Pink dolphins

Over 30 years ago I travelled in Peru from Iquitos on the Amazon River down into the Ucayali River.

A walk in the Amazon can often fail to produce many wildlife sightings, as the creatures are shy and their numbers are diluted over the vast expanse of the rainforest. But wildlife comes into the villages. Pets were here made of a White-winged Parakeet (Brotogeris versicolurus)...

...and an injured Ocelot (Leopardus pardalis).

A female yellow-footed Tortoise (Chelonoides denticulatus) was brought in for dinner.

The eggs were separated from the flesh before cooking.

It's plastron now graces one of my book shelves.

Nothing washes tortoise down better than a Cristal beer. 

The trick is to drink enough to have the courage to climb trees, but not so much as to see pink dolphins.

Canoeing alone along small river tributaries in the calm of the evening is a joy.

I took to fishing - but stopped when this piranha took a large chunk out of a finger.

I still bear the scar.

One evening I heard the ripple of water and felt the boat move as something large passed underneath. Ahead of me it surfaced. It was a Pink Dolphin (Inia geoffrensis).

Resplendence

In my working days, I ran a project on bananas in Costa Rica. That gave me the great opportunity to go up into a Central American cloud forest and photograph this bird: the Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno). It nests in a hole in an old tree, like a woodpecker. It is truly resplendent.

In Guatemala it is held in such high esteem that it is on the national flag...

...and is the name of the national currency.

A Welsh wizard in the Indian Ocean

Twenty years ago I went with my fiancée Marianne to the Mascarenes - three islands in the Indian Ocean, over 600 km east of Madagascar.

The closest to Madagascar is Réunion. It feels very volcanic, as it sits above a hotspot in the earth's crust - and yet feels very much a part of France, with baguettes readily available.

To the east of the island is the Piton de la Fournaise, an active volcano which rises to over 2,630 m above sea level.

To the west, around the dormant collapsed Piton des Neiges, the land has been colonized by lush forests.

Here the Red-legged Golden Orb-web Spider (Nephila inaurata) weaves its web.

I managed to see all the endemic land birds on the island except the local Cuckooshrike: the Réunion Bulbul (Hypsipetes borbonicus), Réunion Olive White-eye (Zosterops olivaceus), Réunion Grey White-eye (Zosterops borbonicus) and (below) the Réunion Stonechat (Saxicola tectes).

Flying 200 km further east we visited independent Mauritius. It is on the same volcanic hotspot as Réunion but has been long dormant, feeling worn down with no land above 900 m. It is surrounded by the world's third largest coral reef, and was once home to the now extinct Dodo.

The Guttural Toad (Sclerophrys gutturalis) has somehow made its way here from mainland Africa.

The islands of the Indian Ocean are home to the bright green, blue and red Phelsuma day geckos. Recent DNA work has shown that the ten or so species on the Mascarene islands have all evolved from one species which originally arrived from Madagascar.

On the tiny Ile Des Deux Cocos, just off the south-east coast, Sooty Terns (Sterna fuscata) rest on the beaches.

We were lucky enough to meet Carl Jones, the famed Welsh conservation biologist. He came to Mauritius in 1979 with the aim to save endemic birds from extinction. In the 1970s the number of Mauritian Kestrels (Falco punctatus) had dropped to only four - but now, after Carl's captive breeding programme, there are over 400 in the wild. Carl showed us around the program...

...but the highlight was a walk with him and his dog into the forest. He whistled, and a young kestrel flew out from the trees and perched above us. He removed a dead mouse from his pocket and asked Marianne to hold it in her outstretched hand - and the bird flew down and grabbed it from her grasp.

I'd heard that an old college friend and house mate of mine, Simon Fowler, was working at the conservation centre at the middle of the island - so I thought I'd surprise him. Unfortunately, when I arrived I was told he had just left to work in New Zealand. But his ex-colleagues kindly allowed me to go into the fenced conservation area, where the native forest is being protected from cutting and grazing. They left me for one hour alone by the feeders.

I watched as a Mauritius Parakeet (Psittacula echo) flew down from the top of a tall tree to within metres of me. It had declined to 10 individuals. A programme of nesting boxes and supplementary feeding has increased their number from 10 to around 650.

And then the spectacular Pink Pigeon (Nesoenas mayeri), a bird like no other, dropped down from the bushes. Also once down to 10 individuals, there are now over 400 on the island.

You can find out more about Carl Jones at this link:

https://www.durrell.org/wildlife/carl-jones/

Out birdwatching on the island I managed to see all the other endemic bird species except the local Fody: the Mauritius Bulbul (Hypsipetes olivaceus), Mauritius Cuckooshrike (Coracina typica), Mauritius Grey White-eye (Zosterops mauritianus) and Mauritius Olive White-eye (Zosterops chloronothus), 

Over 600 km to the east of Mauritius is the island of Rodrigues, the smallest island of the group at only 18 km by 7 km. I decided to take a solo trip there in a small plane, to look for the endemic species. Marianne, 7 months pregnant, wisely decided to remain on Mauritius - supporting her weight in the warm coral sea.

Rodrigues used to be the only home of a large flightless bird related to the Dodo, the Rodrigues Solitaire - but it was hunted to extinction by the end of the 18th century. It has been joined in extinction more recently by the two species of Rodrigues day geckos. I did see the two remaining endemic birds: the Rodrigues Fody (Foudia flavicans) and Rodrigues Warbler (Acrocephalus rodericanus). And it was a wonderful feeling to stand in a mosquito cloud, 1,500 km from the nearest large land mass of Madagascar, staring up at the huge hanging endemic fruit bats - Pteropus rodricensis. The hand of Carl Jones has also been here - their number having risen from 100 to 10,000.