#Rupicola peruvianus

[helluvatimes]

Cock Of The Rock

The Andean Cock-of-the-Rock (Rupicola peruvianus) looking for the ideal spot to preen itself in the Bird Paradise. Photo credit: Jonathan Chua.

This is actually a passerine bird from South America, found in tropical rainforests around rocky outcrops.

[electrosquash]

For @cathartesauraa because your tags made me smile but also for all my dear mutuals (mwah :*) and everyone else who likes birds <3

[way-out-there]

Andean cock-of-the-rock

[captious-solarian]

@prudencepaccard Behold this neon phallus cackling sardonically

Ever hear an Andean cock of the rock before? Probably not, or maybe you have and didn't realise it, because they sound quite a bit like a kookaburra!

[herpsandbirds]

Andean Cock of the Rock (Rupicola peruvianus), male, family Cotingidae, order Passeriformes, Ecuador,

photograph by Cayce Jehaimi

[mutant-distraction]

Andean Cock of the Rock

The Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruvianus), also known as tunki (Quechua), is a large passerine bird of the cotinga family native to Andean cloud forests in South America. It is the national bird of Peru. It has four subspecies and its closest relative is the Guianan cock-of-the-rock.

Photo by:Supreet Sahoo (Tropical Photo Tours) via 500px

[amnhnyc]

Meet the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock (Rupicola peruvianus). Wondering how this bird got its unique name? It’s a reference to this species’ habit of building nests on rocky outcrops. Found at high elevations in the cloud forests of South America’s Andes Mountains, it can reach lengths of up to 12 in (30.5 cm). Males sport vivid red-orange plumage and a disc-shaped crest, but this bird’s appearance isn’t its only unusual trait. Have you ever squeezed a rubber chicken? The Andean-Cock-of-the-Rock makes a similar sound during courtship rituals, which include squeaking, grunting cries! Photo: Doug Greenberg, CC BY-NC 2.0, flickr #amazingnature #wildlife #wildlifeplanet #birdsofinstagram #birdsonearth #nature https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqal_7IrvyJ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cognitivejustice]

With hundreds of highly prized species, bird tourism is thriving in the country – and farmers are increasingly turning their land into nature reserves

“Wildlife tourism is far more profitable than farming but that’s not the only reason we made the change,” says Ajila’s son, Luis Jr. “We wanted to save not just the umbrellabird, but all the special creatures here, and safeguard them for future generations.”

Projects such as this are eligible for funding from the Ecuadorian government. Launched in 2008, the Socio Bosque scheme offers “the poorest private and communal forest landowners annual payments for each hectare of forest cover maintained”, with sums of between $30 (£23) and $60 a hectare.

The Ajila family: Luis Jr, Alejandra and Luis Sr. Photograph: Dr Stephen Moss

But the income provided by birders alone has been enough to propel some farmers to take up the nature reserve model.A few years ago, Favián Luna decided to convert his 120-hectare tomato farm in the Tandayapa Valley, north-west of Quito, into a cloud-forest reserve and lodge called Alambi Reserve. Visitors go to photograph many species of hummingbirds, including the Andean emerald, native to the Chocó bioregion of the Ecuadorian Andes.

Nearby, at Mashpi Amagusa, former farmers Doris Villalbaand Sergio Basantes have created a reserve, lodge and garden, which attracts 260 species of sought-after birds. Highlights include glistening-green, flame-faced and beryl-spangled tanagers, and the rare, endemic rose-faced parrot.

At Finca La Victoriana in Pichincha, the owner Jacqui bought the house and land, and began to reforest the site while growing crops to feed herself. But during lockdown, when she was stuck in nearby Quito, all her crops were stolen. She was saved from having to sell up by a visiting friend, who heard an unusual sound from lower down the valley and realised this was one of South America’s most charismatic birds: the Andean cock-of-the-rock.

Male Andean cocks-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruvianus) lekking to attract a mate. Photograph: Jiri Hrebicek/Alamy

Since 2005, Ángel Paz and his younger brother Rodrigo have transformed their former dairy farm in Mindo into a bird reserve. At first, things didn’t go to plan: it took a month for the first visitor to arrive, and he paid just $10 for a four-hour tour. Since then, however, thousands of people have made the pilgrimage.

[cloud-ya]

me when Rupicola peruvianus

[tropic-havens]

Male and female Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruvianus), also known as tunki (Quechua), the national bird of Peru.

[alonglistofbirds]

[231/10,977] Andean Cock-Of-The-Rock - Rupicola peruvianus

Order: Passeriformes Suborder: Tyranni Family: Cotingidae (cotingas)

Photo credit: Ben Lucking via Macaulay Library

[fatehbaz]

In the Intag Valley of Ecuador, at this “most biodiverse hotspot on the planet” (the cloud forests of the tropical Andes), local communities have engaged in 30 years of sustained defense of environment and resistance to multiple mining corporations, including Canada’s Copper Mesa Corporation. The group Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag has helped plant tens of thousands of trees while establishing about 40 different forest reserves. Now the planet’s biggest copper producer company (Codelco) is targeting the Intag region, with wells already drilled and important court cases scheduled for 2023. Among the many unique orchids, moths, hummingbirds, plate-billed mountain toucan, spectacled bears, mountain tapirs, critically endangered brown-headed spider monkey, and other creatures, in Intag Valley there are two species of frog which live nowhere else on Earth, previously thought to be extinct: the longnose harlequin frog and the newly-named “rana cohete resistencia de intag” (”Intag resistance rocket frog”). The frogs now provide “hope” and are the subjects of Intag’s pending court cases.

