Life in tropical rainforests
Question Part 2. From four year old Benjamin, Dulverton, UK What sort of animals live in the rainforest? ANSWER: We can’t wait to be running through the Amazon tropical rainforest of Brazil and Bolivia. Tropical rainforests have the most different plants and animals of anywhere in the world. This is partly because all animals depend on green plants; which form the base of the food chain. The animals of the tropical rain forests live in a “giant natural green house”; it is very hot with lots of rain. Such an environment is perfect for plants to grow tall and large very quickly....
Read MoreAnimals of the temperate rainforest
Question. from four year old Benjamin, Dulverton, UK What sort of animals live in the rainforest? Answer A: Well we’re in temperate rainforest in Chile at the moment. It is like tropical rainforest, but a lot colder! So I’m tapping from the tent under some massive old southern beech trees wrapped in feather jackets! The animals we see here include the chucao- like a big, fat robin. I love this bird as he is very tame and often comes to see what David and I are doing. His voice is also incredibly loud, like a shot-gun, so we can tell when he is around. Other wildlife include the...
Read MoreWe can talk to birds, really!
Watch the 1 minute video below as I try it out – its true!! I had never though it would be possible to speak to a bird but wildlife legend Sir David Attenborough shows us what is possible on a short video clip at our friends at Conservacion Patagonica. With this fresh in my mind, whilst running with our trailer through a forested area of Southern Chile, we were interrupted by three Magellanic woodpeckers noisily passing through. Clutching two rocks I sunk to my ankles in the boggy forest and found a nice standing hollow trunk to tap. I thought I’d try what David showed me, and...
Read MoreCamouflage: The magical disappearing act of the least seedsnipe!
Key words: Camouflage, Pampas, Chile, Argentina, Least Seedsnipe Yesterday we were running through a very flat landscape of yellows, browns and dark greens. Tussocky spiky grasses and low thorny scrub stretched into the horizon with pebbles and boulders for miles. This is the Pampas- the grassland and shrubland of southern Chile and Argentina. A wild place at the bottom of the earth where the wind blows at hurricane force and snow and ice lingers for months. You wouldn’t think that very much could live here would you- in this very cold, howling and dry place? But things do! You just...
Read MoreA flying carpenter!
Something odd is raining from the sky. Swords of sunlight are slicing through the canopy of ancient trees in Parque Pumalin, southern Chile. It cannot be rain. We squint into the mossy tops of the trees. Ferns and plants (the air plants) drape over the surfaces, scrambling for light and catching water and nutrients from the air. We can’t see anything, but every-now-and-then we’re splatted by pieces of bark and moss?! Suddenly a flash of a wing catches our eyes! It’s black and hammering at a dead branch. A female Magellanic woodpecker! We have never seen one before. Her dagger bill...
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