This coqui ate so many flying termites that he could not eat any more

Today, the Rio Abajo Forest, in Puerto Rico, we had the first really good rain of the rainy season.  More than an inch of rain fell on the forest.  I knew that this would stimulate the local termites into making their nuptial flight.  I turned off all the lights in the house and left only the light of the terrace on.   I sat by the light and waited.  Al 7:30 pm the first termites showed up.  This coqui, which was hiding in a bromeliad near my terrace, quickly jumped near the light and started feasting on the termites.  It ate so many of them that it got to the point that it could not eat any more.  I scooped him up with my finger to take a photo.  I was surprisingly docile considering that normally they don't allow themselves to be picked up.  It stayed on my finger for a few moments and then jumped on the camera.  I gently put him into a bromeliad leaf.

Anolis curvieri eating a tarantula

In January of 2013, I noticed that there was a large lizard eating, with some difficulty, a tarantula it had caught.  Apparently, this normally canopy dwelling animal, saw the tarantula in the ground and decided that it was just a too tempting a prey to pass up.  I was able to take a number of photos before it headed back up to the canopy.  The color of this particular animal is unusual as it is rare to see brown adult individuals, it is even rarer that this form is photographed.  The normal color for adults of this species is green, inmature individuals are brown.  Note the very long tail, more than twice as long as the whole body.

Puerto Rican parrots, Amazona vittata, in captivity feeding on Sierra palm (Prestoea montana) fruits.

Brian Ramos, Piel Jonas Banchs, Ana Estrella, Jong Piel Banchs

Planting sierra palm

Although the diet the parrots receive in captivity is designed to furnish all their nutritional needs, from time to time we add seeds, fruits and leaves gathered from the forest to the parrot's food.  These foods collected from the wild fulfill an important role in the wellbeing of the parrots in captivity. 

Wild collected fruits, seeds, and leaves play a role as environmental enrichment for the birds in captivity, as they offer the opportunity to manipulate and feed on food that is different in size, shape and texture from the standard captive pellet diet.   Because we put the whole inflorescence with the fruits inside the cage, the birds get to interact with the food in a way that is similar with what would happen in the wild.  In simpler terms, environmental enrichment is a way of saying these food help relieve the boredom of the parrots.

Puerto Rican parrots relish eating the fruits of various species of palms.  Although sierra palm is a favorite, they also eat royal palm (Roystonea borinquena) and corozo palm (Attalea aculeata).  In the El Yunque forest the puerto rican parrots favor the sierra palm to the point that it is said that its breeding season is influenced by the availability of sierra palm seeds. 

The staff of the Puerto Rican parrot project collects these wild fruits from the forest around the aviary.  This means that when the birds are released they are quite familiar with the foods available in the forest.  In the Rio Abajo forest, sierra palm Prestonea montana is an uncommon plant we don’t feed the birds with them frequently.  In place of sierra palm we feed the birds royal palm fruits.

Aside from caring for the birds in captivity and monitoring the birds in the wild, the puerto rican parrot project staff works in a variety of endeavors of which the general public is generally not aware, one of these is improving the habitat by planting a variety of trees the parrot use as food. In the past decade the aviary staff has planted, among others, hundreds of seedlings of sierra palm, corozo palm and even the endemic manaca palms (Calyptronomas rivalis), in the aviary and nearby areas.

A Puerto Rican parrot, Amazona vittata, feeding on the fruit of the guava tree Psidium guajava

Those that keep Amazons in captivity are quite familiar with the messy feeding habits of these birds.  It is not rare for an Amazon to take a tiny bite of a piece of fruit and then drop the rest on the floor of the cage.    The birds behave the same way in the wild.  However sometimes, if the mood strikes them, these birds will take a piece of food and manipulate it with surprising delicacy and dexterity.

Some years ago I was able to photograph a Puerto Rican parrot in the wild eating a fruit from a guava tree Psidium guajaba.  Holding the fruit firmly with one leg, the parrot first cut a groove around the middle of the fruit to expose the pulp.  Then it proceeded to consume the fruit slowly and deliberately.  After it had finished the top half it ate the bottom half.   The fact that nothing disturbed this bird during its feeding bout is probably the reason that it ate almost all the fruit.  Birds that feel even slightly alarmed will immediately drop any food they are eating.

Wlid guava Psidium guajava, is a common tree in the Rio Abajo forest, particularly in disturbed areas.  When the local trees are fruiting, the Rio Abajo staff sometimes collects the fruit and gives it to the captive birds.  The captive birds not only relish the fruits but will also eat the leaves and sometimes will also strip the bark of branches after all the fruits and leaves have been eaten.

Puertorican parrots eating west indian tree fern stems

The Puerto Rican parrot (Amazona vittata) is known to eat the leaves, fruits or seeds of more than forty species of plants.  In the Rio Abajo forest the parrots sometimes consume the stems of the fronds of the tree ferns of the genus Cyathea.   The effect of the parrots’ activity is to completely defoliate the ferns.  The parrots consume all stems, from very young ones that are starting to unfurl to the oldest ones.    The ferns eventually produce new leaves and recuperate fully from the parrots foraging activities.    The birds don’t eat the whole frond, just parts of the stems.    I find the fact that the parrots were using the tree fern stems as food remarkable given that the birds that have been  released into the wild since the reintroduction program began were given a wide variety of wild leaves, fruits and seeds before the release, but not tree fern fronds.