This protected swath of steppe and low mountain ranges is starkly beautiful, with the coirón grasses and spiny bushes providing a habitat for rhea, tinamou, pigeon and burrowing owl.
Among the exceptions to this behaviour pattern are the tinamou (partridge-like game birds), ostriches, some gallinaceous species (e.g., pheasant, grouse, turkeys), and phalaropes.
Birds include the vulture, the kiskadee, the blue sacki, the hummingbird, the kingfisher, and the scarlet ibis of the coast and lower rivers and the macaw, the tinamou, the bell-bird, and the cock-of-the-rock in the forest and savanna.
Every bird family but one has lice, and there is a species of bird, the great tinamou, that harbors 18 different species of lice, perhaps because it has many different kinds of feathers, each offering a special niche.
In just three months their traps have captured thousands of pictures: they have photos of rufous-fronted wood quail and a big, endemic kiwi-like bird called a Berlepsch's tinamou (not usually found at the elevation in which they have found it).
"What in the world is a Paraguayan tinamou doing here?" he asked.
Jiovanny matched each one to a laughing falcon, a rufescent tiger heron, a kingfisher, a yellow-tufted woodpecker, an undulated tinamou and a wren -- capturing each one in his spotting scope.
Mr. Belton's recordings, many of which can be heard online, embrace the firm boink-boink-boink of the dark-billed cuckoo, the amiable squik-squik of the white-eyed foliage-gleaner, the wistful rising halftone — D sharp, E — of the solitary tinamou, and much else.
