MANAUS, BRAZIL: AMAZON RAINFOREST & RIVER ISLANDS OCTOBER 4–17, 2019 What simply has to be one of the most beautiful hummingbirds, the Crimson Topaz — Photo: Andrew Whittaker LEADER: ANDREW WHITTAKER LIST COMPILED BY: ANDREW WHITTAKER VICTOR EMANUEL NATURE TOURS, INC. 2525 WALLINGWOOD DRIVE, SUITE 1003 AUSTIN, TEXAS 78746 WWW.VENTBIRD.COM MANAUS, BRAZIL: AMAZON RAINFOREST & RIVER ISLANDS October 4–17, 2019 By Andrew Whittaker Manaus, without doubt, is one of the world’s major birding crossroads, located smack in the middle of the immense Amazon rainforest, 5,500,000 km 2 (2,123,562 sq mi), home to the richest and most mega diverse biome on our planet! This tour, as usual, offered a perfect opportunity to joyfully immerse ourselves into this fascinating birding and natural history bonanza. I have many fond memories of Manaus, as it was my home for more than 25 years and is always full of exciting surprises. I quickly learned that Amazonia never likes to give up any of its multitude of secrets easily, and, wow, there are so many still to discover! Immense rainforest canopy as far as the eye can see of the famous INPA tower — Photo: Andrew Whittaker Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 2 Manaus, Brazil, 2019 Amazonia is much more than just the rainforest, as we quickly learned. We also enjoyed exploring the mighty Amazon waterways on our relaxed boat trips, birding avian-rich river islands while being delighted by the exuberant rainforests on either side of the Negro, each with varied and unique species and different microhabitats. Amazonia never fails, and we certainly had our fair share of many delightful, stunning, and unique avian moments together. Highlights included the king of the raptors, a fantastic Harpy Eagle, and multiple bright, flashy, and colorful species, from gaudy cotingas, parrots, macaws, toucans, aracaris, and toucanets to the smaller manakins and cool barbets. Night, dusk, and pre-dawn excursions produced nightjars, nighthawks, and cool owls too. As is the norm on this great tour, we also managed superlative views of some rarely seen mammals, including the not so cute-looking Golden- handed Tamarin; the ever so cute group of lovely Golden-backed Squirrel Monkeys; and the incredible pod of Pink River Dolphins at arm’s length—certainly a unique display put on by these gorgeous river dolphins. The glorious, peaceful Anavilhanas river islands and myriads of reflections — Photo: Andrew Whittaker Amongst a plethora of avian trip highlights, my favorites included in-your-face views of some of the world’s great glamour birds, from the understory magnificent lekking Guianan Cock-of-the- rock to a superb encounter with a forest gem, the Ferruginous-backed Antbird. The canopy offered scope studies of Dusky Purpletuft and Brown-banded Puffbirds. Remote sandbars Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 3 Manaus, Brazil, 2019 afforded wonderful studies of displaying Sand-colored Nighthawks, and forest borders gave us close encounters with both magnificent male Fiery and Crimson topaz (displaying), the latter in our lodge grounds! However, for me, the icing on the cake has to have been our colorful cotingas, which I have loved ever since getting the famous David Snow book on the cotingas. We had great scope views of the holy grail of cotingas, the rarely seen Crimson Fruitcrow; stupendous studies of male Pompadour and Spangled cotingas as they lit up the forest canopy; and a flashy Guianan Red-Cotinga in the midstory. However, none of us will ever forget the extremely odd un-bird-like chainsaw call from the equally odd-looking Capuchinbird, which we were privileged to see so well. The find of the trip at a new site was a response to playback of a magnificent Capuchinbird – Photo: Andrew Whittaker. This tour has been carefully planned, allowing us time to explore two exciting and extremely different avian endemic centers, the Guianan shield (east of the Negro) and the distinct west bank of the Negro and its Imiri center, as well as to experience the wonders of two of the world’s mightiest rivers (the Amazon and Rio Negro), both so much fun to explore by boat and so completely different! We had time to enjoy these two very contrasting habitats along with their exciting but very different avian riches of white versus black water river island specialists. Engulfing and surrounding these immense waterways was the vast and mega-rich Amazon rainforest, which certainly enchanted all. Every day was like opening a Christmas present as we experienced firsthand how exotic and fascinating its wildlife can be. We also enjoyed the forest from as many different angles as possible and the mysterious canopy (from a couple of superb canopy towers), and we explored secluded forest trails and remote dirt roads amongst towering grandfathers of the forest emergents. Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 4 Manaus, Brazil, 2019 A difficult to see canopy inhabitant is the lovely Caica Parrot – Photo: Andrew Whittaker The Amazon is simply brimming with life and produced an incredible list of non-stop highlights. We marveled at many of its unique colorful birds and forest skulkers, as well as its wild-looking plants, colorful flowers, and myriad of insects. Another angle so often missed in our society of big cities was the ability to experience wonderful Amazonian sounds and aromas, and to appreciate hearing the shifts from the day crew to the very different sounds of the dusk on the night shift. Drifting on a calm evening from our boat rides, amazingly pleasant scented evening flower fragrances sometimes filled the fresh dusk air. Every day we stumbled upon and learned about another truly fascinating intricate symbiotic relationship giving us a brief insight into just why Amazonia possesses such a mega complex and bio-rich web of life. We enjoyed great studies of Golden-handed Tamarin — Photo: Andrew Whittaker The tour began in Manaus where several of you enjoyed our birdy hotel grounds on the edge of the city before the tour started, with impressive views of close-up feeding Scarlet Macaw being one of the many highlights. We officially began the tour with an exciting early pre-dawn visit to Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 5 Manaus, Brazil, 2019 a private forest and a wonderful well-constructed 55 m canopy tower (something not to be missed). Pre-dawn, we waited for unseasonal rain to stop before climbing into this fascinating realm of the rainforest canopy. Here toucans were in abundance, with great scope looks at many White-throated and Channel-billed toucans, plus Green Aracari. Parrot fly-bys (at eye level) kept us happy with a mix of colors while a wonderful female Guianan Toucanet graced a nearby canopy fruiting tree. A small flock of exotic looking Caica Parrots—always hard to see well—perched in a nearby tree top. Fruiting trees rewarded us with Red-billed Pied Tanager, Yellow-tufted Woodpecker, and many more honeycreepers. And let’s not forget the joyful dawn chorus of the forest below and the stunning Resplendent Quetzal of the butterfly world, our first of many dazzling Blue Morphs on the forest trail as we descended to the forest floor. Here too, a distant Lined Forest-Falcon call lured me back down a new trail. Ten minutes later we enjoyed great looks after playback worked, luring out this secretive forest raptor along with a lovely Great Jacamar and the flock-leading Fulvous Shrike-Tanager. A responsive Lined Forest-Falcon was a nice reward — Photo: Andrew Whittaker Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 6 Manaus, Brazil, 2019 Our first exciting full day birding was spent exploring the rich birdlife on white-water river islands and várzea forest along the nearby mighty Amazon. The amazing dynamics of the fierce currents of this, the mightiest of all rivers, was surreal and never ceases to amaze me. High waters (annually rise and fall 40 feet) had ripped apart many of my favored river islands, quickly changing the map and everything else too. However, we managed a joyful day picking up many of the targeted riverine specialists, as well as some interesting boreal migrant shorebirds and breeding terns and skimmers. Pre-dawn found us speeding over the famous “meeting of the waters” where the Negro flows into the Amazon without mixing for 5 miles. Here we explored the different dynamic types of transitional island vegetation in the várzea forest domain (white- water flooded forest). We jumped off our skiff onto various islands seeking out the special island specialties: the cute Black-and-white Antbird; Sand-colored Nighthawks; the striking Spot-breasted Woodpecker; Oriole Blackbird; Short-tailed Parrot; White-bellied and Parker’s spinetails; Lesser Hornero; the Cecropia specialist Pearly-breasted Conebill; cool-looking Riverside Tyrant; and delicate (bad hairdo) River Tyrannulet. Shorebirds abounded with great flocks of mostly Pectoral and White-rumped sandpipers seen at close quarters, and even a flock of Hudsonian Godwits! A stunning close up Black-and-white Antbird — Photo: Andrew Whittaker Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 7 Manaus, Brazil, 2019 After enjoying a great meal on the floating restaurant in the lake reserve, we walked along the elevated boardwalk through the mid-story of the várzea forest where we were rewarded with close observations of a foraging group of cute Golden-backed Squirrel Monkeys. This was followed by wonderful close-up looks at three incredible cryptic woodcreeper species: Zimmer’s, Straight-billed, and Striped, and enjoying the famous giant Vitória-régia (Gigantic Waterlily). Here Marty found a wonderful Sunbittern, much to everyone’s delight! Golden-backed Squirrel Monkey on the Amazon — Photo: Andrew Whittaker The following day we crossed the mighty Rio Negro over the new impressive (White Elephant) road bridge to the west bank, entering into the realms of the exciting “Imeri endemic centre.” Here, our base was in the quaint riverine town of Novo Airão (famous for its boat-building) in our family-run forested lodge.