BRAZIL: THE PANTANAL & AMAZON 26 July – 7 August 2009 Tour leader: Nick Athanas Report by Nick Athanas Photos by the author unless otherwise indicated. Photo below: Scarlet-headed Blackbird. It’s a hard combo to beat – the vast primeval Amazonian forests of Cristalino and the non-stop wildlife show of the Pantanal, where pretty much the only way to stop seeing stuff is to close your eyes. There’s also a bit of cerrado birding thrown in to add some spice and variety, where you can quickly see a bunch of neat birds not available elsewhere on the tour. This year, despite a harpy and the mega-diveristy of Cristalino Lodge, it was Pousada Piuval that stole the show. It has always been good, which is why it features in the itinerary, but this year it was just jaw-dropping, mind-blowingly out-of-this world incredible. There were birds literally everywhere you looked. Vast numbers of birds, insane daily species lists topping out at 174 seen on one day (maybe a TB record?), normally tough birds like Great Rufous Woodcreepers pretty much on the doorstep, and quite simply a huge amount of fun. Mammals got better as we went deeper into the Pantanal, with the likes of Ocelot , Giant Otter , Giant Anteater , and Brazilian Tapir all featuring. I apologize now for the brevity of this report – I’ve had an insane guiding schedule over the last few months, and only a few days before my next one begins. But that’s the way I like it. The Chapada dos Guimarães We spent a couple of days in and around this plateau just northeast of the city of Cuiabá. It’s a picturesque region with scenic views, waterfalls, great accommodation, and some birds that we can’t get anywhere else on the itinerary. Much of the habitat is cerrado , a type of savanna characterized by dense bushes and short trees; it doesn’t look very impressive, but it has a lot of really cool birds in it. Birding here is easy due to the open nature of the habitat, but you have to do it early in the morning or late in the afternoon before it gets blazing hot. Some of the birds we saw in the cerrado include Horned Sungem , White-vented Violetear , Blue-tufted Starthroat (which amazingly we saw at Piuval as well), White-eared Puffbird , Checkered Woodpecker , Red-and-green and Blue-winged Macaws , Plain-crested Elaenia , Chapada Tropical Birding www.tropicalbirding.com 1 Flycatcher , Rufous-sided Pygmy-Tyrant , Collared Crescentchest , Curl-crested Jay , White-rumped , White-banded , Black-faced , & Cinnamon Tanagers , Black-throated Saltator , Plumbeous Seedeater , and a female Coal-crested Finch . White-banded Tanager Blue-tufted Starthroat Birding the gallery forest gets you out of the sun, and it’s a nice place to spend late morning or mid-afternoon. We had great luck with a Pavonine Cuckoo , having one come in close and sit in the open for prolonged scope views, while some of the other birds in here were Planalto Slaty-Antshrike , White-bellied Warbler , Sirystes , Saffron-billed Sparrow , and Rusty- fronted Tody-Flycatcher . Our hotel, the luxurious Pousada Penhasco, is in a beautiful setting perched near the edge of the plateau, with a panoramic view hard to beat anywhere. It’s a great place for raptors, and we saw Black-and-white Hawk-Eagle , Bat Falcon , and King Vulture here. In late afternoon, when the forest has gotten dark and quiet, you can see a lot of birds just by walking around the grounds, like Burnished-buff Tanager , Thick-billed Euphonia , and Burrowing Owl . Burrowing Owl Burnished-buff Tanager Tropical Birding www.tropicalbirding.com 2 The Amazon: Alta Floresta and Cristalino Jungle Lodge The southern Amazon is easy to access from Cuiabá via a two-hour flight up to Alta Floresta. This “frontier town” has become well known to birders in recent years due to a pair of Harpy Eagles that has regularly nested in a little forest fragment around the Floresta Amazonica Hotel. The hotel is owned by the same folks who own Cristalino, so they are well aware of the importance and value of these birds and are keen to protect them. Our flight landed a little bit late, and we were a bit stressed to find out that the young bird had fledged the previous week and was no longer being seen every day! Since we were already running late, we had to insist on racing out to the nest to have a first shot at this mega bird, and it’s a darn good thing we did – the young bird was sitting on the nest, eating something that we couldn’t possibly ID since there wasn’t much left of it; mom or dad had obviously come in