How an Indigenous Community in the Amazon Created a Bird Guide of Their Own

As the sun rises over the white sand beaches and reddish-black waters of the Cubate River in the ­Brazilian Amazon, a shrill cry echoes through the thatched-roof houses in the Indigenous village of Nazaré. It is the call of the Guianan Cock-of-the-rock, or ­galo-da-serra, as the bird is locally known. Despite its bright orange feathers and exuberant half-moon crest, this exquisite forest bird is difficult to spot in the wild. But Darlene Florentino, a middle-aged Baniwa woman, keeps the two males her husband gifted her in a branch-fenced coop in her home. Indigenous families in the Amazon commonly raise wild animals, and the Baniwa in Nazaré love birds. 

Florentino’s husband collected the birds as chicks, retrieving them from a mud-plastered nest atop a massive rock inside a cave. The pets are the family’s xerimbabos, an Indigenous word for animals with which they’ve established a special bond. Several times a day, Florentino feeds them with fruits and xibé, a mixture of manioca flour and water. “They eat everything!” she says proudly as a cock-of-the rock hops onto her wrist. “He is a pretty boy.”

Tales of the cock-of-the-rock’s beauty date back centuries. In 1850 famed British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace arrived on the land of Florentino’s ancestors, determined to find the exotic bird. Wallace, known for developing the idea of evolution by natural selection independently of Charles Darwin, traveled through the Amazon for four years, making observations that later helped form his theories. Midway through this journey he navigated the Cubate River in a 35-foot-long canoe loaded with birdcages, food, and guns, along with cloth, beads, and other articles to exchange with the locals he hoped to hire to find the species. 

It worked. Wallace persuaded almost the entire male population of a small Baniwa village, near where Nazaré is today, to join him in the mountains in return for “good payment” for each cock-of-the-rock they killed. After walking miles in dense jungle, climbing up rocks and precipices, one of the men caught hold of Wallace’s arm and pointed into a thicket. “After looking intently for a little while,” Wallace wrote in his diary, “I caught a glimpse of the magnificent bird, sitting amidst the gloom, shining out like a mass of brilliant flame.” In nine days, 12 Indigenous hunters helped him collect 12 of the birds, along with Blue-capped Manakins, antthrushes, and other species. 

Like most contemporary Baniwa people, Florentino hadn’t heard of Wallace. Isolated in small settlements in the heart of a vast area of preserved forest bordering Colombia and Venezuela, the Baniwa endured centuries of violent Portuguese colonization and a continued legacy of oppression that wiped out many of their cultural habits and histories.

Today the Baniwa live in off-grid communities far from universities, libraries, and cities, with only limited internet access that arrived about three years ago. In the northwest of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, their villages lie within a vast mosaic of Indigenous lands accessible only with special permission from tribes and the federal government—a system put in place to safeguard Indigenous groups and help them maintain their sovereignty. Traveling to Nazaré from the closest town, São Gabriel da Cachoeira, requires a 5- to 10-hour journey on a motorboat. 

In the nearly two centuries since Wallace’s expedition, only a few other naturalists and scientists have visited the area. Like him, they sought out local knowledge to make valuable observations but didn’t leave behind a record of what they had learned. Now, spurred by a rediscovery of Wallace’s historic visit, the Baniwa are leading a communal effort to survey local birds and document cultural traditions at risk as modern influences mount. But this time, they’re doing so on their own terms.

Dzoodzo Baniwa, an Indigenous leader and teacher from a nearby Baniwa community, learned about Wallace’s legacy while visiting Nazaré. Another teacher there had told Dzoodzo about a book, given to him by a researcher decades earlier, that mentioned birds from the region. It was the account of Wallace’s journey, A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. 

As he read the book, Dzoodzo was struck by Wallace’s descriptions of Indigenous practices that are disappearing among younger generations, such as using zarabatanas, blowguns for shooting animals with poisoned darts. But mostly he was surprised by the fascination that Wallace, like the Baniwa, had with birds—especially the galo-da-serra. 

The idea of resurveying local birdlife began forming in Dzoodzo’s mind. It took firmer shape when Damiel Legario Pedro, then president of Nazaré’s Indigenous association, mentioned to him that residents were afraid that the cock-of-the-rock population might be declining: It seemed to be harder to find nests. Dzoodzo, who travels and works often with outside groups (and who also goes by the Portuguese name Juvêncio Cardoso), proposed reaching out to non-Indigenous researchers to help the Baniwa document their local wildlife, as Wallace had done almost 175 years before. 

Camila Ribas, an ecologist focused on birds at the National Institute for Amazonian Research in Manaus, remembers the day in 2019 when Dzoodzo knocked on her office door and asked her to collaborate. “It was a very unusual visit,” she recalls. Although most of the Indigenous population in Brazil lives in the Amazon, it’s still uncommon for natural science researchers studying the forest to partner with them, Ribas says. She accepted the invitation right away; the area where the Baniwa live, within Cabeça do Cachorro (“Dog’s Head”), is one of the most preserved and understudied parts of the forest. “It is a sample void,” says Ribas. “We know very little about the biodiversity there.”

