If you ask me, how old were you when you started to watch birds and how did you become a birdwatcher guide? I wouldn’t know how to answer precisely, since I started many years ago and in an unusual way.
I am farmer son, who as a young man, He embarked on the adventure to colonize fertile lands in the deep Amazon jungle, back in the sixties to search better opportunities; I come from a large family I am fourth from nine siblings who has always been enchanted by nature, the jungle and its dangers adventures.
We were students in Cusco city in Peru and at end of each school year, my younger brother and me we just to go to “my father’s jungle” to work the land whit my father. The property was very good land for rice growing and in times when the rice sprouted its ears, flocks of small birds would approach and feed on the grain of rice that was in a viscous state that looked more like a dense milk, it was a succulent delicacy for the birds, the same delicacy that led them to my father dictating their death sentence.
One morning my Father ordered me to go and take care of the rice field from those small winged creatures that were reducing our harvest and as weapons he gave me a slingshot that could shoot very small stones and a very basic binocular to be more effective when seeing them; This is how my frequency began to the rice field where after a day I would sit in the shade of a tree and begin to observe the vegetation initially and then at those small birds (the seedeaters) that were fluttering around, that was where my attention was caughted for one in particular, one that was showing black and white colors in very light tones (Sporophila luctuosa / Black-and-white Seedeater) whom I decided was untouchable, but in the following days I saw that one was the Male of those that I had been chasing with enthusiasm, there It was where my perspective changed.
One of those afternoons when I was returning to home after watching birds in the rice field, I met a traveler on the road who was carrying a huge backpack and hanging a binocular from his neck, whom I politely greeted and guest to home to have dinner and spend the night. Already at home he told us that he was French, the next day when I left from my room I could see him was observing the different species of hummingbirds that came to drink the nectar from the flowers in the garden, obviously the surroundings were habitats with a lot of biodiversity that I Until that time didn’t know, I started a conversation based on my curiosity and therefore they awakened many more questions in me, that changed my perspective about birds; I accompanied to him to make birding for a few days on my father’s land where I understood the birds are different and fabulous world.
When we said goodbye to him after a little more than a week of intense birdwatching, he asked me for my address in Cusco, and when I returned to Cusco to return to school again, I found at home a gift that my mother said, “one foreigner with blue eyes named Pierre leave this stuff for you and said I hope he take advantage of it.” It was the extra binocular that he had lent me the days we were chasing birds and the bird book of Venezuela that had caught my attention that first time I saw it, those gifts changed my life, since that first opportunity I have been birdwatcher like a hobby but with passion, that same passion that made me to my source of work.
Today I make my life around birds, I travel as a Guide specialized in bird watching, showing the mega diversity of my country, and I live very close to the most biodiverse destination in Peru… the Manu National Park.