zooming past on one motorcycle—and I wasn’t sure of the etiquette. Would it be weird if I clasped him around the waist, or should I rest my hands on his shoulders, or maybe try something else? In the end, I grabbed the seat on either side of my thighs and hung on tight, trying not to lean too far when we banked around corners.

  He politely asked why I was visiting the area and I tried to explain, in broken Spanish, that I was traveling around the world for an entire year just to look at birds. It’s a big project, I said, to set a world record. I love birds: me encantan los aves. Birds are amazing, I added, for clarity.

  Stone silence.

  Sometimes, and this seemed to be one of them, my adventure existed so far beyond the bounds of a person’s everyday life that it simply could not be comprehended. I ran into this reaction repeatedly, especially in very rural areas. A few weeks later in Guatemala, for instance, I tried the same explanation on a local indigenous girl and said that I’d started the year in Antarctica. After a few seconds, she replied, earnestly, “Is that in Guatemala City?” But this can happen anywhere, and it’s not always worth getting into the full story. Just before this Big Year, when I had my last haircut in the United States, at a regular salon on a Wednesday, the hairdresser asked brightly if I had the day off work. What should I say—that I was about to set off on an obsessive, forty-one-country world tour of birdwatching, hence the need to shave all extraneous hair? Sure, I replied. Just running a few errands.

  At the bottom of the mountain, we hopped off the bikes and said our muchas gracias while Gunnar tipped the kids a few Peruvian soles for their help. They buzzed off, looking happy to head home. Gunnar then ordered a taxi by cell phone, describing in detail which dirt road to take, and called some other poor soul to go deal with our injured, abandoned van. Soon enough we were on our way to the tiny Huánuco airport, with barely enough time to catch the afternoon flight back to Lima.

  When we finally arrived at the open-air check-in counter, tired and dusty and sweaty and hungry, there was some confusion. I couldn’t figure out why the ticket agent wouldn’t hand us our boarding passes; she talked too fast for me to catch the drift. It was only when Gunnar stepped in, with his usual calm in the face of trying circumstances, that I understood.

  “Our flight has been canceled,” he said. “The plane didn’t make it in today. We might as well have stayed on that mountain.”

  ✧-✧-✧

  Then I got sick.

  It happened a couple of days after our antics in the highlands. That canceled flight meant spending a night in a hotel without electricity, then a ten-hour drive to Lima the following day, where Glenn and I arrived at the Jorge Chávez International Airport exactly eighteen minutes before our connecting flight to Chiclayo took off. We sprinted through security and just made it, sinking low into our seats to avoid the glares of other passengers. Meanwhile, Gunnar stayed home in Lima, planning to fly up and join us the following day, and Carlos—the young Peruvian birder from Ticlio Pass—met Glenn and me when we landed up north.

  Here was the plan: Carlos, Glenn, and I would begin an ambitious west-to-east transect across northern Peru, a diverse region with several hundred possible bird species. Most organized birding trips dedicate about two weeks to this route, but we had scheduled just six days for the whole shebang, which gave little room for error. Gunnar would join us for some sections. We even had a driver, Julio Benites, who could handle the long days and cook meals in the field.

  I had visited this region once before, a few years earlier, so I knew many of the birds and places already—the first familiar ground since Argentina, weeks ago. My most-wanted bird here was the Marvelous Spatuletail, a spectacular hummingbird with peculiar tail streamers that is found only in one remote valley. I hoped to rack up a lot of species, as each day we’d be in completely new territory.

  Things started well. On the first day in northern Peru I added thirty-seven new species, including some nice “Tumbesian” birds native to the dry, coastal plain shared by Peru and Ecuador. At a place called Chaparrí Reserve, a community-run conservation project east of Chiclayo, local birder Juan Julca kindly pointed out Tumbes Sparrows, Tumbes Tyrants, and a dapper-looking Elegant Crescentchest skulking through the scrubby woodland. Then we stayed up after dark to search for Peruvian Screech-Owls and Scrub Nightjars by spotlight.

