MANAUS, AMAZONAS, BRAZIL – 7th to 28th September, 2018 A SHORT REPORT FOR TRAVELING BIRDERS Petri Hottola (
[email protected]) FIG. 1. An immature Grey Hawk at Ramal Bons Amigos, a confusing Leucopternis-look-alike not (adequately) portrayed in field guides. The following text is going to include brief updates on car rental, accommodations and birding sites in the Manaus region of Amazonas, in an area within the triangle of Presidente Figueiredo – Rio Tupana – Novo Airão. It is based on subjective experiences of a solo visitor on a three week route of 3.100 km, between sites of public access, in September 2018. National parks, exclusive private reserves and upscale tourism services in general were avoided because of their inevitable red tape and time-consuming & anti-birding regulations, not to mention as a rule exorbitant entry fees. At the time of the visit, I suffered from a broken sacrum and had to limit my explorations accordingly. It was challenging enough to manage the flight timetable changes by Latam, which made my frog-leaping return transits 42 h and 46 h long, respectively. Overall, I was nevertheless quite happy with the self-organized visit, to which Juha Honkala (Kon-Tiki Tours) and Bradley Davis (Birding Mato Grosso) also contributed with their expert advice. Birding was great and no significant problems were encountered on the road. All in all, 415 species of birds were recorded, about 150 of which were lifers for me, and 12 species of mammals. Food was good, accommodations were fair, people in most cases welcoming and expenses low because of an exceptionally weak real at the time of the journey, few weeks before Brazilian presidential elections.