The Ccollpa
One distinctive habitat nearby Tambo Blanquillo is the shebonal forest, which is high in clay content, creating clay licks, locally known as ccollpa which are specially used by macaws and other rainforest species as a healthy diet supplement that helps them remove toxins from their digestive tracks. Macaws usually obtain these noxious chemical substances from unripe fruits they ingest.
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A Comfortable Blind
Our lodge is just 10 minutes away from the Macaw Clay Lick. A blind of 10 meters of altitude has been built facing it, so you can take close-up pictures without disturbing the birds activity. It consists of 40 comfortable seats, each with a personal counter where your binoculars and cameras can be placed in order to give you better stability to take superb pictures of the macaw on the lick. Breakfast will be served at the blind and a toilette facility is available. |
A Usual Day on the Lick
It starts around six o’clock, when the first parrots, usually the blue-headed, descend to the treetops above the lick. At eight in the morning, the first macaws arrive in family groups to perch in treetops, specially the scarlet and red and green macaws. Two hours later, around 150 of them will gather and begin their descent to the clay joining the others.
The stream that runs across the clay lick usually attracts different variety of bird species including the Orinoco Goose, the Roseate Spoonbill, the white necked and capped Herons, the Great Egret, the Black Skimmer, Black Caracara, Black-and-white Hawk-Eagle and if luck is on our side, a Harpy Eagle. |