From January 2023, Mongabay provides a thorough report about Intag’s cloud forest ecosystems, community projects, and resistance to mining. Excerpts from their report below.

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For nearly 30 years, communities have worked to conserve, restore and defend the cloud forests of the Intag Valley in Ecuador, in what locals say is the longest continuous resistance movement against mining in Latin America. The tropical Andes are considered the world’s most biodiverse hotspot, ranking first in plant, bird, mammal and amphibian diversity; however, less than 15% of Ecuador’s original cloud forests and only 4% of all forests in northwestern Ecuador remain. Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer from Chile, plans to open a mine in the Intag Valley that would destroy primary forest and lie within the buffer area of Cotacachi Cayapas National Park — a plan that experts say would be ecologically devastating and not worth the cost. Communities are using the presence of two threatened frog species — previously thought to be extinct — at the mining site to challenge the project [...].

In the 1960s, to encourage development, the government deemed forested properties with no human occupants “unproductive” and open to land grabbers. In turn, landowners were forced to clear at least 50% of the land to prove it was in use. These agrarian laws led to a flurry of deforestation that lasted into the 1990s. [...]

Pumas (Puma concolor), spectacled bears (Tremarctos ornatus), mountain tapirs (Tapirus pinchaque), mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata), the critically endangered brown-headed spider monkey (Ateles fusciceps fusciceps), and the colorful plate-billed mountain toucan (Andigena laminirostris) are just a few of the more charismatic threatened species living here. [...]

Our first foray deep into this “terrestrial coral reef” is led by Roberto Castro, a local nature guide, environmental educator, and Zorrilla’s friend and neighbor. [...]

“Here is the Sangre de Drago tree … its red sap [is] a cure for many ailments,” he says. “Here is the Cecropia tree that lives in partnership with the ants.”

He shows us a white flower that shares its nectar with just one bat species and lets go of its seeds in a grand explosion once the nectar is spent. We see the sickle-winged guan (Chamaepetes goudotii), a large ground bird that lays only one, maybe two, precious eggs in a year. The famed Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruvianus) cries out, its song somewhere between that of a parrot and a squealing pig. In the cloud forest, a single leaf is a stage for drama: ants farming aphids, lichens making their slow march against the moss. The forest drips with life.

We stop in a grove of massive elephant ear plants, twice as tall as a person. “These plants tell us water is abundant,” Castro says. The water trail leads us to a 10-meter (33-foot) waterfall. Castro stands in the stream below and pulls out a minuscule underwater castle made from pebbles.

“This is the home of moth larvae,” he shows us. [...]

Zorrilla and other community members started the environmental group Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag (DECOIN) in 1995. [...] DECOIN helped communities establish 38 small-scale forest reserves that, altogether, protect almost 12,000 hectares (nearly 30,000 acres) of forest within the buffer zone of Cotacachi Cayapas National Park. [...]

In Intag, communities are self-defined administrative units, whose leader is nominated by its residents. It’s up to each community to decide how to best protect forests. Most include agreements prohibiting activities such as [...] cattle ranching, mining [...]. Bolaños and fellow community members planted more than 60,000 trees on slopes that were originally forests but had been converted to pasture decades ago. Working for six months each year between 2008 and 2013, dozens of community members planted 22 native species [...].

Intag’s richness aboveground is rivaled by a different kind of wealth below: copper. [...]

In 1996, the Japanese mining company Bishimetals, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation, found evidence of massive copper deposits in the Intag Valley. [...] In 1997, local communities reacted [...]. No one was harmed in the incident, but it was enough to make the company pull out. [...] After Bishimetals retreated in 1997, things calmed down until the Canadian mining company Copper Mesa Corporation (formally Ascendent Copper) entered the scene in 2004. [...] The company tried for five years to develop the project and used paramilitaries and violent force, Zorrilla tells Mongabay. [...] DECOIN helped residents file a lawsuit against both the mining company and the Toronto Stock Exchange for complicity in human rights violations based on Copper Mesa’s actions. [...] [I]n 2010 the Toronto Stock Exchange delisted Copper Mesa Mining Corporation.

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Now, the communities face the world’s largest copper producer, Chile’s Codelco, which has partnered with Empresa Nacional Minera (ENAMI EP), Ecuador’s state-owned mining company, and invested millions into advanced mining explorations across Intag — in particular within the 5,000-hectare (12,400-acre) mining concession known as Llurimagua. [...]

According to several community members Mongabay spoke to, around 400 military and police officers used force to ensure the presence of Codelco and ENAMI in the mining concession. [...] Javier Ramirez was the president of the Junín community in 2014 when he was arrested for “sabotage and rebellion against the state.” [...] Codelco persisted and set up camp in the Junín Community Reserve, a patch of primary, old-growth forest [...].

