Sue Kaufman, in the Peruvian Amazon

Sue Kaufman, a 20-year veteran of the business world, volunteers with several environmental organizations. She is soon to join Grist's board of directors. Here she chronicles her volunteer activities on a recent expedition with Earthwatch Institute to the Peruvian Amazon..

Today we began work.

We've come five hours upriver to the Tambopata Research Center. At 4:30 a.m., our guides (still our camp counselors) wake us and we stumble through the dark into our uniform of long-sleeve shirts, long pants tucked into our socks, and tall rubber boots. We grab a Tupperware of breakfast and head out. My partner, Tanya, and I have the most high-pressure job: early morning at the clay lick.

The clay lick is about a quarter mile of riverbank with 100 feet of vertical red clay. Actually, although it looks like all red clay, binoculars reveal a variety of colors that, on analysis, have proved to have different mineral and clay contents. The lick is visited by up to 15 species of birds, including our three large macaws, scarlet, red and green, and blue and yellow. They visit for reasons that are not completely understood but are of great interest to Donald Brightsmith, our principal investigator.

Although clay licks occur throughout the Amazon, this may be the largest, with the most species visiting. And Brightsmith has the largest dataset of clay-lick observations -- more than 300,000 data points. Brightsmith is working with a couple of theories as to why parrots and macaws spend time here. Primarily seed eaters, parrots ingest many toxins that the seeds have evolved to preserve them from this very predation. It is thought that the clay in the lick may neutralize these toxins. At the same time, their diet is low in sodium and Brightsmith has found that the birds' favorite parts of the lick are high in that very mineral.

In addition to the insights it provides into the diet and natural history of the birds, the clay-lick research is of importance to ecotourism in the area. It is in many ways ideal for ecotourism. It is relatively predictable, and the birds are spectacular and easy to see. Hence, it represents a significant source of revenue for the area. A large percentage of tourists to the area list macaws as among their reasons to travel here. The research we are aiding will help determine the impact of tourists and other boat traffic (though the word traffic is an exaggeration in this remote spot). This is very germane to the local community, which wants to ensure that it doesn't kill the golden goose, so to speak.

Today, about a dozen species of birds arrive, gather in nearby trees, vocalize loudly, circle the lick ("the dance"), and dare each other to be the first to land. Once one bird goes down to the lick -- today and many days it is a red-bellied macaw -- it is followed by dozens of others: 150 mealy parrots, five blue-headed parrots, and finally a group of larger macaws, the red and green. After a while, they are all flushed by an unknown cause and the ritual begins again, with different species coming and going. For those whose idea of an ecotourism event includes days of plane flights, six to seven hours on a riverboat into the jungle, and getting up at 4:30 a.m., it is a spectacular sight.

But for us it is all business. Although Aida, the manager of the project for the last year, will identify birds and do the count for the initial busy period, it is our job to record ... everything. The first call, the arrival of each species, the departure of our boat, the random boat with a tourist ("Where did that boat come from?" Brightsmith wondered at lunch; not much comes down this way that he doesn't recognize), and, every five minutes, the number of birds, by species, on the lick, and the weather -- all go somewhere on the data sheet.

In the written example it all seemed clear, but things are moving rapidly here in the field. "First call, red-bellied macaw," Aida says, in her calm and subdued way. "The blue-headed parrots arrive." "Did you get the departure of the boat?" "Mealy parrots." Frantically, I search the data sheet for the seemingly random place to record these events. Meanwhile, somehow I keep screwing up the digital watch that is supposed to go off at five-minute intervals. Science is depending on me ...

By 7:00 a.m., the vast majority of birds are gone from the lick -- only a family of Spix's guans, a wild turkey relative, remain. Aida heads back in the boat for breakfast; Tanya and I are in charge. Fortunately for our budding identification skills, lick use for the rest of the morning is limited to the three large species of macaw, scarlet, red and green, and blue and yellow. These are species that even a gringo with aging eyesight could hardly fail to identify.

We settle back to watch the ritual: birds assembling and calling in the trees, circling, and, in the late morning, landing on the lick. After 40 minutes they flush -- perhaps because of the vulture passing over.

We record the spectacle at five-minute intervals, but in between sit back and enjoy it. The tension is building again, the circling, the calling, but before they approach the lick again the boat arrives. 11:00 a.m.: shift change.