Aug 4--Garden of the Amazon

Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Garden of the Amazon

Passion flower beside the trail

After a 5:00 am breakfast this morning, we birded a trail around fish ponds and a small lake. Actually it was the other end of  “crunchy trail” and began behind Kathy’s and my room. We had Jonathan with us, as well as Marcelo. Jonathan was learning his birds and working in the dining area of the lodge. He and Luis were in charge of the spotting scope.

There were several birds in the trees or at the edges of the fish ponds in this area. Marcelo used my cell phone to digiscope photos of a Cocoi Heron (1), a Red-throated Piping Guan (2), and a Speckled Chachalaca (3).

We were out in the open by the fish ponds but tried to stick to the shade on the trail. Nonetheless, it was again very hot and tiring to be on one’s feet, stalking the birds for 4 hours.

One bird that we spotted made the morning well worthwhile, however. This was an Ornate Hawk Eagle. I will never forget my first sighting of one. I was on an Earthwatch Expedition in Ecuador’s Cloud Forest north of Guayaquil. I’d gone to the hummingbird research spot at the top of the mountain by myself and lay down on some banana leaves for a short nap and to await the others who were down the mountain eating lunch. I woke from the nap when I heard flapping wings. I opened my eyes to see an Ornate Hawk Eagle looking down at me from a small cecropia tree. Its eyes were piercing and yellow. It’s head feathers were blowing in the wind. Only when the group came up did I learn that this was an Ornate Hawk Eagle.

Internet photo of the gorgeous Ornate Hawk Eagle; this is one time when a bird's name is understatement. Why the bird in this photo has white feet, I have no clue. OHE have bright yellow feet.

After lunch, instead of catching a few zzz’s during the usual midday siesta, I changed into my bathing suit and went to the beautiful spring-fed pool for a dip. Heini came to the pool, too, and we both swam and cooled off in this lovely area.

In the afternoon, we went boat birding on the Rio Claro and headed for the oxbow lake where the Cone-billed Tanagers hung out. This was the first time on the river for me because I had missed the first birding morning at Garden of the Amazon. We took two metal boats, one piloted by the man who owned Garden of the Amazon (cannot now remember his name). We went miles upstream and then tied the two boats together and drifted leisurely downriver looking for birds. During this period, the boats were steered only by small electric motors in their prows. The owner sat on a folding chair in the front of my boat.

At one point, the boats were untied and we nosed into a small gap in the river bank. Marcello pulled our boat through the gap, pushing off the bank with his feet and grabbing small trees to pull us through. We emerged in a small oxbow lake, home of the Cone-billed Tanager. I was the only one of the group who had never seen one . . . and remained that way because we failed to call one into view.

Today we saw the following birds, plus many others: Buff-necked Ibis; Back-throated Mango hummingbird (1); every one of the jacamars—Brown Jacamar (2), Blue-cheeked Jacamar (3), Bronzy Jacamar (4) and Rufous tailed Jacamar (5); Black-fronted Nunbird and White-fronted Nunbird; Black-girdled Barbet (p. 13), Barred Forest Falcon (6), Aplomado Falcon (7); Yellow-chevroned Parrot; Red bellied Macaw (8); Barred Antshrike;  White-flanked Antwren; Chestnut-tailed Antbird; Forest Elanea; Yellow-margined Flycatcher; Rusty-margined Flycatcher, Pompador Cotinga  [gotta love the names], (9), Red-headed Manakin (10); White-browed Purpletuft (11); Black-bridled Barbet (12); Black-faced Dacnis, Blue Dacnis; Yellow-backed Tanager (13);  and Rose-throated Becard (14). I have pulled pix of some of these birds from the Internet. See below:


It gets dark at this latitude at about 5:30. The guys driving the boats are so familiar with the river, however, that they raced each other for miles in the absolute dark, taking the curves at a heart-stopping tilt and somehow avoiding caiman, capybara, snags, sandbars, and running ashore. I decided that they were following the tops of the trees which were dimly visible against the sky, but Marcello told us that they simply know every twist, turn, and twig in the river, having grown up on it. It was scary though, because any moment I expected them to take a bend at a tilt and then crash us into a bank because the bend was actually 25 feet farther on. My mind fixed on a picture of the boat standing on its nose in the bank and myself flying far into the forest.

Also, Marcello was sitting behind Jan and me who were in the front of the boat. He had a spotlight and was using it along both sides of the river to pick up owl or potoo or jaguar eyeshine. The light attracted gnats and allowed us to see Bulldog (fishing) Bats (left). Because of the speed and wind, Jan and I had our heads down and I had my bandanna over my face. I whispered to Jan that when we got back to the dock we would look like the front grill of a car, covered with bugs. Marcello’s keen hearing picked this up over the motor roar and he began turning the light off and on, which gave us a bit of a break.