The Guaiabero: 2According to Collar (1997) food consists of the flesh and seeds
of figs, the above-cited berries of wild vines, and the fruit
of trees including guavas. It is this latter to which the parrot
owes its native Spanish (and English) name, guaiabero,
meaning “guava-harvester” or “guava-dealer”.
We know nothing of the bird’s breeding biology. Collar (1997)
and Juniper & Parr (1998) mention March as a month in which
breeding condition is reached, apparently based on a single collected
female. It is not just information that is scarce: so are photographs.
Janeczek (1994) only contains one photograph of a young bird,
while Fisher & Hicks
(2000) portray a female. In the Lexikon of parrots (Arndt 1990–1996),
a single shot of a female is supplemented by pictures of museum skins.
It was, however, on my second day in 'Jest Camp' that I saw a pair of small green parrots fly across the road and land in the upper branches of a 20 m high tree. Their voice was reminiscent of a small Charmosyna lorikeet, and since they had a larger body than the hanging parrot they had to be Guaiaberos, as a scan through the binoculars eventually confirmed. During the next two days I stayed in this area, discovering very quickly that Guaiaberos were around here all day long, even though mostly just glimpsed crossing the road in their high-speed—indeed bullet-like—flight. In flight they gave a four-syllable, high-pitched ziit call in which the last syllable was notably lower. When they were perched one could normally only hear a sharp monosyllabic zet, produced roughly every 10 seconds, presumably for contact. From this call I was soon able to pick out the trees, usually not very high, in which the birds had perched; and this was when I discovered why the Guaiabero is so unknown, even to the locals. In the foliage they were so well camouflaged by their green plumage that it was practically impossible to detect them, even though they were not particularly shy. Only if I stayed by a tree for very long, and changed my place very often, would the birds—usually a pair—fly off, calling loudly, confirming their identity; but I could not get a photo. In the course of the first day I noticed that many Guaiaberos flew off in the direction of a small brook a few hundred metres from my observation area, or flew in from there. Eventually, next to a bridge across the stream, I found a small fig tree from which the birds’ regular calls could be heard. Four Guaiaberos were in this tree, two of which immediately flew off when I started scanning the branches. I had no chance from the outside to see the two that were left. Only when standing directly under the tree and looking up was I able to detect a male. It calmly ate a fig and from time to time peered down at me. This gave me the chance to take my first pictures, but whenever I put the camera down to search for the second bird, which was occasionally calling and which I assumed to be female, I had trouble relocating the male in the greenery. I have rarely seen wild parrots that were so at one with their environment as these Guaiaberos. When after five minutes a heavy lorry drove past, the male flew off, followed by its partner, allowing me at last to identify her. I spent almost all of the next day in the vicinity of this tree. I never saw any Guaiaberos flying into the tree, but by their occasional calls I knew that they were regularly making use of it. Quite clearly they were taking care not to be seen, and were approaching the tree on the blind side. I realised that my chance of taking pictures would increase if I let the animals feed in peace and quiet for a time. Once they had got the taste of it they were more prepared to put up with my presence, and even when they had completely dissected a fig they did not simply fly off but slowly climbed up to the next one, always keeping me in view. At last I was able to photograph a female. As I followed the birds I could see that they only ate the seeds and not the flesh of the fruit. A few days later, on my way back from Mountain Province, where I was searching for the Montane Racquet-tail P. montanus, I stopped again at “Jest Camp”. The Guaiaberos were still in the tree, but this time I saw that they were also foraging in the front gardens of nearby houses. In one case I was particularly lucky: a male perched in a young fig tree which only had a few branches but which was already bearing fruit, allowing me the chance to get good stills and some video footage. Then I flew to Leyte, in the Eastern Visayas. A visit to the tourist office in the island’s capital Tacloban helped me to get an appointment with the local conservation authorities. They gave me lots of tips on where to find parrots, especially the Guaiaberos. I was told that on Leyte the birds represented by intermedius can easily be seen in the vicinity of the village of Abuyog. Abuyog was a stroke of luck. It is true that the villagers had never heard anything about the Guaiabero, but they gave me a motorcyclist who took me off on his old machine along country paths by ricefields into a small valley whose slopes were well covered with forest. Very soon I saw the first Guaiaberos, flying around the scattered palm trees but also perched in high bamboos and fig trees. I spent two days in this region. Apart from the Leyte Guaiaberos, there were also Philippine Hanging Parrots (race worcesteri) in abundance, but I never saw the two species together in the same tree. My experiences from Subic Bay stood me in good stead. Twice I was able to pick out feeding trees of Guaiaberos. But even here I was only able to take pictures of females. The behaviour of the birds and their voices were the same as on Luzon, but on the whole they were somewhat shyer. During the next four days I made a round trip through Samar. I was hoping to find one or two captive Guaiaberos, in order to determine more precisely whether the questionable subspecies callainipictus, in which the male has a paler blue colouring and the female a stronger yellow tone in the hind-collar (duPont 1971), is really different from the population on Leyte. However, as before, nobody knew the birds. The locals were keeping numerous Philippine Hanging Parrots, as well as some Talaud Blue-naped Parrots Tanygnathus lucionensis talautensis, Azurerumped Parrots T. sumatranus everetti and even Blue-crowned Racquet-tails Prioniturus discurus whiteheadi, but they had no Guaiaberos. Only once did I see Guaiaberos in the vicinity of Paranas, flying across the road, but I was unable to take a picture, and next day I had to fly back to Manila, bringing my visit to the Philippines to an abrupt end. Despite this minor disappointment, my encounters with the Guaiabero are a source of good memories for me, as indeed are the Philippines in general, with their friendly, vivacious people and well-developed infrastructure for the traveller. This article is an abridged and lightly edited translation, by I. Weiss and N. J. Collar, of Arndt (2005). OBC thanks Thomas Arndt for permission to translate his original paper and reproduce the photographs here. References
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