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kittykat23uk

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Boy, you guys have had incredible encounters during this trip!  I really can't think of anything you missed so far plus you saw so many rare things (mating Jaguars, Ocelots, Giant Armadillo).  I don't think the trip could have gone any better for you guys which is great.  Luckily, I am not jealous...OK, maybe a tiny bit. :)

 

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Thanks @Atdahl well there were two mammals that @BigBaldIan and I saw on our first trip that we missed this time but nothing much else that I recall. :)

 

But you are right, as far as wildlife sightings go, the trip really couldn't have gone better. 

 

 

 

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I agree, we were very lucky! Here's one video I took of the jaguars mating (or attempting to, not sure if this one was successful). I thought I had more but can't find at the moment. Sorry it's a bit shaky!

 

 

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I think we heard that one had been seen not long before we there at San Francisco, but we did not.

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Wow, just wow. What an awesome trip, thanks for sharing. 

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After the mating jaguars settled down, we left them to their rest at about 9:40 a.m. We saw some birds and some Capybara but I don't have any decent photos for a few hours after we left them. I think we were not seeing much, and this is tough in the middle of the day. I should mention, we did not go back to the lodge at lunch time as many of the boats did. Julio's philosophy is it takes about 40 minutes to get back to the lodge and 40 to get back out on the river - why waste that time when you could bring lunch with you and maybe see some things out on the water while most of the boats are gone and it's quieter out.  Sometimes this worked and sometimes not. And it was brutally hot out on the water midday. We did have a canopy, but sometimes the sun would be coming from the side - then Julio would hang a Brazilian flag with clips and it would help. But even when not in the direct sunlight, the heat could sometimes just feel oppressive and we would need to go take a break and rest in the shade.

 

At about 12:30 we saw this lizard 

 

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and about ten minutes later, this bird, what I think is a tiger heron but please someone correct me if I'm wrong!

 

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after that, I have nothing for another two hours. At some point in the middle of the day, we were waiting around at a spot where a jaguar had been spotted and hoping it would reappear but it didn't. So it really was a slow middle of the day after the great otter and mating jaguar sightings early in the day.

 

At about 2:55 pm we encountered a second group of otters (or maybe it was the same group as before, who knows!) I think @kittykat23uk had some photos of these otters mixed in with her morning otters.

 

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Edited by SafariChick
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6 hours ago, SafariChick said:

what I think is a tiger heron but please someone correct me if I'm wrong!

 

 Correct but not precise: Rufescent Tiger-Heron it is.

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Great sightings and great photos from both of you. Good to see Julinho looking well!

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Thanks @TonyQ well actually,  Julio did have a health problem when we were with him, which I really sympathised with as I had the same issue a few years ago,  and he needed an operation a couple of weeks after we left but I am delighted to report that he has sailed through  and is back guiding again!

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Yes I mixed up some of my otter shots, whoopsie! Some of them were from the second encounter. 

 

Here's a few more of the Green Iguana and a Roadside Hawk

 

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P9261885 Roadside Hawk by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9280087 Green Iguana by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9261892 Green Iguana by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9261923 Rufescent Tiger Heron by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

We had further slow time waiting around until we got a call that the mating pair were back at it. So back we went. We arrived a little late and missed a bit of action early on, and they both went to rest up:

 

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1970/30510629217_6a1385d25b_z.jpg

[/img]P9261942 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9261953 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9261960 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9261977 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9261997 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9262043 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9262049 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9262132 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9262165 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9262202 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9262209 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

As dusk approached we headed back, we had to pass through a lot of smoke from the bush fires and even saw some pockets of flames on the river banks.

