Leishmaniasis

Sedge Wren, Cerro de Hula, Honduras

I usually write about birds or butterflies here in these pages, and occasionally about bats, but not very often about me. However, the previous entry, Frederick's story, has a little tail, and it concerns me. If it wasn't for him, I would never have gone to the Alonso Suazo Medical Center in Tegucigalpa, where last week one of the doctors noticed a skin lesion on my right hand, and asked me "what is that, and how long have you had that?"

When I answered her that I didn't know what it was, and that I've had it for almost two years, she said: "It looks like possible leishmaniasis. You should have that checked out. Why don't you go to the laboratory here on the third floor."

This I did, but it was Friday afternoon, and they had already closed. I was asked to come back Monday. 

That Monday, a skin biopsy was carried out. The next day, I went back there and was informed that I had tested positive for leishmaniasis.

Leishmaniasis is a tropical disease spread by the bite of the female sandfly. There is visceral leishmaniasis and cutaneous leishmaniasis. The former is more dangerous; I have the latter. If left untreated, this disease is often fatal, for it is a parasite that attacks the immune system. Another disease comes along and the body fails to engage its immune system, and you die. World-wide, about 60,000 people, mostly infants, die from visceral leishmaniasis each year. Treatment of cutaneous leishmaniasis, however, is often successful and the cure is complete. 

The skin lesion on my hand is where the sandfly bit me. Hopefully, it will disappear over the next three weeks.

Treatment here in Honduras consists of a series of 40 injections over a period of 20 days. Since I live about 45 minute drive from that medical center in Tegucigalpa, I researched the possibility to have these shots delivered by my local medical center, but it turns out that they are not adequately staffed to make that happen. So the next two and a half weeks (I started yesterday, on my birthday), I will be driving to Tegucigalpa and back every day for these shots. It is important that I follow the regimen without missing a day. The shots are not painful. On the 17th of February, I will have the good fortune to receive not two but three shots: the last one in the anti-rabies treatment, plus the two for leishmaniasis. Meanwhile, I will continue working here, monitoring bird and bat mortality at a wind farm in Honduras.

This is the second tropical disease that I've had now. I had dengue fever back in 2009 in Veracruz. That was no picnic, but ultimately harmless. (For me, that is. Not for infants and the elderly.) Both diseases were contracted through insect bites. The lesson here is that a mosquito bite in the tropics is not always just that, and that I need to be more pro-active regarding insect repellence, and more careful to have lesions or other oddities looked into.

Next time, I plan to write again about birds. We have what appears to be a large population of Sedge Wrens up in Cerro de Hula, where we live. Since a few weeks, these birds have been singing everywhere, and I've recorded several of them. Xeno-canto has a huge collection of Sedge Wren recordings, but none from Central America.

Finally, I want to advise my readers that I am temporarily without internet, and have to grab whatever little bit of wireless I can get at fast food restaurants in Tegucigalpa these days. If you write me, please be patient. I will reply, but it may take me a while.

Frederick the fruit bat

Last week, we found a bat entangled in a barbed wire fence . It was hanging less than a meter from the ground, with one of its wings wrapped around the barbed wire. It was still alive.

We untangled it and took it home, where we gave it water and a rehydration solution. We fed it with a pipet, from which it readily drank.

We fed it every two to three hours, and between feedings we hung it on a little stick propped inside a closet, in the guest bedroom. 

We soon grew attached to it, and named him - it was a male - Frederick. He had some wing damage from being stuck on the fence, but otherwise seemed in rather good condition. Once rehydrated, he became quite active.

Frederick is a Jamaican (or Mexican, or Common) Fruit Bat, Artibeus jamaicensis. This species occurs throughout Mexico and Central America, and northern South America. Naturally, fruit bats are a lot easier to care for than insectivorous bats. We made him a banana and watermelon smoothie, which he lapped up readily! 

As Fred got more active, he also tried to fly. At one point we heard noises coming from the room, looked at each other, and said "he must be trying to fly". We went in, and there he was, spread-eagled on the floor, making short flappy jumps. When I reached to pick him up, he bit me.

At first, I didn't think much of it. I cleaned the bite wound on my thumb, and we continued to feed Frederick. A couple of feedings later, he seemed ready to be released. After nightfall, we hung him on a piece of string under a little tree in our yard, and gave him a piece of banana. Twenty minutes later, Fred was still there but the banana was gone. Later that evening, we gave him another piece. The next morning, Frederick was gone.

