Photo of a this very rare bird, the Tepui Greenlet, made by
Foek Chin Joe in March 2005. This photo was only the first time
the bird was reported by him and Otte Ottema for Suriname and, as
you can expect from its name, this was from the Tafelberg. They
made also a soundrecording
there.
The Tafelberg is the only high sandstone formation (Tepui) in
Suriname. Tepuis are high mountains with mostly steep sides found
in the higher parts of the Guyanas and Venezuela (Roraima for
instance), with many species of plant and animals that can only
be found there. The Tepui were first described by Sir Walter
Raleigh (1595, the Raleigh Falls were named after him) and were
climbed in 1884 by an English botanist Everard Im Thurn on an
expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society and were
described in the beautiful book on the Guyana's: 'Among the
indians of Guiana'. His adventures were an inspiration for
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Lost World' (1912) another
even more famous book with prehistoric animals in it, that was
made into a film (already in 1925) and that will have inspired
Michael Crichton's 1991 'Jurassic parc', that was used
for the film. No greenlet in the film by the way.
Each small square indicates the observation of at least one (group) of these birds, the medium ones at least 4 observations on different days and the largest ones 10 or more. The color of each square indicates: blue for coastal area, yellow for savanna and red for rainforest.
Names in:
Photos of other birds of Suriname
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