The latest news (30/03/2015 – 28/04/2015)

General info

The rainy season seems to drag on. During those last weeks we still had to endure some storms events, which caused a branch to crash down on one of the solar panels next to the office.

Monkeys

On the 12th of April we received a massive arrival of animals, mainly birds (she further) and a young male tamarin monkey which we named Kiru (meaning for gold). He is in a small cage in the office where he receives strawberry milk five times a day as well as some fruit. He asks for a lot of attention and loves jumping on people’s shoulder.
Since the 25th of April, he shares his cage with the young Leo, a squirrel monkey brought by Elena from Bello Horizonte where he was someone’s pet.
They both seem to get along pretty well.
We still receive regularly visits of the wild groups of squirrel monkeys and wild tamarins which come to share some fruit with the resident monkeys from time to time.
Mica (female capuchin) and Louie (young male squirrel monkey) like to hang out on top of one of the cages or in the trees accompanied by the three woolly monkeys and sometimes Shambito (young male tamarin), which spend now all his time outside.

Willow the male woolly monkey still tries by every means to catch people’s attention and now Nagoya (female woolly) seems to follow his path by trying to interact more and more with the volunteers.

Nikita, the young capuchin female, still receives milk three times per day, but seems to become more and more independent.
Camila, our female squirrel monkey, has had several episodes of what seems like epileptic attacks. She had a bad fall from a tree once. We closed her in for observation, but after 1,5 week without any sign of an attack, we let her go. She gets crazy in a cage, so we decided to take the risk, but are keeping a close eye on her. The last episode was almost a month ago.

Birds

At the end of March, the Esperanza Verde family welcomed a young male toucan, Tupak. He was handed over to Olivia by a woman in Curimana. He stays in the cage near Douwe and Olivia’s house (the release cage for parakeets) where he can enjoy a some space. He is a very greedy bird, always waiting for a new plate with fresh papayas and other fruit.

On the 12th of April 280 parakeets (all white-winged parakeets) and 4 oranged winged amazon parrots arrived. They were all confiscate in transport, going from Pucallpa direction Lima. The ministry of Fauna and Flora brought them all to us.
Most of the birds were in more or less a good shape (meaning better than the last time!).  Although all had part of their feathers pulled out, the good thing is that most have newly growing feathers and will be able to fly again in some months. They are pretty wild, in behavior, so we have high hopes for their release.
We had to make important arrangements among the cages and, unfortunately, had no other options than to put a large amount of birds in each cage.
We expected some deaths in the first week-maybe weeks, as often these animals have been lacking proper food and care for some time. And yes almost every day we found some, but now after 1,5 week it seems to have stopped. So far we have 24 parakeets died and 1 amazon parrot. We hope we have the situation under control now, as having such full cages does not give the best conditions to feed them and provide them with proper medicine.

But with all the extra care of our volunteers, feeding 3 times a day, in the beginning even 4 times and giving them enough leaves in the cages they seem to have calmed down.
Over in the Aviary, the birds have now the company of Pichu (white-eyed parakeet). He was for some time with the parakeets in the release cage, till they (as they could fly) left and Pichu was on his own. Pichu seems to adapt properly to his new environment and his new friends. Unfortunately Ruiz (the green winged macaw) started to pull his feathers out again. but he seems to befriend some of the other macaws now so we hope he will stop again.

Residents

The five tortoises (Momo and Co), which are still separated for iodine cleaning in order to avoid further fungus problems, are almost cured.
Splinter the Mata-Mata turtle had some nails and shell damages because of his pond made of cement. As there is no release site in this area, we decided to move him to the reptilepond of the reptile cage (at the moment our peccary Quintisha is also in there). That way he has more space and more chances of getting his own food.

Construction

Thanks to the large rains of those last days, the high river and some strong arms, an important amount of material (mainly bricks, large pieces of wood and metal sheets) could find its way to the clinic building area. It took some time, as the road from Curimana to Bello Horizonte was closed for big trucks, as a bridge was about to fall apart.
Now the pillars are supporting the roof and only fresh cement is missing in order to carry on the construction of the clinic.
The stone project (providing all paths with stones) is still going on, but some of the freshly built pathways have been drowned by the heavy rains of those last days. Anyway, volunteers keep working on their maintenance and hopefully the dry season will finally show up and keep everyone safe from the muddy and slippery pathways.
A newly handmade sign with Esperanza Verde is now welcoming the visitors at the port.

Volunteers

In the current of April, we went from a totally full guesthouse to a half empty due to the leaving of five of the volunteers at the same time.
Despites this massive departure the house is still full of positive energy and the ‘late’ evenings around a nice fire camp are getting more and more common.