I researched the bat bite a little on the internet, and learned that any kind of bite from a bat is cause for concern; and that after thoroughly cleaning the bite site, I should also seek medical assistance. This I did: the local hospital did not have the anti-rabies vaccine, but they suggested I go to the town's medical center. That was already closed, so I went the next morning, after our field work.

Our medical center here did not have any anti-rabies vaccine, it turned out. They suggested I contact my medical insurance. They referred me to a medical center in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, which is a 45 min drive from here. 

Once we got there and I was checked into the medical center, there was nothing else to do but wait my turn in the crowded hallway. I re-read Alice in Wonderland beginning to end, and had just started on Through the Looking-Glass, when I was called in for an exam.

After hearing my story, and after finding out the bat was no longer in our possession, medical staff there advised me that very likely I was not infected with rabies, but that I should follow an anti-rabies cure, just to be safe. I received a tetanus injection and the first of a series of anti-rabies injections.

So now I'm traveling to Tegucigalpa every day for my shot of anti-rabies vaccine. My regimen prescribes six shots over a period of six days, then one more shot ten days later. I need to be back there for medical exams two more times after that, once in February and once in April.

I'm the darling of the nurses there. There's usually seven or eight nurses attending me, and they take pictures of me receiving the shots almost every time. I'm not quite sure why. When they asked me why I was there, I explained that I was bitten by a bat, and I reassured them that they were quite safe: the bite had not turned me into a vampire. 

A few days before we found Frederick, we found another fruit bat, also entangled in barbed wire. This bat (we called her Mathilda) had been hanging out in the sun for almost a day, and was severely dehydrated. Her condition was much worse than Frederick's, and despite our care, she died a day later.

Barbed wire fences, apparently, are a threat to fruit bats around the world, as this Australian poster from bats.org.au shows. 

eBirding Honduras

Cassin's Kingbird, Jan 23, 2012, Cerro de Hula, Honduras

eBird, an online database for bird observations launched in 2002 by Cornell University and National Audubon Society, now routinely logs over a million bird observations each month!

The vast majority of those sightings are of course from the United States and southern Canada. Certain localities - the more populated areas on both coasts - receive ample coverage.

Recently, eBird asked its community of birders to make an effort and contribute checklists from 'under-birded' areas, typically areas where fewer birders live.

The other day, upon hearing I was now in Honduras for a whole year, a friend of mine from Massachusetts asked me whether I was eBirding down here at all.

"All the time!" I said. (According to eBird, I've submitted 26 checklists so far this month.)

Not surprisingly, Honduras is a seriously under-birded country. Very few birders live here, and few birders visit (compared to countries like Costa Rica, Panama and Belize, or even Guatemala or Mexico). Thus, it is not unusual to find birds here that have few or no Honduran reports in eBird. Here's a sample from just the last few days:

Ash-throated Flycatcher, Jan 22, 2012, Los Noques, Honduras

Sunday, Roselvy and I went to a nearby valley, where we encountered an Ash-throated Flycatcher, a species rarely reported this far south. Other Myiarchus flycatchers, like Dusky-capped, Brown-crested, Nutting's, or Great Crested, are more frequently observed.

eBird records for Ash-throated Flycatcher in Central America as per Jan 24, 2012 (data courtesy of ebird.org)

The only other Central American record of Ash-throated in eBird is from a 2004 checklist submitted from Nicaragua (species crossed off as 'present', without further details).

Ring-necked Ducks, Jan 22, 2012, Los Noques, Honduras

Also Sunday, at the same place, we found a group of 12 Ring-necked Ducks (a male and two females pictured above).

eBird records for Ring-necked Duck in Central America as per Jan 24, 2012 (data courtesy of ebird.org)

The only other Honduran record in eBird for this species is from 2008, Lake Yojoa, where 4 individuals were seen. Our Ring-necked Ducks were in company of two female Lesser Scaup, a more expected species in Central America.

Ruddy Duck, Jan 22, 2012, Los Noques, Honduras

Ruddy Duck is also rare in Honduras. eBird has one other record, 10 individuals seen in 2008.

Cassin's Kingbird, Jan 23, 2012, Cerro de Hula, Honduras

Cassin's Kingbird is probably rare almost anywhere in Central America.

eBird records for Cassin's Kingbird in Central America as per Jan 24, 2012 (data courtesy of ebird.org)

There's a January 2010 record from Nicaragua in eBird, but that's it. The bird we found yesterday in Cerro de Hula could not be relocated today.

