This is bird noted.

To us humans, flooding can often seem like an unmitigated catastrophe.

In the right circumstances, though, when it's predictable and wildlife is well adapted,

flooding can create a biological bonanza.

In the Amazon River basin, annual heavy rains can raise water levels 30 to 40 feet in

just days.

The basin is almost flat, sloping just one inch per mile over its eastward flow to the

Atlantic.

A journey of some 2,000 miles, so when the rain arrives, forests flood, and a massive push

of sediment erects new islands almost overnight.

It's a lush world that scientists and nature travelers explore by boat, where some of the

world's most iconic birds find fruit in the trees or perch at the water's edge.

Two cans of macaques, tiny pygmy kingfishers, tiger herons, and massive ringed kingfishers.

Or appendulas sing a startling refrain.

These birds are part of the richest array of life on Earth, an extraordinary mosaic of

habitats all intricately linked, and all dependent on the river system that holds

one-fifth of all the world's fresh water.

For Bird Note, I'm Mary McCann.