Cotinga Search: Page Two

Stuart Pimm
for national Geographic News

February 27, 2004

Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm is a member of the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration (CRE). An accomplished scientist, teacher, and author—and a passionate birder—Pimm recently traveled to Brazil to meet up with a National Geographic expedition in search of a rare bird, the grey-winged cotinga. This is the second page of his account from the frontlines of conservation.

<< Page One: How the Expedition Came About

Friday, December 5, 2003: We lunch improbably in a luxurious home on the Fazenda Itatiba high in a valley a few miles from our intended camp. "It won't be like this when we get to camp!" we joke with the fazenda's administrator, Argélio.

The helicopter cannot carry everything we need in one trip, but will ferry the team and equipment in short trips between the fazenda and the camp.

We've hired a private company this time. I just wish its pilot wasn't wearing shiny black shoes, pressed black trousers and a white, starched shirt with epaulettes that vaguely suggest a naval uniform. I fly on helicopter surveys across the world each year. Most pilots wear fatigues or tattered shorts, repudiate fashion, and have flight helmets that sport small insignia that hint of a previous life ("Da Nang", for example) that one never brings up in conversation.

There's a break in the clouds and I'm off. Knowing the risks, I ensure that my tent, pack, water bottle, and the remains of last night's pizza are with me. As we cross into the next valley, the clouds break. Over the landing spot, it's bright sunshine. The pilot doesn't land and circles around. I jab my finger energetically at the flat area of grass and smooth rocks on which we had landed in August.

As we land, I know from experience that he should keep the engine running, holding the helicopter under power in case it slips. He reduces power and I prepare to get out. He signals me to stay inside the helicopter. OK, I understand that rule: he wants to shut down completely. Hell no, he then gets out.

If wind tips the helicopter, the still-rotating blades will hit the ground and the resulting shrapnel will turn me into hamburger. I get out, grab my gear and move well away from the helicopter. I notice I've a companion, a worker from the fazenda. In a minute, the pilot is off.

Fifteen minutes later, he's back in our valley, but isn't coming this way. He lands a mile or more below us in a depression. We wave. We strip off our shirts and wave them. Through the binoculars, I watch Alline and Maria Alice unload gear and the helicopter leaves. We will never see it again.

A silence descends. I slap on the sunscreen I had the good sense to pack. My companion calls Maria Alice on our radio. "I told at the pilot it wasn't the right place, but he said your site was not safe," she tells me. "So, why didn't he then come to fetch us?" I ask.

"I screamed at him that he had to. He ignored me and left," Maria Alice said. "Well," I reply, "you have too much stuff to walk up to us, we'll have to come to you." "Your companion is called Gilmar," Maria Alice tells me. He wasn't expecting to stay and has nothing but the clothes he's wearing.

Between us, we can just manage to pick everything up. It takes us three hours to reach Maria Alice and Alline. By that time, the sun has turned to rain and we're sodden. The route is partly a bog filled with tussock grass six feet (two meters) tall. A few yards takes us five minutes—and another five to get our breath back.

We head for a low forest, only to find it's a tangled thicket of bushes and bamboo. The only practical solution is to park the gear and cut a trail with the machete, then come back for the gear, and repeat the process. We'll have to make "the hole" our camp and explore from there. It would take three trips to get to our planned destination with all our gear—at best, a long and exhausting day.

Maria Alice has already set up our mist nets. The nets catch small birds as they fly between the trees. My job is to listen for the grey-winged cotinga, to play a tape of its song to entice it to respond, and to record songs of birds we do not recognize.

We set up tents in the rain, glad we have a third for Gilmar. The final insult is the gas stove doesn't work. As one attaches the burner, it's supposed to puncture the canister through a rubber seal. It doesn't. The prospect of cold food for two days sinks in. Out comes a pocketknife, we puncture the canister, and screw on the burner quickly before all the gas escapes. Hot noodles taste so good in the field.

Saturday, December 6 starts cold and misty, then variously fogs, drizzles, sheets, spots, torrents, and all the other forms of rain for which we Britons have so many names. We band birds and listen for songs. Gilmar cuts a trail up the hillside to our north—the direction of "home," the fazenda. "Just in case something goes wrong," we tell ourselves.

