Bird Watching Prospects in
the Amazon Rainforest by Rick Chapo
Once you catch bird watching
fever, the completion of your life list will become a dream. In that dream,
there is little doubt that you will see the famous Amazon Rainforest.
Bird Watching Prospects
in the Amazon Rainforest
Encompassing about 1,500
species in the land where the world's second longest river flows, the Amazon
Rainforest is a unique birding habitat. This region of South America from
the Peruvian Andes to the South Atlantic in Brazil is known as Amazonia.
The Amazon River and shoreline
is a major destination for bird watchers with 4,000 miles of shoreline.
It is estimated that about 15 percent of all known bird species in the
world have their habitat here, which represents only 4 percent of the planet's
land surface.
The Amazon Rainforest is
a 7 million km square (1.2 billion acres) moist broad leaf forest from
9 nations, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname,
French Guiana and Brazil, the country which encompasses 60 percent of the
Amazon rainforest. The range of nations and the characteristics of the
forest contribute to making this region home of the world's tiniest hummingbirds.
The area includes such rare species as the hoatzin, toucan, and the umbrella
bird.
Amazonia forest also represents
over half of the planet's remaining rainforests, one of the few areas where
bird watchers can find such life list necessities as exotic parrots, umbrella
birds and trogons. The high diversity of Amazon species includes resident
species, wintering in, migrating birds, or just passing though the region.
Few of the species are found
throughout the vast rainforest. Instead, each has particular habitats in
particular areas. Species at the base of the Andes are far different than
those found closer to the vast Amazon River basin. In short, one has to
have a thorough knowledge of specific species before simply heading down
to South America on a birding expedition.
The Amazon Rainforest represents
one of the last great ecological environments on our planet. Alas, humanity
is encroaching on it every day, slashing and burning acre after acre. While
it is nice to imagine this destruction will soon stop, it is best to pursue
any birding trip in the next ten years or so. After all, the planet is
changing and they think there may be trees growing on Antarctica in the
next hundred years or so!
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