Sunday afternoon

This is not far from home, about a 20 minute walk.

When I was a kid I loved to come here and see the ducks and geese. Most of the houses you see around were not there, so walking around the area was pretty cool.


I remember a bunch of all white geese and later on a flock of all brown ducks.

Yesterday, when we first got there, these were the only guys around. I like the different poses of the ducks.


Then I realized about that little 'patch' of bright colour feathers that these ones had on the sides/wings...


... purple...


... or blue!

Then, this guy saw me and decided it was a perfect moment to pose and wait for the-fat-girl-with-the-cam to finally!! take a picture...


... while this other one tried to keep a low profile and made me hide behind a bush to be able to get a close enough shot!


After a while, we saw this fellow... What happened to you???


By the time we had to leave, other odd looking duck-geese??? were arriving to the shore.


This is not what I remember from my childhood! Seems like someone's dad has been with the wrong mom! You know I have very little knowledge about this, so, if someone could explain or tell what these are, I would be very grateful :)


Lucky for us we had to leave, as these two didn't like to have their pics taken... 'What are YOU looking at?!!'

What's wrong with this picture?

I've been having odd encounters with trees lately... I took this pic of my love trying to figure out what exactly this was... tree growing through wall, wall 'growing' around tree, who knows...
Streets of San Isidro, Lima.

Just pics

Hello!

This week has been crazy! I've been to a few job interviews, classes, meetings and interviews for my thesis, lots and lots of reading and writing, and it's not over yet!

As I can't write much today, I decided to post the last of the Guayaquil pics, I'm not familiar with any of the bugs, dragonflies, moths, but will try to find out more about them later. Click on them to enlarge the pics, you know my camera is not the best (yeah yeah blame the camera... haha)

Hope you enjoy the pics, will have more time to post and keep up with blog reading this weekend.

Pirates and flowers

A pirate ship in Guayaquil? Well, kind of... It's supposed to be a replica of Henry Morgan's ship, and although the city was attacked by pirates in the past, Morgan was not one of the attackers!
We got in it at night, we watched the city at night from the Guayas river, there was an open bar and music... you know, the pirate's life, hahaha


Walking was great, we found many beautiful parks and gardens, huge colourful flowers or tiny and delicate, that made us feel so nice!


Some bugs were flying around or resting on leaves or flower petals... But those are for the next post ;)


Some of the flowers reminded me of my grandma's garden when I was a kid, good memories came back and made my smile even bigger...


... Until I felt someone was staring at me, I turned around and found no bird, no bug, no person, but this...


Can you see the face or is it just my paranoia??? hahaha

Happy Easter! ¡Felices Pascuas!

Do you celebrate it? How?

I thought I would celebrate my Easter with pics for my friends ;)

These were all taken at 'Parque Histórico', Guayaquil, on March 15th, 2008.

I would like to start with the first guy we found there, the local name is 'Canclón', but you might know it as Horned Screamer (Anhima Cornuta), although this bird is supose to be related to ducks, swans and geese, it does look like a big fat black turkey! It could weight up to 3.5 kg (aprox 7.7 lbs) and be up to 85 or 95 cm (aprox. 33-38 inches)

It has a long quill on its head, kind of going forward, which is one of the reason for the name of this species. projecting forward from the crown, which gives this species its name. It lives in well-vegetated marshes and feeds on water plants.

The one seen on this pic was hanging around with the ducks in a small pond, it was strange to see them together, it looks huge next to them!

Horned Screamer (Anhima Cornuta)

Our next friends were loud and colourful... Thanks to this pdf guide on neotropical birds I was able to id them. I hope I did it right! (I'll write first the local name)

This guy is a 'Lora harinosa' (Amazona Farinosa), most of the body is green and it grows up to 38 or 46 cms. Usually travels in groups.

Amazona Farinosa

These guys are smaller and have red on top of the beak, they are 'Loras frentirojas' (Amazona Autumnalis) and travel in small groups or alone.

