A baby puertorican boa startles and delights

This baby Puertorican boa surprised, startled and delighted the personnel of the Puertorican Parrot project by spending the day wrapped around the rails of one of the paths in the aviary.  It was quite festy and would try to bite if someone got too close.  It provided me with a rare occasion to use my 100mm macro lens on an animal.  After I took a number of photos gently but firmly, I coaxed the snake to leave the rail and to move to the vegetation.  The little snake eventually slithered down the rail and moved away.  I did this at night fall so that it would not fall prey to daytime predators.

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.

Some comments on the changes in brightness of certain colors of the tail feathers of the Puerto Rican parrot as you look at them from different perspectives.

top view

Reverse view

Side angle view

front angle view

Of all the species in the psittacine genus Amazona, the puertorican parrot, Amazona vittata is the least colorful.¹  Aside from a limited amount of red in the forehead, and the white skin patches around the eye, the rest of the body is covered with green feathers.  On a perching PR parrot there is little color besides green to be seen, the turquoise and black of the wings, the blue, red and yellow areas on the tail are all kept well hidden.  The reason for such lack of color is probably the need to be as cryptic as possible to avoid attracting the attention of predators.

The PR parrot brightest colors are in the forehead and in the tail feathers.   The red band in the forehead varies widely in width, length and shape.  Generally males have a wider red band than females, but not always.  Perhaps the best example of the variability of the forehead color in the species is the pair of PR parrots currently on exhibition on the Juan A. Rivero Zoo at Mayaguez. The male has a single tiny red feather in his forehead, the female has a red band wider and larger than almost all females, so one on first sight could easily be fooled into thinking she is the male and vise versa.

Very few people are familiar with the color in the tail feathers of the PR parrots.  The reason is that because they can only be sighted when the parrots fan their tails, a normally brief occurrence, they are essentially invisible to the casual observer.     But even if an observer happened to be at the right place and time to see a bird with its tail fanned, from a distance the colors are barely visible and unremarkable when compared even with even modestly colorful species, such as the hispaniolan amazon (Amazona ventralis).

In the aviary the birds interact in many ways during the day.  Some of these interactions involve body language, on occasions this includes tail fanning which is normally accompanied by vocalizations and sometimes bowing and wing cupping.   The birds can do these displays as parts of being aggressive and also for other reasons which are not necessarily so easy to discern.   Except when we are selecting breeding pairs from the flock, or are concerned about a bird being bullied, we don’t pay much attention to these displays. 

About a decade ago, when I was standing next to her breeding cage, a female known as Ann, did a bowing and tail fanning display standing in front of me on the wire floor of the cage,  very close to my face, this is, to this day, an uncommon event (by the way, Ann and her mate, Pepe, used to be among the tamest and sweetest birds in the aviary, but as they grew older they became more and more intolerant of people around their breeding cage, now as they are getting close to the two decade mark in their lives, when breeding, they are hideously aggressive and among the most fierce of our pairs, but I digress).

When this event happened, it was morning and sunlight was coming from my back and hitting the parrot head on.  When Ann did her display, for a brief moment, her green color became brighter the way a mirror becomes brighter when the sun hits it at just the right angle.  I was intrigued by this but given that I had many other concerns at the time, filed it in the back of my mind for future reference.  Early this year I found some a shed tail feather and decided to photograph it to record how light reflected from it.

The feathers that are the last ones at the sides of the tail are different from the other tail feather and any other feather.  They are asymmetrical and one of their sides is blue.  I found that the blue of these feathers changes in brightness and you look at it from different perspectives.  If you look at the feather from an angle of 90 degrees from top looking down at the top side, the color is not particularly bright.  But as one changes the perspective, the blue becomes brighter and brighter as one approaches the horizontal plane.  If one looks at the feather in the orientation that it would have if a parrot was displaying standing in front of you the blue becomes almost mirror-like in its brightness.  You can see how the blue changes in the photos.  

What is the meaning of this change of color?  The birds have a different color perception system than us, with four receptor cell types.   Personally, I don’t know how the eyes the parrot’s perceives the changes in color that my mammal brain reports to me.   My own guess would be that if the feathers undergo changes in color and brightness as a result of the birds fanning and bowing, it may be that those changes play a role in courting displays, alternatively it also could be important in aggressive interactions.   It has been shown that budgerigar females favor males whose face feathers display fluorescence.²   For the moment, from a strictly scientific point of view, I can’t say with any certainty what the brightness changes means for the parrots.   For all I know it could be an artifact of perspective or of my own perception.   Nevertheless I find it an intriguing phenomenon. I don’t foresee the program exploring this matter as we have worked hard to keep our birds from getting imprinted with humans and breeding pairs are not fond of either people or photographic cameras.