Codelco has installed at least 90 drilling platforms within the reserve, digging down to depths of 1,200 meters (3,900 feet). [...]

The U.S. nonprofit Earth Economics [...] valued ecosystem services in Intag, such as water, food, climate regulation, soil retention, pollination, waste treatment, recreation, and scientific research, at $447 million per year in 2011. That’s higher than the projected revenue from copper mining in the region [...].

At the base of a waterfall, we stop to catch our breath, and Zorrilla steps forward. “This is close to where they found the frogs,” he says.

And here enters hope.

Among the dozens of threatened species in the tropical Andes, two have been found in this reserve and nowhere else on Earth: the longnose harlequin toad (Atelopus longirostris) and the Intag resistance rocket frog whose name was chosen through a contest. Both were presumed extinct until they were recently found again in the Junín Community Reserve. [...]

Finding these frogs has given the community a strong argument to try to legally stop mining development [...].

In September 2020, the Intag communities won one of the few cases upholding the rights of nature in the lower court. But the case was overturned in the higher provincial appeals court due to a procedural error. [...] The case is now before a three-member appeals court. After months of delay, a new judge was appointed in December. The new judge wants to have all of the evidence presented again, essentially starting the process over. The next court hearing is scheduled for Jan. 23 [2023]. [...]

We speak with Norma Bolаños about Mujer y Medio Ambiente (Women and the Environment), a group of nearly 50 women in Intag who make products out of cabuya, a fiber they produce from the agave plant, and color with natural dyes. [...]

In Cotacachi, we visit the home of Cenaida Guachagmira. She’s 28, the same age as the resistance movement, and has known this fight her whole life. [...] “The companies have their weapons and we have our dignity,” Guachagmira told Re:wild in an interview earlier this year.

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Headline, images, captions, and all text published by: Liz Kimbrough. “In Ecuador, communities protecting a ‘terrestrial coral reef’ face a mining giant.” Mongabay. 9 January 2023. [Italicized heading and first paragraph in this post added by me.]

[coffeenuts]

Cock-of-the-Rock (Rupicola peruvianus sanguinolentus) by ASAV Photography https://flic.kr/p/2ngpYmb

[davidstanleytravel]

The Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruvianus) is perhaps the most distinctive bird of the South American rainforest. This one was at the Aviario Nacional de Colombia near Cartagena.

[herpsandbirds]

Andean Cock of the Rock (Rupicola peruvianus), male, family Cotingidae, order Passeriformes, Ecuador,

photograph by Lior Berman Fernández

[reinato]

Devocional diário Vislumbres da Eternidade - Víctor Armenteros

Ovos contra pedras

Mesmo que o nosso ser exterior se desgaste, o nosso ser interior se renova dia a dia. 2ª Coríntios 4:16

Alguns anos atrás, deparei-me com um artigo interessante que falava sobre Física e ovos de galinha. Não se tratava do eterno debate sobre o ovo ou a galinha, mas sim de uma expressão chinesa, Yi luan ji shi, que se refere ao impacto de um ovo contra uma rocha, em que sempre é o ovo que se quebra. Essa ideia se fixou em minha mente como um modelo de quando duas forças desiguais colidem. É provável que isso lembre alguma experiência que você já teve na vida. No entanto, uma frase anônima que li recentemente me fez repensar minha concepção sobre “ovos” e “rochas”. Ela dizia: “Se for uma força externa que quebra um ovo, a vida se acaba. Se for uma força interna, a vida começa. Mude a partir do seu interior.” Essa frase espetacular me fez refletir que talvez o problema não esteja nas rochas.

O galo-da-serra-andino, também conhecido como Rupicola peruvianus, é a ave nacional do Peru e é uma das mais belas aves que já vi. Ele recebe o nome de “rupícola” por viver e fazer seu ninho em rochas montanhosas nos Andes. As fêmeas se camuflam perfeitamente nas encostas dos montes, tornando-se difíceis de serem vistas. Para essa espécie, as rochas não representam um problema, pois essas aves não temem as alturas. Talvez seja por isso que muitos as chamam de “galinho das rochas”.

Passamos a vida temendo as “rochas” e o impacto que elas podem causar em nossa existência, quando deveríamos estar nos desenvolvendo interiormente para sairmos do ovo e viver plenamente! É por isso que Paulo aconselha os coríntios a não desistirem e a terem a paciência necessária para crescerem internamente, mesmo que externamente sejam alvos de impactos. Devemos nos renovar a cada dia e voltar a tentar, pois a paciência molda o nosso caráter e nos fortalece para lidar com as dificuldades da vida.

Lembre-se: a maioria de nossas lutas não é contra o mundo exterior, mas sim com nosso mundo interior. Portanto, em vez de temermos as dificuldades e os desafios do viver, devemos encará-los como oportunidades de crescimento e aprimoramento. Que possamos, com o poder do Espírito Santo, buscar a força necessária para encarar as rochas da vida e nos tornar seres humanos melhores.