We were on the road well before 6 having had a very early breakfast at the lodge. All good wildlife lodges recognise the need for early starts and the Calango Azul was no different. We were headed east, along the road to Balbine, constructed as I understand it in order to create a dam on the Uatuma River. We stopped well before this at the Ramal do Tucumanduba, passing a Variable Chachalaca en route as it exploded across the road. Luckily we missed it.
We were to spend over five hours walking just over mile along the Ramal do Tucumanduba, this is how intense the birding is. It's a reasonably wide track, enough space for two cars to pass in certain places, and also with spots to pull a car off to allow another to get by. I guess we drove a certain distance down it before continuing on foot, possibly a fallen tree had something to do with this but such is the passage of time (this was in late June, it is now September) I cannot now recall.
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| Amazonian Pygmy-Owl |
In short it was excellent birding the whole way along. Collared Forest-falcon was heard early on, and one of the first birds we saw was a Marail Guan, a new species for this family for me. It is hard for me now to remember what came when, and whilst it would be easy to type out a long list of birds (or get my mate Claude to do that) I will just pick a few highlights. I think we saw 58 species, with Brad adding a further 13 or so, so really quite a birdy walk. The big target here was Blue-backed Tanager, a really difficult bird that few people see and one of our most wanted species. Brad picked it up on call and managed to track it down. Pretty sure there was only one bird, but we ended up seeing it several times. Other notablebirds included Screaming Piha, White-throated Manakin, White-fronted Manakin, White-crowned Manakin and Paradise Jacamar. A Pompadour Cotinga was great, but a female so we missed the full pomp and circumstance - they all count though! Black-spotted Barbet showed well, and Antpeople were represented by two Cinereous Antshrike, a Brown-bellied Stipplethroat, two White-flanked Antwren, two Grey Antwren, two Spot-backed Antwren, two Black-headed Antbird, and a Rufous-capped Antthrush. Whilst these were all shades of charcoal grey, a contrast of riotous colour was provided by Flame-crested Tanager, Fulvous-crested Tanager, Fulvous Shrike-Tanager, Silver-beaked Tanager, Blue-backed Tanager, Spotted Tanager, Black-faced Dacnis, Blue Dacnis, and Green Honeycreeper. Most of the this action seemed to happen high above our heads and the trees in the Amazon are particularly tall - we used neck muscles that rarely get a look in and it was very tiring.
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| Blue-backed Tanager |
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| Brad |
Brad also noted that this was a good spot for Blackish Nightjar and sure enough he found one perched close to the edge of the track. Another bird recolated to the track itself which made for a much nicer photograph - it is amazing how close you can get if you are slow and steady. I no longer lie down to take photographs, especially not in countries that host unfavourable Ants, but had I done so the images could have been epic.
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| Blackish Nightjar |
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| Blackish Nightjar |
Hummingbirds were represented by Straight-billed Hermit, two Black-eared Fairy, a Grey-breasted Sabrewing, a Fork-tailed Woodnymph, a Versicoloured Emerald and a Rufous-throated Sapphire. Alas my Sony 200-600mm lens at f6.3 is basically too slow to get anything decent, this is one of those situations where I wished I still had the Canon 500mm f4. What a lens that was. Then again I would likely have left it in the car, towards the end I hated carrying that thing. There were so many other good birds it is hard to know where to start. I really liked the Yellow-billed Jacamar and Paradise Jacamar, but equally the Black-spotted Barbet, Green-backed Trogon and Guianan Violaceous Trogon were pretty sensational as well. This is just what birding in South America is like. If like me you spend much of your birding life wandering round a lifeless inland patch in the UK, birding in South America can almost be too much, you almost can't believe it can be as good as it is and you end up questioning your life choices. Greyish Mourner is less spectacular, but you have to work so hard to actually find it despite being able to hear it that it becomes much more exciting than it fact is. The same can probably be said of Bright-rumped Attila, another fiendishly difficult bird to track down. There were many more birds seen but I'll spare you - have a look at the eBird checklist instead. You can also see the extra list of birds that Brad heard or saw, and that we were too deaf/slow to get on. He did all the eBirding, and so each night when he submitted them we went through the painful task of deleting everything that we had missed!
We returned to Presidente Figueredo for lunch at Urubiu. Tambaqui anyone? To be fair it was really good at this restaurant, expertly grilled right on the street. The place was hugely popular, no doubt because it was the weekend and the swimming area nearby. After lunch we returned east to a site close to our lodge, the Ramal do Bacurau. The main draw here was a Capucinbird lek, I suspect one that is not generally advertised. There were perhaps five birds making the strangest of sounds, a cow in agony or something along those lines, and when you managed to set eyes on one you realised that they looked even odder than they sounded which is quite saying something. Unfortunately they were very high up and mostly obscured by foliage so I don't have any sparkling photos so that you can see what I mean.
We added another Jacamar to our burgeoning collection along this road, Bronzy Jacamar, as well as another Paradise Jacamar, and a Curve-billed Scythebill was a special treat. In a small clearing about to become a lodge was a Grey-breasted Sabrewing, a pair of Corya Wren, and along the track/road we found quite a few birds on the forest edge, usually quite high up, with Fulvous-crested Tanager, a pair of Silver-beaked Tanager, four Opal-rumped Tanager, Green Honeycreeper and Bananaquit. A miniature chicken was also seen, a Rufous-capped Antthrush that stayed deep in cover. There were also some very noisy Variable Chachalaca in a bush that, much like the bird in the morning, exploded out when we passed and kind of ran/jumped higher up into the trees. The only downside to this track was that it was quite busy with cars as it leads to a swimming hole. As the day drew to a close a veritable convoy of vehicles came streaming out, disturbing the birding each time.
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| Yellow-billed Jacamar |
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| Grey-breasted Sabrewing |
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| Green-backed Trogon |
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| White-throated Manakin |
Just before dusk we spent a quick ten minutes at Ramal Comunidade Marcos Freire. Here we noted a Greater Yellow-headed Vulture with four White-throated Toucan, two Rusty-margined Flycatcher, a Variegated Flycatcher, five Tropical Kingbird, and a Silver-beaked Tanager. Quite a birdy ten minutes! Our final stop for the day was at Aldeia Marí Marí. We were here for a really special bird, White-winged Potoo Brad explained that the post they usually landed on, a dead palm trunk, had fallen over in the last year but that he was hopeful that the birds were still present. Sure enough as it became properly dark they started calling and we were able to locate them in trees. Hardly anyone sees this bird apparently, so we had got really lucky - all you need to do is look at the eBird observations, less than 1000. A Great Tinamou was also heard along with a Short-tailed Nighthawk, and a Common Pauraque was on the road as we drove back to the lodge for a bit of food and a beverage.
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