Wildlife you can see now
What is worth looking out for this month in Peru?
EndangeredAmazon River Dolphin
Inia geoffrensis
Now is a good time: Best time to see Amazon river dolphins (June to November (low-water season))
South America
Peru is arranged in three parallel bands: a desert coast washed by the cold Humboldt Current, the Andean sierra with the largest tropical mountain range in the world and its glaciers, and the Amazon rainforest, which covers more than half the country. That cold current generates one of the most productive seas on the planet and sustains immense seabird colonies and the largest single-species fishery in the world, that of the anchoveta. In the Amazon, Manu and Tambopata bring together a number of bird and butterfly species hard to match, with clay licks where hundreds of macaws and parrots gather each morning to take in minerals. In the Andes live vicuñas, condors and Andean bears.
National animal: The vicuña, the national animal, on the coat of arms; the Andean cock-of-the-rock is the national bird
The Titicaca water frog lives at almost four thousand metres and never comes to the surface to breathe. It has solved the shortage of oxygen in cold high-altitude water with an enormous baggy skin, gathered into folds that multiply its surface area and through which it absorbs oxygen directly. When it needs to, it rocks back and forth on the bottom to refresh the water around those folds, like someone fanning themselves.
The guano of the coastal islands, piled up over centuries by millions of seabirds thanks to the productivity of the Humboldt Current, supported a nineteenth-century fertiliser industry that financed the state and is today harvested under regulation every few years. The vicuña recovered from a few thousand animals through community shearing.
The clay licks of Tambopata and Manu at dawn for macaws. The Colca canyon in the morning for condors. Paracas and the Ballestas islands year-round for seabirds and sea lions.
What is worth looking out for this month in Peru?
EndangeredAmazon River Dolphin
Inia geoffrensis
Now is a good time: Best time to see Amazon river dolphins (June to November (low-water season))
321 species found
Based on what we already know about Peru.
