How to Study Birds in Lima
Para la version de este post en español, visita Limanatural.
1. Plan to spend ample time in the car. In other words, you will be a radio expert: Radio Mágica, Radio Oasis, and Radio Oxígeno have the least commercials, but sometimes your field team (Igor Lazo and Joaquín Grández) will just need to scream the words to reggaeton classics on Radio La Zona, Radio Onda Cero, and Radio Moda. You’ll be confused at the English versions of these songs on Radio Planeta, and you’ll all dance to cumbia and salsa on Radio La Karibeña, Radio La Kalle, and Radio Nueva Q. One Sunday, you’ll spend 30 minutes listening to Radio Filarmonía thinking it’s special programming. Then you’ll realize it’s classical all the time. You’ll know how to avoid Phillip Butters, so as to not induce more road rage, and, even while maneuvering traffic, you’ll switch away from Radio Romantica in order to stave off boredom. By the end of your field season, you’ll be intimately acquainted with Lima’s road design issues, thegratuitous use of the claxón, and the guilt of using a car when there are already too many on the roads.
“Despacito” by Luis Fonsi became our anthem, and here Joaquín tries out his recorder skills as accompaniment. I promise that he became better at it. Video by Igor Lazo.
2. Get better at communication. For so many reasons, you will have to learn to explain what you’re doing. I’m observing birds in Lima to answer questions about urbanization, yet I’m used to talking about these questions as “diversity” questions. A simple switch-a-roo on focus and people stop responding with “Why don’t you go to Pantanos de Villa? Don’t you know there are more birds there?” I do know that. But Pantanos de Villa isn’t urban and its diversity is determined by its habitat type (wetland) and its proximity to the ocean. It doesn’t answer my questions about birds in urban environments. Your field team though will continue asking why we don’t go to Pantanos de Villa, because they’ll want to see more species. To them, you should compromise and go to some “natural” area, because you might come across something totally unexpected.
We went to the Cascajo Wetlands where we saw this Magnificent Frigatebird (Fregata magnificens), a bird known to occur in Northern Peru, but not around Lima. We believe it wandered southwards due to the unusual torrential rains in its distribution. Photo by Igor Lazo.
3. Ask questions together. In order to replicate sampling points for questions about intra-city diversity, you’ll go to the same places over and over again. You’ll start to notice weird patterns that don’t relate directly to your research question. Keep these in mind and ask about them, their answers might be inspiring. For example, we kept seeing all these filled plastic water bottles on the roofs of houses and wondering casually between the three of us what they could possibly be for. Finally, Igor asked his cousin why, and she said that the bottles kept pigeons away. Had we not continued to point this out to each other, we might have forgotten this observation. Had we not been three people, the probability that one of us knew someone who had an insight on this question would have been lower. Now, I’m sitting here wondering, does that work?* (Another potential research question!)
4. Keep your eyes (and ears) open and don’t un-see (un-hear) the nature around us. If we go strictly by the numbers, Lima is basically just as species-rich as its agricultural/rural matrix. During our time sampling, we found 42 species (anecdotally, up to 45) in the city, and 44 outside the city. The compositions of these communities are different. I haven’t done the analysis yet, but my impression is that the community in Lima is much more dominated by birds that have come to the city through the pet trade (f. ex., Sicalis flaveola) or colonization (f. ex. Columba livia), while rural areas are pretty much dominated by jumping, squeaking Volatinia jacarina, with other species saying, “what’s up” every so often. But now that I’m done with this section of my fieldwork, it’s easy to go back to seeing Lima as an impenetrable slab of concrete, devoid of any life. Resist this urge – remember that Lima is actually an urban jungle, where its “trees” might be made of brick and metal, but birds still use them as homes. Bike around Lima: when you hear a small chirp, think Sicalis; when you think you hear a violin in a garden, think Thraupis; and when you hear a kwaaak, think Psittacara.
If you’re interested in more information about urban ecology and conservation in Lima, please visit the website Limanatural.
* Armando Valdés-Velásquez says these bottles could be SODIS bottles. This is definitely a possibility, but again, thank goodness we’re communicating as a group to gain more information!
