As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Sunday 1 July 2018

The secret treasure found off Peru’s coast: bird dung


Guano remains a highly prized fertilizer, and Peru is at the top of the field thanks to the gigantic quantity of oily anchovies that guano birds feast on – which makes their dung valuable – and the unusual nature of Peru’s desert coast. It never rains, so the guano just piles up.
June 23, 2018 at 8:45 am
By Lucien Chauvin | Washington Post
LIMA, Peru — Bird droppings are a nuisance for most people, but in Peru they have been a closely guarded treasure since pre-Columbian times.
Guano, a gentler word for dung, is one of the few words in English derived from Quechua, the language of the Incas. The Incas used guano harvested from islands that dot Peru’s 1,500-mile coastline as fertilizer. They fiercely guarded the source. And execution was the ultimate punishment for anyone who disturbed the sea birds or the islands where they deposited dung.
Execution is off the table today, but not much else has changed. The Peruvian government maintains strict control over the islands, which are part of a coastal protected reserve. Guano remains a highly prized fertilizer, and Peru is at the top of the field thanks to the gigantic quantity of oily anchovies that guano birds feast on — which makes their dung valuable — and the unusual nature of Peru’s desert coast. It never rains, so the guano just piles up.
Guano is harvested much the same way it was hundreds of years ago, with a squadron of workers manually scraping, sifting and bagging it. The government, through a division of the Agriculture and Irrigation Ministry, selects about 400 men each year to work eight months as harvesters. More than 60 percent of the workers return from one harvest to the next, and many are relatives. The work is limited to one or two islands, sometimes three, in each campaign.

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