Photograph Steve Brookes


Three days before departure he realised that he was developing a hernia. Endless riding on pack animals, without a saddle, kept him in constant pain and in a state of exhaustion. On the first day he suffered an attack of malaria.


days of searching the Raso Helmut Sick and Dante Teixeira came across flight feathers of a Lear’s Macaw that had been shot and eaten by a hunter. “Two days later we ourselves finally met the no longer mysterious macaw in the field…” (Sick, undated but published in 1981). We know from a letter from Sick published in the German magazine


42 BIRD SCENE


Gefiederte Welt in 1979 that the journey was a terrible ordeal for him. Three days before departure he realised that he was developing a hernia. Endless riding on pack animals, without a saddle, kept him in constant pain and in a state of exhaustion. On the first day he suffered an attack of malaria. His young assistants had fever, diarrhoea, sunburn and injuries from spiny plants. The guide got lost and Sick’s robust four-wheel drive vehicle was ruined. After six weeks in the field (including his 69th birthday) he flew to Rio and was operated on for a double hernia.


How fortunate was I to see more


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