that morning to feed it. My camera gear was still packed away from the flight, but Linton was ready and got a shot of it, which you can see here. To jump ahead in the story, when we checked the nest before flying back five days later, the bird was nowhere to be found! It’s always a thrill to see this bird, and this time also a huge relief. From there, we rode about two hours in 4WD vehicles to the edge of the Teles Pires river, and took a boat up the Cristalino river to Cristalino Jungle Lodge, our base for the next five nights, seeing our only Amazonian Umbrellabird along the way. Cristalino Jungle Lodge makes the shortlist as one of the top jungle lodges in the world. It is wonderfully remote, adjacent to a huge state park that the lodge owner helped to establish, and the whole food chain is still intact here. However, the nature of the forest (20-30 m canopy with 40 m emergents) combined with the fact that a large number of the birds are shy and skulking makes birding here extremely challenging. While their bird list is nearing 600, you may only see a third of those on a five- night visit (and hear many that you never see). That was certainly our experience. While the canopy tower treated us well (it was fabulous on both our morning and afternoon visits), the forest interior required a huge amount of hard work and patience to call the birds in. Despite this, we still managed to see the vast majority of what I consider the specialties of Cristalino, birds that are easier to see here than in most other easily accessible sites, and I even managed to get a lifer, the Brown-banded Puffbird pictured above! I’ll mention a few of the key birds we saw during our wonderful stay here: Crimson-bellied and Santarem Parakeets , Kawall’s Parrot , Bronzy Jacamar , Black-girdled Barbet , Gould’s Toucanet , Para Foliage- gleaner , Glossy Antshrike , Natterer’s Slaty-Antshrike , Spix’s Warbling-Antbird , Pompadour Cotinga , Snow-capped and Flame-crowned Manakins , Tooth-billed Wren , and Red-billed Pied Tanager . Andrew and Dan even managed to find an active Undulated Tropical Birding www.tropicalbirding.com 3 Tinamou nest one evening while out looking for snakes, and they found a few of as well (see the list at the end). While they were some of the youngest TB tour participants we’ve had, their enthusiasm to see everything that flew, hopped, walked, crawled, swam, or slithered was addictive and refreshing. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or both of them end up volunteering at Cristalino one day. The Pantanal Our flight from Alta Floresta landed pretty much on time, and we were shocked to discover that it was almost cold ! This is usually one of the hottest places on the continent, but a rare, powerful cold front, pushing up from Patagonia, had just passed through. The cool weather would only last for a couple of days, but it made our stay at Piuval just that much better. Our driver was there right on time to meet us, and he headed south for about 1h45m, getting us to Pousada Piuval just in time for dinner. We split our time in the Pantanal between three lodges: Pousada Piuval, Pantanal Wildlife Center, and Jaguar Ecolodge. The latter was a late addition since PWC was full for our last night, and while we didn’t see any huge kitties there, it was an interesting change of venue that got us a few extra birds. I’ve already raved a bit about Piuval; the main reason why it is such great birding is that you have a wide variety of habitats in easy reach, including marshes, ponds, rivers, pastures (dry & flooded), gallery forest, dry woodland, and scrubland. You can access all of this in just a few kilometers, so can see huge numbers in a day. We took a boat out onto a river so wide it seemed like a lake, and though we didn’t see much different from the boat itself, with it we could access an island with a wildlife observation tower. This tower offered a 360º view over the surrounding wetlands, where we witnessed an incredible concentration of birdlife of the sort that is very hard to find in the world today, making one realize just what we have lost in the rest of the world over the last few hundred years. Hyacinth Macaws near Pousada Piuval – probably the most desired bird in the Pantanal. Tropical Birding www.tropicalbirding.com 4 More birds from Piuval: Gray-crested Cacholote and Yellow-billed Cardinal, regulars near the lodge. A Plumbeous Ibis in a flooded field in front of the lodge, and a White-naped Xenopsaris along the entrance track.