Pantanal 4: Of Motmots and men
When: November 2019 Weather: Hot 25-35C
Nikon P900. Leica M10P 35mm Summilux. Canon 5D
One of the endearing things about birding in Brazil is the utterly charming names of many birds seen in this amazing part of the world. I mean, who could coin a word like motmot or quetzal to describe a bird??? In this last post on our Pantanal visit, it shows some of the birds we saw in the area opposite the entrance to the Araras Eco Lodge..a dirt road leads into the area of thousands of hectares and there is a farm as well as the Jabiru Observation Tower….we went there for a couple of dawn and afternoon rambles, night safari, Jabiru tower outing and had a horse ride through it….
Daybreak over the Pantanal..where the light is awesome
You have to be a little careful when trekking in this terrain
Buff throated tree creeper
black fronted nunbird
Limpkin
white faced whistling ducks were active in the water near the farm
The bare faced ibis
Buff necked or white throated Ibis
Muscovy Duck
Smooth billed Ani
Tropical kingbird
We also took a ride across the Transpantaneira
On our ride in the area, this brown crested woodpecker appeared
Another sunrise on the Pantanal
Narrow billed woodcreeper
Scaled dove
Bay winged cowbird
Pair of bare faced Curassow
Male bare faced curassow with amazing hair do
Female bare faced curassow
As we drove went on the dirt track towards the farm, we had our first decent sighting of the symbolic Toco Toucan
Perched on a tree, a bat falcon was lit by the soft morning glow
Bat falcon crouching
and taking off…
arriving at the farm, a wooden bridge over the wetlands with a black collared hawk keeping vigil
A savannah hawk too
a flock of Amazonian blue fronted parrots took flight
Close up of Blue fronted parrot
Guira cuckoo family
An agouti darted around..have used this word quite often playing scrabble and at last I know what it actually means!
Rufous hornero nest
female white shoulered tanager
female white shouldered tanager
grey headed wood rail
Beautiful capped heron
Great rufous woodcreeper
and then our guide whispered the magic words….Motmot! and sitting quietly well camouflaged, was a blue crowned motmot…one of my target birds
He perched for a minute …what a beauty!
an unidentified hummingbird
And as we were leaving on the last morning, we came across a couple of birds on the road…..they were sun bitterns…
A pair of sun bitterns on the road
the beautiful sunbittern….not having researched this bird before, we didn’t know that the done thing was to try and shoot the bird in flight to show the stunning eye spots on the wing…
so when our guide clapped and the birds took off, we weren’t ready…
I missed the open wings but the better half managed to shoot this with her 200mm lens….
Blurry though the image is, we can see enough of the brilliant yellow orange eye spots on the wing of the sun bittern…just gorgeous!
Back at the lodge, a chalk browed mockingbird
a beautiful blue and yellow macaw visited
this one was used to visiting the lodge to get fed…
So our wonderful 3 night Pantanal experience ended with about 110 species….almost all spectacular with some really close sightings. Highlights were the jacamars, aracaris, the sunbittern and the motmot of course. Highly recommended!
The Natural Traveller 