Before starting any study, the Nazaré community had to be convinced. Many were skeptical of outsiders. European colonizers had waged warfare and spread diseases that killed most of the continent’s Indigenous population, and today ­cattle farmers and miners are illegally advancing into Indigenous territories in the Amazon and grabbing land, clearing forests, and massacring residents. So far, the rampant deforestation plaguing much of the Amazon has not touched the Baniwa’s relatively isolated lands. But that could change. “They had a lot, a lot of fear,” Pedro says. They worried the researchers would exploit them, too. 

Ribas understood their reluctance and knew that building a relationship was a critical first step. “There is a long tradition of surveys where scientists worry a lot about their science and very little about the people who live there,” she says. Typically, she notes, research crews enter Amazon communities, mobilize residents to assist them, and then leave: “It’s practically an invasion.” The Baniwa wanted to ensure an equal partnership that valued their expertise—unlike their relationship with Wallace, whose writings, as Dzoodzo points out, didn’t name the many Indigenous people who made his expeditions successful.  

After several long meetings with the researchers in Nazaré, the community decided to move forward with a survey. They also elected to create a bird guide that would list each species’ scientific name, Portuguese name, and name in two Indigenous languages. “Most of the books we have are in Portuguese,” says Pedro, who teaches in the village’s school. “What we really wanted was a book in our language.” 

The survey started in January 2023. For two months local volunteers and scientists followed Wallace’s steps in a bird-dense, six-square-mile area that covered a variety of habitats: non-flooded and seasonally flooded forests, riverbanks, open fields, and sandy areas by the river. The researchers trained participants to use binoculars and put up mist nets, and they installed microphones in the forest; software later sifted through recordings to help an expert pinpoint which birds were present. 

Meanwhile, Pedro led a two-day workshop at the community center, a pavilion the size of a soccer field. More than 100 people of all ages met to look at pictures and listen to calls to identify species by their Indigenous names. They also documented cultural uses and beliefs linked to birds in the guide. Eating a Black Manakin, for example, is said to strengthen a woman after she gives birth, while hearing White-throated Toucans sing at dawn is a sign of a warm and rainy day.

Euziane Evangelista Florentino grew up using traditional medicines and listening to bird legends her mother told her. As she tends to her free-ranging Blue-gray Tanager, she explains she wanted to learn more about the birds around her, so she participated in the project as a paid monitor, going house to house recording others’ knowledge. One story she wrote down is the fable of the cock-of-the-rock. 

According to the legend, the bird wanted to build a nest for its family but didn’t know how. So it hired an acari, a catfish known for using stones to make underwater nests. The fish was the real architect but, unable to leave the water, it in turn subcontracted some termites to collect mud, construct the nest, and affix it to stones in a cave. In the end, the cock-of-the-rock had a sturdy nest that lasted for life, a place to lay its eggs season after season. Bringing collaborators with varying skills and backgrounds together, the legend shows, was expensive—but worth it. 

T

he Baniwa aren’t the only ones ­retracing the steps of historic naturalists, though their endeavor is unique because it is community-led. Scientists and locals in other parts of the Americas are looking to the past to better understand today’s wildlife and ecosystems. 

For the past eight years, American and Mexican researchers have followed in the footsteps of Chester Lamb, a collector who worked for American naturalist Robert Moore from 1933 to 1955. Lamb had recruited uncredited locals to help him navigate harsh terrain across Mexico, where he ultimately collected roughly 40,000 bird specimens. The Mexican Bird Resurvey Project has, to date, returned to 4 of the roughly 300 sites Lamb visited to document how the country’s biodiversity has changed.

To cover more ground, the researchers also gave Lamb an afterlife via the eBird app, hoping to spur birders to gather more data and seek out unusual sightings. They sifted through typed-up copies of his dusty notebooks to compile his observations, ultimately uploading them in 3,573 checklists of 755 species. “We get people contacting us from various places all over Mexico,” says John McCormack, director and curator of the Moore Laboratory of Zoology in California, where the collection is housed. When birders email him, he provides Lamb’s field notes and routes and encourages them to make more detailed surveys. 

Comparing modern eBird and survey data to Lamb’s historic snapshots has offered the scientists insight into how avian distributions have shifted since Mexico industrialized. While they’ve found some species Lamb never encountered, overall the research shows a loss of biodiversity. Sensitive and specialized species, such as the Red-crowned Parrot, as well as game birds like the Ocellated Turkey, are less common, while urban birds that adapt well to disturbance are spreading into new habitats. “The southern rainforests have definitely been hit pretty hard, not only in species loss,” McCormack says, “but also in terms of the uniqueness of their avifauna.” 

In Colombia, a resurvey project is going to even greater lengths to engage communities, both to meet scientific goals and to address past wrongs. More than a century ago, American ornithologist and museum curator Frank Chapman (also founder of Bird-Lore, the precursor to Audubon magazine) led a team of naturalists to collect birds in the country. Over several expeditions in the early 1900s, they gathered the most complete collection of its time: 15,775 specimens of an astounding 1,285 species. 