Amazona Autumnalis

The next guy is a 'Lora Alibronceada' (Pionus Chalcopterus), it is smaller than the previous ones (28-30cm) and personally, is the one I liked the most! You can't see enough in the pic, but the colours were amazing!

Pionus Chalcopterus

This fellow was the loudest of them all, easiest to find, came very close to us! It is a 'Papagayo Azul-Amarillo' (Ara Ararauna), and it's a BIG bird! It grows up to 71-90cm, and if you consider the colours (once more not as bright as seen with the 'eye'), it is a pretty amazing view if you were looking for small hidden treasures and this apears in front of you!

Ara Ararauna

My last bird of this post wasn't free. It's part of a local project to help protect and reproduce this species. If you enlarge the pic by clicking on it you'll find the unmistakable shape of... Harpy Eagle (Harpia harpyja) or Águila Arpía in Spanish. This is a special treat for Markus at Birdingnet.com, who first told me about this species a couple of weeks ago! He sent me this link.

We took this pic from a very high tower and about 50 mts away, and even that far you could see a HUGE bird, too bad we couldn't see it flying free :(

Harpia harpyja

Six Word Memoir Meme

I was tagged by Birdfreak for this 6 word meme which has to describe your inner birder. I usually don't meme... I hope the 'victims' tagged here carry on with it :)

This is the result of mine:

Birds Plus Blogs Equals Fun Learning

To continue the fun, we must tag five others:

1. Birdingnet.com

2. Mon@rch's Nature Blog

3. Born Again Bird Watcher

4. Nature Knitter

5. Mary's View


The rules are:

1. Write your own six word memoir.

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.

4 .Tag five more blogs with links.

5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

Caminando por Guayaquil

Walking along Guayaquil parks we found a few birds. Most of them couldn't be pictured, they were either too far or too fast :(

Anyway, on this post I'll show you some of the guys we found, please click to enlarge the pics and sorry for the poor quality...

First one, this guy hiding in a HUGE ficus, grabbing a seed that he dropped later on...


... then he went seeking for more...



... he stopped right in front of us (we were on a bridge, trying to get as close as possible), and with our max possible zoom this is what we got...

We continued walking and found this other guy, some kind of heron? I have no idea, I'm such a begginer with just one small guide for my local city! hahaha... Totally clueless but hopefully not for long ;)


At the 'Parque Histórico' we found some colourful guys that will be posted soon. For now I'll leave you with these (also trying to id them!)


Most of this post's pics are kind of a 'Where's Waldo?' game, trying to find the bird or birds in a small bad pic (click to enlarge), like the following... Can you find the two birdies here?


This guy was huge! Couldn't get any closer pics, we were WAY DOWN in the ground, anyone can guess what it is??? HELP!


And finally these fellows, in the 'Jardines del Malecón' (Gardens of the Malecon)


See you in the next post! Have to go now, family is waiting to have lunch!

Iguana 'watching'... in a public plaza!

Hi there! Back in Lima now! My first post about the trip to Guayaquil has to do with a park in the middle of the city...

Parque Seminario, also known as 'Parque de las Iguanas' is a few metres across from Guayaquil's Cathedral.

It is a small park with a few trees and possibly a couple hundred of iguanas!


Some of them come down the trees at around noon and go back up when the sun sets...


They share the park with some birds, mostly pigeons, that look strange while walking around the iguanas... I think some pigeons might want to 'change flocks', as the long tailed fellows get more attention (and food) from the visitors.


All sizes and colours: from one to five feet long, from bright green to dark brown, they walk around, lay quiet on the stone paths or grass, climb up the trees...


They eat celery and lettuce that some people bring for them, a couple fight over the same piece making sounds and trying to bite each other...


After 'lunch' some of them go up again and stay on the branches above people's heads, we stood up in the sun, then saw a few iguanas on the top peeing!, quite funny to see people jumping around trying to avoid the 'attack'...


I hope you liked this post, we had a lot of fun watching these guys and some others that I'll upload and talk about in the following days :)