From 23 April to May 1976, J. A. Dick and W. B. McGillivray obtained a reference collection of bird specimens and studied aspects of the natural history and ecology of the avifauna of the Saül area.

In 1977, from 21 January-27 February, W. B. McGillivray with D. J. Brooks returned to Saül to continue the fieldwork. The specimens acquired during the first trip are housed in the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Toronto, Canada and those of the second trip in the Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas (KU), Lawrence, Kansas.

In 1976, J. A. Dick and W. B. McGillivray set 10, 12-m mist nets in a row in mature rainforest 3 km SE of Saül. The families Apocynaceae, Bursaraceae, Lecythidaceae, Sapotaceae, Leguminosae, Rubiaceae, Anacardiaceae, Moraceae and Arecaceae were conspicuously represented in the rainforest.

Most acquisition in 1976, apart from netted birds, was done along the road to the airstrip or near the airstrip itself. In 1977, mist nets were set up in the same area as in 1976. Also in that year, two nets were placed at heights of 10 and 15 m near a flowering Miconia tree along the airport road. (lire la suite…)

One group of brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) was observed for 19 months in French Guiana. White Hawks (Leucopternis albicollis) were seen in association with these monkeys throughout the year.

Our study revealed that :

(1) hawks mainly followed capuchins in open forest types, and in this vegetation they mainly flew at the height of 10-20 m from the ground where horizontal visibility is better than in other strata of the forest, (lire la suite…)

In French Guiana, the nesting of the Rufous-tailed Flatbill (Ramphotrigon ruficauda) occurs during the main dry season from mid-July to the end of October.

This rain forest inhabitant nests exclusively at the bottom of cavities in the end of broken trunks or large fallen branches near the ground. (lire la suite…)

L’analyse d’un milieu aussi complexe que la forêt tropicale sud-américaine ne peut être envisagée qu’à long terme et avec de gros moyens, aussi avons-nous entrepris dans un premier temps l’étude d’une “fraction” de cet ecosystème.

Sans ignorer les multiples interactions qui lient tous les organismes vivant dans la même biocénose, nous avons considéré tout spécialement une communauté de mammifères frugivores arboricoles nocturnes et les principales espèces végétales qu’ils exploitent. Le milieu choisi, forêt secondaire néotropicale, représente un stade de la régénération forestière. (lire la suite…)

This report describes the results of nonvolant mammal inventory fieldwork at Paracou, a lowland rainforest locality in northern French Guiana, and concludes the faunal analysis introduced by our previous monograph on the bats of Paracou (Simmons and Voss, 1998).

Working within a 3-km radius over the course of 202 sampling dates from 1991 to 1994, we recorded a total of 64 nonvolant species by conventional trapping, arboreal platform trapping, pitfall trapping, diurnal and nocturnal hunting, and interviews with local residents. Included in this total species count are 12 marsupials, 9 xenarthrans, 6 primates, 10 carnivores, 5 ungulates, and 22 rodents. (lire la suite…)