These surveys contributed to Colombia’s title as the country with the world’s largest number of bird species. But most of the specimens ended up in the United States, at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) or Cornell University. “All was taken away, and despite being well kept, it is unavailable for Colombian people,” says Daniel Cadena, an ornithologist at University of the Andes in Bogotá.

Cadena is helping to remedy that with modern expeditions in partnership with several Colombian institutions, as well as AMNH and Cornell. Funded by the Colombian Science, Technology, and Innovation Ministry, the effort aims to record how the nation’s biodiversity has changed and create a stronger national bird collection. Since 2019 the researchers have revisited 7 of the 74 locations that Chapman’s team explored, collecting specimens to be housed at the National University of Colombia and the Humboldt Institute, both in Bogotá.

Community involvement is at the core of the team’s work. Before they visit an area, Nelsy Niño Rodríguez, an anthropologist and biologist who leads the team’s outreach, meets with locals to explain the research process, gather input, and encourage participation. She organizes workshops and educational activities in the communities and training sessions for volunteers. These strategies not only help increase local interest in bird conservation, they also yield results. 

In San Agustín, for example, where Chapman’s team and the Indigenous men he employed once scouted for the Andean Cock-of-the-rock (a relative of the Brazilian species), the researchers spent three days struggling to catch birds with a mist net. Then one of the local crew members, Rosalino Ortiz, an environmentalist and ex-hunter with years of experience following these animals, suggested moving to a spot with more open vegetation. “The next day was crazy! We collected all kinds of birds,” Ortiz says. The catch included a cock-of-the-rock, wild pigeons, and the Maroon-tailed Parakeet, which the researchers thought they had no hope of collecting because of how high it flies. 

Inspired by the experience, Ortiz decided to focus his master’s thesis on strategies to protect the Dusky-headed Brushfinch, a tiny olive-colored bird with a yellow belly that is becoming rare in the area due to rampant deforestation. He also began organizing workshops to train locals and farmers to become bird guides for tourists, a skill that could offer them a sustainable income source. The work, for him, is a way to honor his roots. “I am proud of being born in the countryside,” he says. “I am a campesino, and I will continue to be one.”

O

n a warm October morning in Nazaré, children carry backpacks and thick orange hardcover books to the school, one of the village’s few brick buildings. It’s a Saturday, but they’re excited for this special class, which will introduce them to the 350-page bird guide that their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins created over the past two years. In the classroom, they flick through the book, which is filled with colorful photos and some of the kids’ drawings of avian legends. The teacher tells them their task is to draw the birds they like and present them at the blackboard. 

Some of the nearly 310 species in the guide, like the Azure-naped Jay and Orinoco Piculet, represent the first documentation of these birds in the region. It’s not that these species are all rare—it’s that the area wasn’t systematically studied before, so scientists had never recorded their presence. “We are just starting to know the local avifauna,” Ribas says. Since the Baniwa first launched the survey, they’ve grown less worried for the cock-of-the-rock, whose numbers near the community can fluctuate from year to year. They’re again observing more of the flaming bright birds. 

Ribas plans in the coming years to use avian blood and tissue samples taken during the survey for genomic research, with the Baniwa’s consent. After his visit to the Amazon, Wallace was one of the first to propose that geographic barriers, such as rivers, can help explain species diversity. His theory, later proven correct, was that populations of a species isolated by these features may evolve different traits and diverge into separate species. 

Similarly, Ribas also wants to unravel the relationship between the landscape and biodiversity of the area. By looking at DNA of related bird species and their current distribution, she can see how the Amazon has changed over time. “What we are studying here is a photograph of a landscape that is evolving,” Ribas says. The analysis could also indicate how wildlife will respond to today’s climate changes, which include lower rainfall and drying rivers—trends that already threaten the forest and worry many Indigenous communities across the region.  

For Dzoodzo, one of the few people from his ­community with a master’s degree, this research partnership is a first step toward his lifelong dream of founding an Indigenous university in the forest. He wants to offer youth the opportunity to continue their schooling while remaining in their territory and retaining their culture, rather than leaving for advanced education in cities. He envisions a university built on Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge, together aimed at tackling urgent problems, both local and global. “We have come to understand that alone we will not go very far,” he says. “We will only be able to deal with this climate challenge and planetary crisis through collective solutions.”

Virgília Aragua Almeida, a local Indigenous teacher, is proud of her scientific and cultural contributions to the research and guide. “We are smart enough to make our own books,” she says. “Sometimes all we need is a little help to put our knowledge in the white people’s language.” Trained by the researchers, Almeida preserved specimens and participated in field surveys. Her name is among the guide’s 193 authors, which includes everyone in the community who participated. Now on the primary school’s shelves, among books written only in Portuguese, the new multilingual guide is a testament to intercultural collaboration. 

And unlike the specimens, maps, and notes that Wallace amassed during his four years in the ­Amazon—most of which burned in a fire that overtook his ship on the way back to England—­hundreds of copies of the book will now stay in the community and in other schools in the region, available for readers for generations to come.