Word: birding
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That night our group (which consisted of Gomez, Munn, his wife Martha and me) camped in tents set up on the foundation of a new lodge Gomez is building in the cloud forest. Home to the endangered spectacled bear, a brilliant orange bird called cock of the rock and dozens of species of hummingbirds, the forest is an utterly green world. Plants, mosses and trees are so thick on the vertiginous mountain slopes that trails have a trampoline-like feel underfoot...
Experts have called Amazonia the best bird-watching lodge in the world because it sits at the juncture of a zone where birds from upland peaks mingle with lowland species. For many years the Manu held the record for sightings of different species in a single day: 331. With no effort whatsoever, we spotted more than 100 species in the course of five days. A short canoe ride from the Manu Lodge, visitors can see the nesting sites of hoatzins, perhaps the world's strangest birds. The floppy, pheasant-sized avians have three stomachs, like cows; the young defend themselves...
...exuberantly colored and gregarious macaws, however, are the celebrity fauna of the region. During a three-hour motorized canoe ride up the Manu River, we saw 327 of the loquacious birds in a scintillating array of colors: red and green, blue and yellow, scarlet. Munn estimates that each macaw in the $ region could generate between $750 and $4,700 a year in tourist revenue -- far more over the bird's lifetime than if the animals were caught and sold...
California politicians are planning to move up their state's primary date from June to March in an attempt to muscle in on the kingmaking power Iowa and New Hampshire enjoy during presidential-election years. An early-bird contest would be likely to force Democratic candidates to give short shrift to the two smaller states so contenders could focus on California's wide-ranging constituencies and demonstrate national appeal. Willie Brown, Democratic speaker of the California assembly, hopes to schedule the primary on the first Tuesday in March, which would position it just a week before the "Super Tuesday" group...
...there are no robots on the island, only a colorful, noisy bird colony. Like Orlando, it is thriving, out of the reach (almost) of predators, deep in Disney World's embrace...