The Course to Train Bird Guides
Las Guacamayas, Chiapas, Mexico, September 21-25, 2009
by Brock Huffman
Supported in part by the American Birding Association's Birders' Exchange
Our course to train bird guides would not have been the tremendous success that it was but for the leadership of Alberto Martinez-Fernandez. Pronatura Sur, A.C. should be extremely proud of his enthusiasm, his ornithological knowledge, his energy, and above all, his passion in helping the students become observers of birds and their importance to forests and ecology in general, and to those of Chiapas in particular. As a teacher, he was not only highly respected by everyone, but his personality also was entertaining and likeable, while still maintaining the ability to be critically honest in his corrections. His passion was obvious in waking up at 4:00a.m. to search for the mottled owl – and being sure the rest of the staff was awake as well. Praises are due to Alberto and also to Pronatura for having such a biologist on its team.
The course itself exceeded all of my preconceptions and expectations. In the beginning, I felt that if we completed the course with 5 or 6 students wanting to go forward with more courses and more studies, we would have been successful; instead we ended up with the 13 we started with. We worked them from 6:30 in the morning until 9:30 or 10:00 at night, with short meal breaks and 1 ½ hour rest break in the afternoon. Not 1 student ever left the walks, the instructive sessions, or the games in the evenings. They never stopped paying attention to what we were doing. I was absolutely amazed. In 44 years of conferences and courses for “continuing Legal Education” required annually in my profession, I was accustomed to seeing some of the attendees leave for coffee, go do other things, or generally appear bored and disinterested – but not our 13. Our students actually appeared thirsty for more information.
We had representatives from 4 different communities of the forest – principally Frontera Corozal and Las Guacamayas, but also el Ejidal Guanal and Acapetahua. I was disappointed that individual females from Najá, Frontera Corozal and Las Guacamayas did not attend because evidently they were afraid they would be the only women. We will be sure next time to keep them informed of an other females who will be attending, and that they will be housed together. I never had any feeling that we had a “macho” course, but I believe it is important next time to be sure we have female representatives.
Truly the students had a knowledge of the birds, and their eyes were really sharp in spotting them (the 5 from Frontera Corozal gave me one of our field guides wherein they had written the names in “Ch’ol” for the birds).
We took the students in 2 groups on 2 walks daily where they were drilled on silhouettes (partly due to lack of sunlight) and on identification otherwise by size, color of eyes, feathers, legs, beaks, wings, tails, etc… Back in the classroom, we worked on splitting into groups and drawing the birds with colored pencils, which they had identified in the morning. We studied our equipment, the basic parts of the bird, characteristics of the birds, what a bird guide should be, the rules and ethics of birdwatching, how to use a field guide, how to describe where the bird is located, what to expect and how to take care of tourist “birders,” what equipment they will need, etc…We walked in cattle fields, in thick, compact, wet jungle, and entered the Monte Azul Reserve with 2 launch boats, ending with a check list of more than 115 birds identified by the students. We watched slides having photos of the birds with the English and Spanish names and repeated the names in English over and over until improvement was very evident. At night we played “Bingo” with 50 bird pictures – 25 to a sheet – with Memo Mena (a/k/a Harry Potter/Mandrake) having a deck of 50 birds which he would call out until someone had 5 birds in a row (horizontal, vertical or diagonal). You could see the improvement the next day, both in their identification of the birds and in their pronunciation of the English names.
Friday evening, we sent the students home with the binoculars donated by the ABA-Birders Exchange, which they had used during the week and agreed to take care of until the next course; with “bird” coloring books in Spanish for their families, donated by Jack Eitinear; with hummingbird feeders for their community; and most importantly with a newfound interest in the birds and in protecting their habitat, the forest. I told them that I would be back in a couple of weeks with Howell and Webb field guides and tapes of bird songs with identification by names, along with CD players to practice with. If I were a betting man, I would bet we will be amazed by the advancement in their knowledge between courses.
Last, but not least, I have to tell you that our staff was outstanding. In addition to Alberto, we had Alex Dzib, a nature bird guide from the Yucatan. For walks we always divided in half, with Alberto leading one group and Alex leading the other. Alex also helped with the classes.
We also had Daniel Soto, university student, well advanced in his studies of Eco-Tourism, and Memo Mena, a school teacher of 18 years, who is one of the most amazing storytellers I have ever heard. We called him Harry Potter, though I believe he preferred Mandrake. Memo was in charge of games.
As you can probably tell, I am really encouraged by what I witnessed in this course. Obviously, if we have local bird guides in this area (and there are none presently that I could find), and if these guides can identify the bird as well as their English names, I believe, with the use of websites and the additional draw of the area’s ruins in Palenque, Bonampak and Yaxchilán, we can attract many English speaking birdwatchers. This should benefit not only the guides themselves financially, but stimulate the economy of the communities where the lodges, restaurants, and souvenir sellers are situated. The forests will thus be protected because the citizens can see an economic benefit in doing so. This is much more effective than just “telling them” to protect the forests. They have such wonderful and beautiful flora and fauna to share with others, and an incredibly rich, exciting and varied culture to be proud of and share with others.
I am proud of what Pronatura Sur, A.C., the American Birding Association-Birders Exchange, and Eco-Logic Latin-America, Inc. have done in this course, and I hope we can continue to work together.
Brock Huffman has been a Criminal Defense trial lawyer for 43 years. His keen interest in working in Latin America began with a summer as a student missionary in Cuba in 1957 and in Honduras in 1958. He Graduated from the Georgetown Univeristy School of Foreign Service, with honors in 1963, and from the University of Texas Law School in 1966. Brock has birded all over Mexico, the Central American countries, and in Peru and Ecuador and is the author of Aves De La Selva Lacandona De Chiapas - Birds of the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas.