Part... it's anyone's guess now
San Pedro (Cock of the Rock Lodge)
The first day in San Pedro started poor but ended in pretty thrilling style, and so the next day we were out on the road before dawn. Brown Tinamou and Scaled Antpitta were calling in the bottom of the valley and a male Booted Racket-tail was a nice sunrise starter. But no sooner had the common birds come out to play when crack! and a tiny raptor smacked into a Siskin (presumably Olivaceous) before landing just above our heads, piercing the rigid corpse’s head and neck with its beautifully manicured talons. Tiny it was indeed, being a Tiny Hawk. It sat still just a couple of metres above our heads, presumably shocked at its own good fortune having secured something to eat so early in the day. This was to be the start of a curious plague of avian injuries and deaths throughout the day.
This section of the road was definitely subject to the dawn and dusk rule, with activity being lower between about 10am-4pm, something that didn’t seem quite so marked down in the lowlands. But even in the quiet moments you were still never long in waiting for your next new tick, and throughout the day we managed some superb birds, including Pearled Treerunner, Yellow-breasted Antwren, Streak-necked Flycatcher, Marble-faced Bristle -Tyrant (common), Bananaquit, Yellow-throated Bush-Tanager, Black-eared Hemispingus (no thanks to the field guide!) and regularly stumbling upon mixed Tanager flocks containing up to twelve different species.
Back at the lodge we were sat eating a late breakfast when there was another crack! There was no visible sign of feathered catastrophe, but as we were heading back out we noticed a shiny green thing crumpled on the floor by the big glass windows. Gutted! It was a male Booted Racket-tail, now a smashed up carcass awaiting removal by the local scavengers, the windows proving to be a death trap. I got up close to it, tears welling in my eyes (or maybe not), paying my final respects, when one of those horror film moments happened and the Racket-tail flipped onto its back and began writhing about trying to fly, stunned and not aware of the fact that it was upside down. It eventually flipped back onto its front and began a lethargic attempt at being a hummingbird again, soon managing to get itself back together and zooming off to assess exactly what had happened over the last five minutes. You shouldn’t laugh, but, well, I did.
Ticks had afflicted Miss Cole earlier in the trip, but so far I had thankfully remained a tick free zone. In fact, up until this very day my entire life had been one of tick free bliss. But if you are going to do something you may was well do it properly, so upon getting my first tick I decided to get one attached right on the very end of the bodily part not usually mentioned in polite company. And if that’s too vague then I had a tick on the end of my cock. It wasn’t a particularly great experience - strange that - and it had to be removed safely to avoid getting a todger infection if the head became detached and was left stuck in. Applying antispetic, I grabed the sh1t just by my todge skin with a pair of tweezers and then began to pull gently at the head, and after a few pulls it came free (oo-er!), its vicious, revolting jaws biting the air presumably hoping to clasp onto something else. It was crushed and flushed, and then I began an all over body check just incase anymore had worked their way onto me. No ticks, but there was a curious black mark in the back of my knee joint. The weak of stomach should probably avoid this next paragraph.
It basically looked like a scab, but I asked Miss Cole to check it wasn’t a tick, just in case. However, upon close inspection her face revealed that something was not good, and I mean really not good. “I hope they are your leg hairs,”she said, referring to the thin black strands that seemed to be matted into the scab. So did I. After dribbling on a bit of antispectic a wave of nausea overcame me as watched the strands start to wriggle. Oh f*ck! “Get it off,” I yelped, thrusting the tweezers at Miss Cole and she peeled the spider/mite type thing off my skin. What had happened was totally disgusting: it seems as though something had bitten me and left an open scab, which this spider/mite thing had taken a liking to. It was obviously so keen to gorge itself on the juices that it been completely unaware that a scab was forming over it and eventually became trapped inside the scab. There it continued to feast, eventually attaining quite an impressive size until it was peeled off, crushed and flushed.
Then, just to add one final insane twist to what was already straight out of the mind of William Burroughs, a Slate-throated Redstart plummeted past the window and slapped hard onto the floor outside our window, having hit the upstairs windows at some speed. Unfortunately the Redstart wasn’t as lucky as the Racket-tail.
Just after lunch history repeated itself, and another hummer suffered a window strike, and this time it was a great new tick: Green-fronted Lancebill! Thankfully it recovered.
Later that day we walked up to inspect the Cock-of-the-Rock lekking hides, just a short walk above San Pedro. Residents of CORL get to use the hides for free, but anyone can go in for just a couple of dollars. But there really is no need. We were able to watch them lekking above the hides themselves from the road, in fact you wouldn’t have even seen them from inside the hides. Just five or six metres away from us the males were bobbing and shuffling sideways along branches, as females and young males watched on from the sidelines. It was one of those phwoar! experiences, and something I’ll never forget.
On day three at San Pedro something went a bit wrong. Checking through my stuff I found some receipts and realised that we had to be in Cusco the next day to catch a bus to Arequipa. I’d booked the tickets and ballsed up the dates as we were supposed to be going higher up the Manu road tomorrow, but we would now have to catch the overnight Gallito de las Rocas bus back to Cusco. Therefore, this would tragically be our last day in Manu. And it was a fantastic end, with another great haul of birds, today’s new ticks being Golden-olive Woodpecker, Montane Woodcreeper, Monatne Foliage-gleaner, Golden-crowned Flycatcher and Russet-crowned Warbler. We also saw another Highland Motmot about 200m above San Pedro by an obvious rock fall, and we later discovered that this is a regular place.
The day came to a close stood on the roadside watching Chestnut-collared and White-collared Swifts en masse heading off to roost, as the sun set over the sharp ridges of the lower Andes to the sound of Chestnut-backed Antshrikes, Black Antbirds and a Cock-of-the-Rock, which unfortunately can only be described as sounding like someone vomiting whilst being violently beaten about the head with a brick.
They look a lot better than they sound.