Welcome to Jennie of the Jungle!

Meet Aron Smolley, Senior Bird Trainer at the Tracy Aviary in Salt Lake City, Utah. This lucky duck has been working at the Aviary for the last five years. He has worked with many types of birds, including toucans, parrots, vultures, roadrunners, hawks, eagles, owls, crows, cranes, and more! Here are some of the bright birds he's currently working with... Zazu, the wrinkled hornbill Grunt, the colorful king vulture Precocious kea parrots Tropical turaco named Kambo Aron and the Aviary contribute to conservation efforts on a daily basis by using education birds to inspire curiosity and love in those who visit. A love for the natural world and its animals is important in instilling a desire to protect it. Aron not only cares for the birds at the Aviary, he is also responsible for creating and presenting the Aviary's bird shows, which focus on educating visitors about the simple things they can do to protect the environment, birds and their habitat....

Wow, where can I start? I just returned from a stint in the Peruvian Amazon. More specifically, in the Tambopata Research Center (TRC) situated in the Tambopata National Reserve on the upper Tambopata River in the center of a large uninhabited track of primary tropical lowland forest near the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park in the Madre de Dios Region of Peru. Whew! In short, it was beautiful and amazing, and the work I took part in was so important to the conservation of some of the most colorful and spirited birds on the planet. Proyecto Guacamayo, or the Tambopata Macaw Project, is based around a series of clay licks in the area (in fact, this area hosts the highest concentrations of avian clay licks in the world). The director of this project, Dr. Donald Brightsmith, has been working on this project for over 10 years. Dr. Brightsmith was my professor for a month-long tropical ecology field course in Costa Rica in 2000, and was a huge factor in getting me intere...