  That evening, though, it was difficult to write my daily blog entry—a task I never failed to do, no matter how long the day had been. “Edging on hallucinatory sleep deprivation,” I noted. “Maybe that will help me see more birds?”

  I’d now been in Peru for a full week and had averaged less than four hours of sleep each night, without any chance to catch up. Gunnar had driven us hard, wanting to reach every possible species in our allotted time. I appreciated the effort but wondered how long I could take this grueling schedule—it was physically wearing me down and I was having trouble concentrating. I was becoming a pro at power naps, even while sitting upright.

  The next day I hit the wall.

  It was probably inevitable. Carlos, Glenn, Julio, and I stopped at a place called Abra Porcuya for a picnic lunch, along a rural road with good access to foothill forest. All of a sudden, even though it was a warm, sunny day, I started shivering and couldn’t quit. My throat hurt, and I had the dizzy feeling that if I didn’t sit down, I’d vomit.

  Carlos spotted a bird called a Piura Chat-Tyrant and I lifted my binoculars, but my arms were shaky. I knelt down on the roadside and tried not to think about my queasy stomach.

  “I don’t think I can keep walking,” I mumbled.

  Glenn suggested we abort the afternoon’s plans and proceed straight into Jaén, the next town. At first I protested, but it was no use—my system had decided to force the issue, and now I had a fever. Julio pulled up the van, I climbed in and reclined my seat, and we drove onward in silence.

  It should have been a two-hour trip, but halfway to Jaén, traffic was backed up on the two-lane road, apparently because of an obstruction ahead. Julio didn’t hesitate: he pulled into the opposing lane and zoomed past more than a mile of parked cars until we reached the scene of an accident, where a bus had collided with a tractor on a blind curve.

  “I have a sick person and we are going to the hospital!” Julio yelled at the people directing traffic. (We were, in fact, going to a hotel.)

  When the flipped tractor was cleared, we rocketed ahead of the jam on a blessedly traffic-free road.

  In the next few miles, I couldn’t help but notice two large billboards placed by the Jaén
health ministry along the highway which said, in large letters, “Cuidado . . . ¡El Dengue es Mortal!”—“Be Careful, Dengue Fever Is Deadly!” The billboards featured a picture of a mosquito on a red drop of blood and were written in a dramatic font suitable for a horror movie.

  When you have just contracted a mysterious fever, signs like this are not encouraging. Sprawled in my seat, I wondered what I was in for. I hoped that it wasn’t dengue—which often manifests as severe joint pain, hence the disease’s nickname, “breakbone fever”—but it was too early to tell. Dengue fever is serious in tropical areas around the world, especially in South and Central America; hundreds of millions of people are infected with dengue by mosquitoes each year, and the incidence is growing, which is why even on the hottest, most humid days I covered myself in clothing that I had treated with mosquito-repelling pyrethrin.

  Dengue was just one of a suite of tropical diseases on my radar in 2015. Before leaving home, I had read up on all of them. Chikungunya, another mosquito-borne virus, first introduced to the Americas in 2013, had infected more than a million people in the Caribbean region by the end of 2014; like dengue, chikungunya usually presents a painful fever and has no specific treatment or vaccine. Malaria kills up to a million people each year, mostly in Africa, and I’d packed a supply of antimalarial pills that I would start taking each day later in the year to ward that off. Leishmaniasis is really creepy, caused by a flesh-eating parasite spread by sandflies, and I actually knew someone with a large, open wound to show for it. Chagas disease can lead to sudden heart failure ten to thirty years after being transmitted by the bite of a tiny, blood-sucking “kissing bug”; more than eight million people are probably infected with Chagas, though most Americans have never even heard of it. The West African Ebola outbreak of 2014–2015 had fewer than 30,000 total cases (and 12,000 deaths)—a blip by comparison—but I was worried about Ebola, too, as I was headed to the African continent in a few short months.