© The Lilac Breasted RollerBatty
Species name: Steatornis caripensisHabitat: Caves, in woodland areas in the north of South America
"Raucous shrieking and frightful retching... which might express the sufferings of sea-sick demons." Not a passage from Milton, though this description by the early 20th-century zoologist John Golding Myers does describe his entry to a kind of earthly hell: a cave of roosting oilbirds.
This split-personality, cave-dwelling oddity, known to North Americans as the guacharo, doesn't seem to know whether it is bat or bird. It echolocates like a bat to perceive its surroundings, but as well as this crude form of sonar, the oilbird has the most sensitive eyes of any vertebrate.
It has feathers and a wingspan of 90 centimetres. It sports a menacing hooked beak. OK - it's a bird, though a weird one. And new evidence suggests that it plays a major role in preserving the forests where it lives.
As Myers noted, oilbirds spend much of their time squabbling in caves, in colonies numbering up to 20,000 birds. Because of the immense numbers living there, the floor is carpeted with guano, which supports a host of insects and other small animals. The birds also put the guano to good use during the breeding season: they build nests with it.
Comment: A new field of science called solastalgia attempts to explain the profound psychological damage that is done when people's connection to the land they love is broken. According to the article "Is there an ecological unconscious", people's minds are inexorably linked to their surroundings: Unfortunately, this experience has relentlessly repeated itself in the history of indigenous peoples around the world and continues unbroken, as we see, today.