Each bird mentioned above we found within a radius of 10 minutes driving time from our house, in unprotected areas. While doing point counts today (at only 3 minutes from our house), we saw or heard several Sedge Wrens, many Grasshopper Sparrows, four Wilson's Snipe... all birds that are infrequently reported in Honduras.

This begs the question whether all these birds are genuinely rare in the region, or have simply been overlooked. Over time, eBird will provide the answer.

Plumbeous Vireo

Last week, Roselvy and I moved into our new house in Santa Ana, in the department of Francisco Morazan, Honduras, where we will be working with birds for an entire year. We already love it here, with lots of cool birds in the surrounding pine-oak forests.

One notable member of the bird community here is a Central American subspecies of Plumbeous Vireo.

Plumbeous Vireo became its own species in 1997, when the AOU split the Solitary Vireo into three species: Cassin's, Plumbeous and Blue-headed Vireo. All three are field-identifiable, with the most western Cassin's Vireo of California, Oregon, Washington and southern British Columbia more or less intermediate in appearance between the drab gray Plumbeous Vireo of the Intermountain West and the more colorful Blue-headed Vireo of the northeastern and boreal forest.

The Central American subspecies of the Plumbeous Vireo found in El Salvador and Honduras is actually more similar to Cassin's Vireo than it is to northern Plumbeous Vireo populations. Currently, the two subspecies recognized in Central America are notius (Belize) and montanus (El Salvador and Honduras), although these subspecies sometimes have been considered synonymous (Curson & Goguen 1998). Monroe (1968) considered the Honduran subspecies to be notius rather than montanus.

In this subspecies, the sides of the breast and belly are greenish (not gray), the secondaries have greenish edges (not gray), and there is a subtle contrast between the blueish gray head and the greenish gray back, unlike the all-gray head and back of the northern Plumbeous Vireo.

The vocalizations are different too. Here's some footage of a bird calling in response to my Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl imitation.

I also recorded some song. The same individual first sang a more or less continuous song, followed by a different song consisting of shorter, more hesitant phrases.


Cited literature
Curson, David R. and Christopher B. Goguen. 1998. Plumbeous Vireo (Vireo plumbeus), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/366
Monroe, Jr., B. L. 1968. A distributional survey of the birds of Honduras. Ornithol. Monogr. 7.

White-breasted Hawk

adult male White-breasted Hawk, Honduras, December 2011

White-breasted Hawk is a little known raptor from the Central American pine-oak forest. Officially (AOU) still a subspecies of the Sharp-shinned Hawk, most authors agree that this form should really be its own species. Currently, ten subspecies of Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus) are recognized, which can be subdivided in three main groups: the striatus (Sharp-shinned) group which contains four subspecies on the North American mainland and three island ssp; the Central American chionogaster (White-breasted) group with just one subspecies; and the erythronemius (Rufous-thighed) group with two South American subspecies (Bildstein & Meyer 2000). Future DNA work is likely to result in a split into at least three species: Sharp-shinned Hawk; White-breasted Hawk; and Rufous-thighed Hawk.

tail of adult male White-breasted Hawk, Honduras, December 2011

We caught this adult male while banding in Monte Uyuca (Honduras) last week. We have been banding there every month for two years now, and regularly see White-breasted Hawks around the net lanes. This was the first time we caught it here. Note (browner) retained outer rectrices from a previous molt generation.

Upperside wing ad male White-breasted Hawk, Honduras, December 2011

Upperside wing shot. Note the difference in (browner) retained primary coverts compared to (slaty) fresher secondary coverts.

adult male White-breasted Hawk, Honduras, December 2011

After we released the bird, it perched in a nearby tree. It may be worth noting that the tibial feathers appear white, like the rest of the underparts. Bildstein & Meyer (2000) describe light ochraceous-buff tibial feathering for the adult White-breasted Hawk...

juvenile male Sharp-shinned Hawk, Honduras, December 2011

Another first for the site was this juvenile male Sharp-shinned Hawk. We caught it two days later during the same pulse.

juvenile male Sharp-shinned Hawk, Honduras, December 2011

White-breasted Hawk is a resident species here in Honduras; Sharp-shinned Hawk is a winter visitor to the region.

References
Bildstein, Keith L. and Ken Meyer. 2000. Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/482