Brazil - The Amazon - July 2026 - Day 9 - Manaus - MUSA Tower

It was our final day. Well, morning really. We had a flight out of Manaus and back to Sao Paulo mid afternoon to connect with an international flight to Madrid and then on to London. But there was one last hurrah, a morning on the MUSA observation tower at the Adolphoe Ducke reserve, a huge green square on the north side of Manaus. This was similar to the ZF-2 tower further to the north but right on the edge of Manaus. Looking one direction you saw nothing but green. But turn around and you were looking at the high rise cityscape of Manaus - as I said, a curious place in a curious location.

We arrived in the dark and were let in by the guardian who was also to accompany us to the tower. The reserve is huge but you can't access any of it - the tower is as far as you can go. It's primarily an educational establishment as far as a I can tell, with a number of buildings by the road in which there are various exhibitions about Amazonian life and history, focussed mainly on the indigenous tribes, and then a short circular paved trail to the tower and back with various information plaques, photographs and so on. Crested Owl was calling as made our way to the tower but we couldn't see it.

The tower is 42m high and has a great many steps, equivalent to the ZF-2 tower in almost all respects but felt sturdier somehow, perhaps as it is designed to hold more people, and more importantly, the general public. We had it to ourselves at first light as it had been booked in advance, but shortly after 9am a trickle of visitors began to arrive and almost all of them came up the tower to have a look, but by then of course we were nearly done.

The view south to Manaus

Four Black‑bellied Whistling‑Duck were seen heading our way from miles out and correctly called as ducks, however unlikely, as they came towarrds us. When I got CoPilot to scoop up all the species from eBird and lay them out in chronological text to aid with this series of blog posts it helpfully added a pond into the mix. Maybe there was one? Common Squirrel‑Cuckoo was seen early on, and a few Woodcreepers called from somewhere below us but barring Cinnamon‑throated Woodcreeper and Amazonian Barred‑Woodcreeper we couldn't get on them - I think Red-billed Woodcreeper was one we needed yet couldn't see. Frustrating!

Black-bellied Whistling Duck

The tower was good though, lots of birds. Band‑rumped Swift circled above us as we scanned, and as the morning lightened up we found a Black‑eared Fairy visiting flowering trees below us. The perspective really is amazing. At one stage we were forced to sprint down the tower, all 200+ steps, as Brad heard a Black‑throated Antshrike calling from around the base. This is a super hard bird and so we charged down to try and add it to the list. Success!! Crazily difficult in the dark understory conditions but our guide is just amazing at somehow working out where these things are and getting us on them.

Back up the tower as it warmed up, the first American Black Vultures began to drift over but by and large raptors were notable by their absence. A Green‑backed Trogon called from the mid‑storey, and then the action really started with some Black‑spotted Barbet and handful of Green Aracari moving through fruiting trees to the east of us. Guianan Toucanet followed and then all of a sudden there were a pair of Guianan Puffbird perched more or less at eye level. Where had they come from?

Guianan Puffbird

Green Aracari

Parrots were of course active during this first stage of the morning with maybe two dozen Blue‑headed Parrot, two Mealy Amazon, four Red‑bellied Macaw, and two Red‑and‑green Macaw flying over the forest. A pair of Red‑fan Parrot, perched up distantly allowing for some scope views. My specialty whilst up here was finding distant dots for Brad to ID. In this way we added Spangled Cotinga and a few other things to the day list.

Woodpeckers included two Golden‑collared Woodpecker, a Waved Woodpecker, and a Yellow‑throated Woodpecker, and three Black‑tailed Tityra moved through the canopy. We had good views of some Painted Tody‑Flycatcher, and also added Small‑billed Elaenia, a Guianan Tyrannulet, and Yellow‑backed Tanager.

Painted Tody-Flycatcher

Waved Woodpecker

Palm Tanager

Blue-and-Grey Tanager

Spotted Tanager

Guianan Tyrannulet

Yellow-throated Woodpecker

Black-spotted Barbet

At 9am the reserve opened its gates and it wasn't long after that the first visitors joined us on the tower. Thereafter it became a bit of a procession, and with activity having in any event rather died down we descended to the base to bird our way out of the reserve. We took our time, covering the short distance very slowly. This was very worthwhile with a showy pair of Ferruginous‑backed Antbird close to one of the shelters. Virtually impossible to take a sharp and clear photo as they tended to move quickly over open ground and shutter speeds were glacial. We also added Plain‑brown Woodcreeper, two Short‑tailed Pygmy‑Tyrant , and heard a Pygmy Owl.

Ferruginous-backed Antbird

And that was it! We returned to the hotel to clean up, pack up, and have some lunch, and by 2pm we were at Manaus airport for our flight back to Sao Paulo. I didn't want it to be over and could not stop birding, sneakily adding a Collared Plover on the apron. An uneventful but much busier flight back to the coast and then an extremely stressful sprint through the airport to make our flight to Madrid. Not at all fun - we had been a bit late arriving into GRU and had to also change terminals - I think we were amongst the last people to board and had we been perhaps five minutes slower there is a good chance we would have missed it. All was well in the end though and I slept like a log over the Atlantic. A couple of hours in Barajas and then back to London. What a trip!

There are no more Tambaqui. We ate them all.