Southeastern Peru Amazon

This scene is an original illustration set in Southeastern Peru Amazon. It lies in the tropics, where the climate is tropical rainforest — hot and wet all year.

Dozens of red-and-green macaws cling to a bare clay wall and wheel in front of it. The bank is a sheer ochre-red river cut, and dense rainforest presses in above and around it. The morning light is bright and the birds are loud against the wall.

Why do macaws gather to eat clay from a river bank?

Macaws eat unripe seeds loaded with plant toxins, and the clay binds those compounds so the birds can digest them — the wall is a mineral supplement, not a nest site. Only certain exposed banks work, so the same site is used for generations. A river cutting a fresh clay face through unbroken lowland rainforest places it deep in an equatorial basin.

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