¹Low, R. 1984. Endangered parrots

²Proc Biol Sci. 2001 Nov 7;268(1482):2273-9.

Ultraviolet vision, fluorescence and mate choice in a parrot, the budgerigar Melopsittacus undulatus.

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.    

Festival de las Mascaras de Hatillo, an overwhelming experience for the senses..

In some jurisdiction using this type of noise cannon against rioters is considered cruel and inhumane

The floats have to pass through this without any police help

Two young men on the prowl amply armed with shaving cream 

Females feing disinterest in the male antics, this makes them display with increased fervor

What better to way to impress young females than being dragged behind a float , what could go wrong?

Some of the floats are so crowded that an Indian train raider would quail at the idea of getting on them

There is a bottle of either maple syrup or chocolate in the hand of the man in the left

Beer, beer, everywhere...

Burning rubber,

WTF???

A jester's cap

A Native American themed float named "cats"

A these bullhorns are capable of a weapon of mass destruction level of sound production

A puerto rican themed costume with a Santa Claus cap

Dolphins and Nepturne

A cream smeared branch can add a distinctive look

You can notice earplugs in the driver and in some of the riders

This young man was sitting in front of a power array of bullhorns hopefully he won't have tinnitus for the rest of his life

The Golden Calf and Moses 

In Puerto Rico there are many traditional activities during the Christmas period.  Among the most distinctive is the Festival de las Mascaras de Hatillo.  To say it is distinctive is an understatement, it is an truly unique sense overwhelming experience that is not for the faint hearted or those with delicate sensibilities.   Although the origin of the activity is rooted on the remembrance of the biblical history about children killed by Herod the Great in Bethlehem, the activity in its present form shows little that is recognizable of the traditional history.  Because of my training in biology to me the Mascaras festival resembles a huge bird lek.

The lek behavior in birds is a form of cooperative mating display.  In a lek the males display in a group for the females.   In the Mascaras Festival males (and rarely females) form groups that dress in a particular distinctive manner and that ride into the festival in one or more floats decorated in bright often clashing colors.   The most eye catching the float and dresses and the louder the color the better.  Such things as thematic coherence and symbolic unity are disregarded with gleeful enthusiasm.  Sometimes the males play wrestle and end up on the ground but none of the encounters I saw were anything but playful and good natured.

But the bright colors are just part of the experience of the Mascaras, sound is another sense shattering element of the activity.  The level of sound when you are in the thick of the float train is truly unbelievable and it can be fully capable of inflicting permanent nerve damage if you are in front of some of the floats.  I was unfortunate enough to wander in front of one of the floats that had a large array of bullhorns when the float let go with a sound blast.  I am not a particularly nervous person but the sound blast almost made me jump out of my skin.  I had the foresight to put on carefully fitted ear plugs but even then the sheer power of the sound made every air space in my body vibrate in a nauseating manner.  I guess this taught me quite vividly how the floats are able to make their way through the thick of the throng of revelers.

The sense of smell has to deal with an assortment of pungent smells that range from oil and gasoline to burned rubber, shaving cream and sweat.  If it rains lightly the heat makes the area even more fragrant.  Beer and other alcoholic beverages are everywhere and are consumed in quantity with unwonted gusto.

Another noteworthy characteristic is that the participant in the floats play “pranks” on the public, and by the public I mean any shapely female that might catch their fancy.  Usually this means spraying the females with shaving cream but I have seen the young men use chocolate, maple syrup and ketchup.  Ketchup seems to be reserved mostly for use on males.   Most young females don’t seem to mind too much and I had the weird feeling that not having a speck of shaving cream to show for the assistance to the activity was far worse than being smeared with it.

For anyone that might want to assist to this activity I have some advice.  If you want to photograph the floats and the costumed people you have to do it before they wade into the throng.  You need to be nimble on your feet and be alert at all times to avoid being hit by the floats, motorcycles, 4-tracks, bicycles and other assorted vehicles that mix on the road and in an unpredictable manner.  Avoid drinking beer and take small sips of water, you will notice that port-a-potties are not conspicuously present in the photos.  Avoid clusters of young people (especially those with many young women) or you will become collateral damage when the shaving cream, or perhaps even less savory fluids, starts spurting.

Every year Las Mascaras festival reports dozens of minor accidents and people slightly hurt.  I suspect this is an understatement.  So if you want to participate please be forewarned it is a pretty intensive experience that is not for everyone taste.  Personally I found the experience amazing and a photographer’s feast, but one that can be really challenging.

Some happy splattered revelers