Walks round and about the lodge

Tags

Brazil, caiman, cattle tyrant, chaco chachalaca, coati, hyacinth macaw, marmoset, monk parakeet, Pantanal, peach-fronted parakeet, Pouso Alegre, rhea, rufous hornero, tega, toco toucan

Most mornings we were up around 6.00 am, sometimes earlier. Today, Sunday 20th September, some went for a short guided walk before breakfast;  I just wandered around a bit on my own for a few minutes.  I, and no doubt everyone else, had been woken by the noisy ‘hoarse, harsh cackling’, to quote my bird book, of these:

Chaco chachalacas – on my roof

They were everywhere we went in the Pantanal, and it was rare that their characteristic loud calls, instantly recognisable, were not, at least faintly, somewhere in the soundscape.  Others tired of them, but I never did.

You practically tripped over cattle tyrants.  Where people were, they were.

Hyacinth macaws, the second heaviest member of the parrot family, are globally endangered, but they are seen quite frequently in the Pantanal, and have adopted some of the lodges at which to settle and breed.  Their squawking is just slightly more musical than that of the chachalacas.

After our early breakfast, we all went out for a walk,

in this sort of terrain, which would be flooded in the wet season.

It was a pleasure to see the occasional flower, or flowering tree, but given that it was the end of the dry season, it was not surprising that we saw few at all during the nine days.

We didn’t see many coatis either. They are about the size of a domestic cat, and here is my best picture of a very distant one.

Toco toucan

Two baby caiman

Quite sweet really, head about 2 inches wide

Marmoset

Thousands of snail shells were at our feet.  Once snails have bred and left their eggs in the ground to develop in during the next wet season, they are a valuable part of the food chain, nourishing especially birds like snail kites, but many other creatures as well.

These shells are all empty.

Back at the lodge, before and after lunch we just sat or wandered around, observing the many creatures to be seen within 50 yards or so

A tega lizard. Picture of what he did next (poop) on request.

Chaco chachalaca and mango

Monk parakeets

Peach-fronted parakeet. Sadly the mangos were not ripe enough for our digestions.

Rufous hornero

Red-crested and yellow-billed cardinals

Rheas were unconcerned at our presence and one could approach quite close to them.

Time for a siesta.

The Brazilian Pantanal

Tags

Amazon kingfisher, black-collared hawk, Brazil, brocket deer, caiman, caiman lizard, capybara, crab-eating fox, egret, Jabiru, Pantanal, Pouso Alegre, rhea, rufescent tiger heron, seriema, Transpantaneira, wood stork

If on a map you bisect South America into equal halves, from various points, then where your lines cross is the Pantanal, ‘South America’s Wetland Jewel’, 210,000 sq km (half the size of California, and 20 times the size of the Everglades), average width 500 km, average altitude around 130 m, of seasonally flooded swampland.  70% of it lies in Brazil. Bolivia and Paraguay share the rest. The wet season is from November to March. The Pantanal’s low population lives mainly by cattle ranching. It is one of the most spectacular areas on earth for wildlife.  Its main habitats are grassland (31%) two kinds of woodland, marshes, forest, and floating mats.

We were there, in the Mato Grosso, towards the end of the dry season.  We expected  temperatures to be in the high 20°s C in the day, and coolish evenings. In fact we experienced the high 30°s, with little relief later in the day.  It was also humid, loved by various biting and stinging insects.  No matter – it was all worth it. This is the first of perhaps 15 photo-blogs about the trip.

On Saturday 19th September, 24 hours after leaving home, after lunch, I found myself with 10 other wildlife tourists and two naturalist guides, Nick from the UK and Fiorella (Italian name, Peruvian nationality) at Poconé, transferring into this safari truck for a four-hour journey to our first lodge.  How we welcomed the (albeit warm) breeze its open sides allowed, quite apart from the viewing opportunities they gave.

What an introduction to the area’s wildlife, as we travelled initially in cerrado woodland, then on the only road into (but piercing less than halfway across) the Pantanal, the 148 km Transpantaneira, with its 120 ‘bridges’ (dicey wooden same-level crossings of streams and ditches).

Amazon kingfisher

Those white blobs are metre-high termite mounds

Plumbeous ibis

A note on the names of birds. Birders were thrilled to see and or hear over 200 different bird species while we were there.  I managed to learn the name of perhaps 20, and to photograph perhaps the same number, though these do not necessarily coincide.  If I give no name here, it means I don’t know or have forgotten it.  An ‘?’ means I am fairly sure, a ‘??’ means I think it might be.  I shall hope perhaps to refine these over the coming weeks, but with a ten-day trip to cover, I prefer to get on with the account than spend hours at this stage trying to find them in my 2000+ page bird book.  Any assistance with the task would be appreciated…

Red-legged seriema

Now we saw more creatures of the waterways, crowded closer together as the swamps had all but dried out.

Rufescent tiger heron which has just taken a baby caiman

Chased off by parent caiman

A note on my photographs.  I have preferred to use pictures which tell the story best rather than those which are technically the best.  Moving and/or wobbly vehicles, (truck and boats), dust, haze, rain, misted lenses, very low light at dawn and dusk, made for difficult photographic conditions at times.  Them’s my excuses anyway.

Our first Rhea

Wood stork

Black-collared hawk

Capybara with Wattled jacanas, cooling off

Caiman lizard, about a metre long

Great egrets

Great egrets, Jabiru storks and possibly Snowy and/or Cattle egrets

Egrets with Caiman. These crocodilians are up to 7 feet long, not nearly as terrifying as their more well-known relatives, though it was these which used to be taken to make ‘crocodile’ goods etc.

We had turned off the Transpantaneira, and were but two or three kilometres from our first lodge, when the driver announced that we had a flat tyre.  We were obliged to get off for a while, so went for a walk along the track.  Exhausted as we were after all that travelling, we were pleased nevertheless to see creatures we might otherwise have missed.

Red brocket deer

Brown brocket deer

and several more birds. No-one was sorry though to climb back on the truck, shortly afterwards to arrive, at dusk, at the place where were to stay for the next two nights:

Despite our exhaustion we were persuaded by our naturalist guides to go for a night drive, where, ‘lamped’ by Fiorella, a Pauraque (nightjar)

and a crab eating fox were revealed to us,

along with a crab-eating racoon, of which I did not get a photo.

Bed was never more welcome.