Madagascar is called the red island for a
very good reason. The soil consists mainly of brown-red laterite. In the dry season it is very dusty almost everywhere and everything is coloured red in no time. Also the Greater and Lesser Vasa Parrots here were brown coloured by the red-brown dust. So for me it was impossible to determine the subspecies on-site. The first distinct observation we could do
was in the Ankarana Mountains in the north. In the rock face at a lake called Lac Vert
nestled a pair of Greater Vasas. Every morning they flew over the treetops of the forest, where we camped for several days. The conditions were quite primitive. There was no camping place we stayed in the middle of the forest. Food we had brought ourselves, water was taken from an underground river in a cave. The water we disinfected with iodine to make it drinkable. For us it was an interesting area because
we have observed here quite a lot of animals and interesting plants, including reptiles (various geckos), in the streams Pachypanchax homalonotus (small killifish) and Aponogeton madagascariensis (water plant), crown lemurs (Lemur coronatus), Ring-tailed mongoose (Galidia elegans) etc. After climbing the peaks of these pinnacle mountains we descended a cliff, down to the small lake Lac Vert. Down the cliff it appeared an underground river got out
46 BIRD SCENE
from a cave. We walked a little piece into the cave, but had no flashlights. So quickly we walked back to take a bath in the greenish water of the lake. Later it turned out that it was swarming with crocodiles in the cave.......... Because we had no binoculars or
telephoto lenses for our camera, observing the Vasa Parrots was difficult. Moreover, after a few days we had to leave our camp to continue our journey, partly because a group of crown lemurs had plundered our food supply........... About a day’s drive from Ankarana on the
west coast, I saw flying over a Lesser Vasa Parrot on the edge of a mangrove forest. Unfortunately I have not seen more individuals. The other (Lesser) Vasa Parrots we have seen in the zoo and at two traders only. Locals and animal traders told us that Lesser Vasa Parrots (then in 1995 already) were always difficult to find. The bird catchers had to look deeper and deeper into the woods. That probably explains why, in that year,
the export quota for the Greater Vasa Parrot had been reached in October: 3,000 birds! I initially bought a few Greater Vasas but no further export permits were available, luckily I was able to exchange them for Lesser Vasas. Where that 3,000 Greater Vasas went to I do not know, but as far as I know that into Europe not that many have been imported. Anyway, for the Lesser Vasas also a quota
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