Yeray Seminario

Namaste!

The Asian Vultures Crisis, as it came to be known, is one of the most compelling stories in wildlife conservation. Vultures in South Asia were dying off by the thousands and entire populations were plummeting. Finally, it was proven that a drug called Diclofenac, widely used to treat cattle and other livestock at the end of the last century, was inadvertently causing the death of these vultures. The Peregrine Fund solved the mystery and now the drug is banned in India, Nepal and Pakistan. To this day, The Peregrine Fund keeps monitoring the vulture populations in India.

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Find more articles about Aplomado Falcon, California Condor, Egyptian Vulture, Long-billed Vulture, Pallas's Fish Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, Asia-Pacific

I still don’t understand how some of the places we visit once and again in Belize, are not more popular and better known to the average tourist. In this globalized, fast communicating, social network world, we receive on our backlit screens, the very same pictures taken from millions of different people - the same picture, the same landscape, the same feature time after time. It seems we tend to replicate that mental image, that stereotypic picture, that for some reason has captivated our collective imagination. Thousand Foot Falls or King Vulture Falls in Belize, could easily fit in this category of iconic images, as an example of real wilderness and pristine paradise.

Maybe coincidentally or maybe not, these are probably the two best spots in the world to see the Orange-breasted Falcon. Many birders come to the Mountain Pine Ridge in Belize just to see the falcons, but in doing so, they find themselves in some beautiful and unique scenery, which makes their sighting much more valuable than the simple act of adding another species to their life list.

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The Las Cuevas Research Station is located in the heart of the Chiquibul National Park, the largest reserve in all of Belize. That is where I met up with Chapal – a local guide who would accompany me for the next few days during our trip to Nak Chen (which means “large hole” in Mayan). Nak Chen is one of the largest sinkholes in the area. We located it during an over flight conducted last year. From the air, these sinkholes appear enormous, and seem to be the perfect spot in which to find the rare Orange-breasted Falcon, our real motive for hiking into the deepest parts of the Chiquibul.

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Find more articles about Orange-breasted Falcon, Neotropics

Four days ago, one of the Orange-breasted Falcon’s (OBF) released in Belize gave us a gratifying surprise. The female called AB, 108 days old, captured her first avian prey.

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Find more articles about Orange-breasted Falcon, Neotropics