 

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P9262223 Sunset by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9262227 Sunset by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9250460 Sunset by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

I had hoped by staying at a lodge rather than camping at the homestay as we did last time that we might be able to do some spotlighting after dinner along the transpanteneira and dirt track to the lodge. Unfortunately, Julio advised against this idea as he didn't feel that going along the road would be very productive owing to an increase in construction noise around the area (not that we noticed any disturbance). I was a little disappointed and the evenings here were not as fun as when @BigBaldIan and I were with Julio- where we played pool and had singalongs. This might also have been in part due to his health problem (which we were unaware of until a couple of days later), he was a bit subdued and distant. In any case I found I personally needed more time to keep on top of my photos as I was looking like I'd run out of space if not! :O

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Here's a vid of the mating Jaguars, no sound as it turns out my microphone isn't working:

 

 

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I'll just add some photos from this late afternoon encounter as well.  Sometimes looking at the photos, you can forget just how many boats were gathered at these sightings. So once in a while I took a photo of the paparazzi

 

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Must be the same thoughts that also leopard(s) have :o! Just use the long focal lens, it will narrow your FOV :D ...

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Rio Paraguai is an alternative (I was there in 2013) but sightings there were never on the level of Porto Joffre and I seem to remember reading that the jaguar population there has been hit pretty hard in the last years.

 

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Towlersonsafari

what wonderful photos of the jaguars @kittykat23uk and @SafariChick  does the number of boats detract from the experience or is it something that you just put up with for the joy of seeing these wonderful animals?

(asking for a friend)

Edited by Towlersonsafari
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Yes it does to an extent, particularly when a cat is trying to hunt. I will cover this later. 

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wow that first ocelot looked so chilled, and so comfortable despite that awkward position she was sitting in 

That crowd is scary but hopefully everyone was well behaved. 

 

@SafariChick the camera is serving you so well! looks like I'll need a few lessons from you in August!

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Thanks for all the nice comments! In terms of the number of boats, I'd say it can detract a bit from the experience but then after a while you get used to it and, as @Towlersonsafari said, it becomes something that is just par for the course to see these gorgeous creatures. Yes, they can be seen elsewhere but much less reliably. And you are looking at the jaguar, not at all the people around you most of the time. These boats are all the boats that were out and it's a big river but everyone gathers when there's a good sighting. Everyone was very friendly and collegial - if we would pull up to a sighting and others were already there, someone would gesture to help pull our boat and would actually reach out to pull us closer so we didn't drift away with the motor off. All the guides and boat drivers knew each other and we started to recognize and say hi to different groups of people. If there was a good sighting we all smiled at each other. It wasn't so bad, in my opinion, though of course it's nice to see a wild animal without a lot of others around. There was one incident which Jo is alluding to above but I'll let her tell that story.

Edited by SafariChick
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27 September 2018

 

We first had a sighting of a couple of Bare-face Ibis as we were heading toward our first Jaguar sighting of the day:

 

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P9270003 (2) Bare-faced Ibis by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270022 Bare-faced Ibis by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

Then we stopped around 0930 to spend some time with this beautiful cat:

 

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P9270040 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270046 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270063 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270067 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270084 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270092 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270100 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270101 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270108 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270121 Great Kiskadee by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270146 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270150 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270160 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270168 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270188  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270193 Great Kiskadee by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270204 by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270218  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270229 Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

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A few birds vied for attention

 

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P9270242 Golden-green Woodpecker by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270249 Black-capped Donacobious by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270265 Black-capped Donacobious by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

But it wasn't long before my eyes were drawn back towards the gorgeous jaguar

 

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P9270274  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270282  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270289  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270293 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270308 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270311 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270333 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270344 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270352 (2)  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

Although I don't think I always caught her best side:

 

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P9270371 (2) Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

 

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When it was time to move on we cruised the waterways for a while and had a fantastic sighting of three boat-billed herons!

 

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P9270397 Boat-billed Heron by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270415 Boat-billed Heron by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270426 Boat-billed Heron by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270446 Boat-billed Heron by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

Then I spotted what I thought was a Tegu on the river bank. But Julio suddenly got really excited and shouted, "its a Caiman Lizard" and motored over towards it. What a stunning beast this turned out to be! Very prehistoric looking!

 

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P9270471 Caiman Lizard by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270527 Caiman Lizard by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270536 Caiman Lizard by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

Then came our second Jaguar of the day:

 

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P9270544  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270583  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270588  Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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Jaguar by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270665 Black-backed Water Tyrant by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

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P9270675 Black-backed Water Tyrant by Jo Dale, on Flickr

 

 

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