What I hear on the trail is not encouraging. Scientists know almost nothing about the grey-winged cotinga. It's supposed to live just below the tree line—just where we are. It's the other fact that worries me. The bird is supposed to occupy forest at a higher elevation than its closest relative, the black and gold cotinga.

The gold cotinga's song is one of the extraordinary sounds of the Brazilian mountains—a pure whistle several seconds long, that rises mid-point to half a note higher. The altimeter says we should be too high for it. It's so common here that the overlapping whistles create a continuous dissonance.

I return to camp, soaked. As evening draws in, we're all too cold to eat outside, so we eat inside my tent. Dinner is a protracted affair, hot noodles, soup, trail bars, nuts, chocolate, dry fruit, hot chocolate to drink. We're all in our sleeping bags to keep warm, our wet clothes piled up around us. Tomorrow night we'll be warm again, back at the fazenda in the next valley, where the owner's generosity has extended to a night at his house.

Sunday, December y: I have never learned to love the sensation of getting out of a toasty, dry sleeping bag, and pulling on cold, damp rain gear, soaked socks and boots. It's raining; I will be wetter yet within minutes. Only hard work will generate the body heat to warm the cold clothes.

By 1 p.m., we're hearing our helicopter every 15 minutes, or at least think we are. None appears.

We have no radio and cell phone connections in the "hole". Gilmar takes a radio and cell phone and heads up his rough trail. After an hour, from his perch above the forest, he can reach us by radio and the outside world by cell phone.

The pilot is still at home. That means at least an hour to get to the helicopter in the Rio de Janeiro traffic, longer still to reach us. "I was expecting you to call me," he tells us.

Maria Alice is furious, for we all know how clear her instructions had been and the impossibility of us calling him from where he left us. "Come in under the clouds and head up the valley from the southwest," I ask Maria Alice to tell Gilmar to tell the pilot. The valley floor is still clear and the clouds above it are showing patches of blue sky. "If you can't make it today, come first thing tomorrow."

The pilot has abandoned us in a terrible place, one from which we cannot call the outside. There's no reason why he shouldn't have been here.

If the pilot doesn't arrive in the morning, it will be a disaster. Even if we can walk out, we'll have to abandon all our gear and will be lucky to carry out our cameras and sound recording equipment. At some later date, we'll need to come back by helicopter to recover it. This could delay the expedition for days, even weeks. "What do I tell National Geographic?" Maria Alice worries. It could be a lot worse: we have food.

Monday, December 8, morning: We pack for the hike out and by 9 a.m. are on our way. My tent is left up, with our gear packed as neatly as we can inside it. When we reclaim all that we must now leave, we want to be able to load it quickly. The rain has eased a bit.

The way out is simple and daunting. We know where we are and where we want to be—to the nearest yard from our GPS. It's not far—a few miles—it's just that there is a very large mountain in the way. We must go around it. Is to the left or the right better?

Gilmar has told us the bad news: the forest has bamboo thickets, but above the tree line is worse. There are open areas, but they are bare granite on slopes too steep to climb. We also know that the fazenda's elevation is 1,500 feet (450 meters) below our camp. Climbing up the mountain between us will be hard, but also mean that we'll have to climb down those 1,500 feet—plus every extra foot we climb up along the way. Accidents are more likely going down than going up.

By lunchtime, we're back in camp, wet, muddy from boots to hat, and smelling of rotten vegetation. After a thousand-foot (300-meter) climb, we get radio and phone reception. We call the pilot, who incredibly thinks that we were going to call him to let him know when to come. He flew from Rio the previous afternoon, but gone to a town ten miles (16 kilometers) away and found it to be in the clouds. That really angers us. We'll get a bill for a thousand dollars for a trip that didn't come close to us at a time when the weather was good in our valley.

We also reach Argélio at the fazenda by radio—and that's the important news. He's coming to find us and he's not coming the short way. He's coming up a different valley, though quite how and where is beyond me. Something about a tractor, I'm told.

One thing we have learned: there are no grey-winged cotingas here. We hiked to the tree line this morning, but all we've heard were black and golds.

Page Three: Rescue >>