BAHAMA PARROTS: BAHAMAS NATIONAL TRUST DOCUMENTARY

January 11, 2012 by Rolling Harbour

BNT ABACO / INAGUA PARROT DOCUMENTARY

In August 2011 the Bahamas National Trust published a documentary about the resident Abaco and Inagua populations of this Cuban Parrot subspecies. It features research scientist Caroline Stahala, and contains plenty of information about these birds, their nesting and breeding habits, and the problems they face from predation. In places, some of the devastation caused by the extensive forest fires in March 2011 is still evident (see images in earlier POST). If you want to know more about these attractive (but noisy) birds, the documentary video below covers a great deal in 8 minutes…

ABACO PARROTS NESTING – RARE VIDEO FOOTAGE

July 13, 2011 by Rolling Harbour

Click me!

ABACO PARROTS AND THEIR UNDERGROUND NEST

Exceptional and rare video footage of Abaco Parrots entering their underground nest, very kindly provided by Caroline Stahala for use in this blog. I don’t imagine many people have been lucky enough to see this sort of parrot activity in the wild, so it is great to be able to see it captured on video…

If the video above doesn’t work you can reach it another way: CLICK LINK—–>>>ABACO PARROTS NESTING

[At the moment the video is reachable by the link above. I’m working on embedding it, but there’s a technical hitch to sort out. It’s all geek to me. So I’m using something I’d never heard of until this morning called Dropshot, which at least lets you see the video… though I’ve got a feeling it entails having to have ‘friends’ and to end up involuntarily ‘following’ people like Britney Spears and some crazy guy called ‘iruletheworld’]

Many thanks for this great video, Caroline

ABACO BIRDING EXPEDITION WITH RICKY JOHNSON + CUBAN PARROTS

May 17, 2011 by Rolling Harbour

Ricky ushers us into his spacious, comfortable truck: 6 denizens of Delphi eager for adventure. Most have already been on a morning trip to see the Abaco Barbs (wild horses) of which more in a separate post. rollingharbour suffers from an unfortunate but mild form of equine indifference disorder, so gave it a miss.

We set off north on the highway, checking cameras, binoculars and other essential expeditionary impedimenta. Meanwhile, Ricky reveals his knowledge, experience and huge enthusiasm… this extends way, way beyond mere birds to the trees and plants, to poisons and herbal remedies, to geology and speleology, to geography and history. Soon we reach our destination, confident in Ricky’s renowned ability to know where the parrots (and many more birds besides) are to be found. We don’t have to wait very long – about two minutes after we turn off the highway, in fact… The parrots favour the Gumbo Limbo Tree (Bursera simaruba) as pictured, which invariably and most conveniently grows next to the Poisonwood tree (Metopium Toxiferum) and is its antidote. That’s the first place to look.

ABACO PARROTS (Amazona leucocephala bahamensis) Here is a selection of our photos of these fantastic birds. I hadn’t expected to see so many, for so long, and at such close quarters. Their colouring was extraordinarily vivid, with a slash of blue on the wings. This was especially dramatic in flight. One parrot, shown below, had red frontal markings that extended almost to its tail. Ricky hadn’t seen one like it before.

CLICK on the images to enlarge them significantly [Mrs rollingharbour reports that this is as yet a theory and may not work in practice]