Brazil 2023 - a loooooong time coming!

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @TonyQ, @Miss Biscuit, and @xelas for the comments.  Just a brief interlude, this year is another bad one for fires in the Pantanal - link.   Henrique has sent me several videos over WhatsApp that are really devastating.  

 

Those two sightings were the two main, exciting ones that we had at Piuval.  Anyone who has read any of my previous trip reports on SafariTalk will know that I can go through a full two weeks on safari in Africa and come back with maybe 5 bird pictures.  Well, the Pantanal clearly wouldn't allow for that - as mentioned before, even if there weren't any mammals around there were always lots of birds, and so we took advantage of that.  I'll lump these photos together in a few posts, rather than go chronological.

 

Hyacinth Macaw.  We walked into a small piece of forest to find them, they were a little shy.

 

 

Buff-necked Ibis silhouette.  

 

Rufescent tiger-heron hanging out in the top of a tree. 

 

 

Jabiru stork at sunset.  There was at least one, if not two, chicks in the nest, but the angle was definitely challenging. 

 

Chestnut-eared Aracari.  Another bird that we had to play hide-and-seek with a little, they were moving around a lot!

 

With a snack.

 

[Zubbie15]

Sorry this is taking a while, I have been trying to set up a new website to sell my photos (if anyone wants to buy them...) and was hoping to get it up and running in time for the holidays, but I realize that isn't going to happen.  So now that that time pressure is off I can try to move this along a little faster!

 

Let's call the next batch of pictures "birds on the ground."  A couple of these sightings were clearly well-known to the camp guide, but still kind of cool to see.  

 

It seemed whenever we were almost back to camp, we would go through a particular field slowly as if looking for something.  Well, toward the end of our trip we actually stopped, and we were told that there was a Burrowing Owl pair in the field. It was the first time I had seen this species, and I have to admit I was rather surprised at just how small they are!  They were fairly shy around us, one quickly flew off about 100 meters to distract us.  The other stayed in the vicinity of the burrow, but it was hard to get a good view with a lot of branches around.  Eventually that one disappeared down into the burrow, and we decided to leave.  Walking back to the truck, I decided to take a quick peak at the burrow, and just as I got there the owl popped up. I am not sure which one of us was more surprised to see the other - I quickly snapped off a few photos and then slowly backed away to leave them in peace.

 

 

The other "known" sighting was of a Rhea sitting on his nest.  He was clearly relying on his camouflage, and also pretty habituated, as we were able to get down (quietly) from the truck and get reasonably close without him showing any concern.  

 

 

Finally, the most unique sighting in my mind.  We stopped at the area where they used to launch boat cruises (the river has apparently dried up now, so no more boats).  There was a Black Vulture on the ground in the area, and it really didn't seem like it wanted to leave.  

 

 

We eventually realized that there was a baby vulture also on the ground, that seemed to have fallen or been blown out of the nest and was using a hole in a tree as refuge.

 

 

It was getting late in the afternoon, with the sun setting, and at one point a small beam of light lit up the baby vulture and its parent.  

 

 

It seemed like the baby was in a pretty precarious position on the ground, but hopefully it has managed to stay safe.

[michael-ibk]

Really enjoying this report - with every one I read it´s becoming clear to me that it´s really time for a return. It was the place that most profoundly sowed the seeds for my turn into a birder, so beware! Wonderful photos, and how cool you saw both Anteaters.

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @michael-ibk.

 

Before I continue, and to continue about the on-going fires, there are now 1 million hectares of Pantanal burned.  Henrique suggested for anyone who wants to help with the issue that a good NGO to support would be www.sospantanal.org.br.  I'm having issues contributing as they seem to need a Brazil-specific identified number, but I'll put this here in case anyone wants to try.  

 

Continuing with a few mammals from Piuval... One more of the Southern Tamandua, if you'll permit me.

 

 

We came across Brocket Deer every once in a while - I believe these are Gray due to the large ears and the fact they were out during the day, but happy to be corrected.

 

 

 

I had hoped on this trip that we would have a nice view of coatis - and while we did have several, none were particularly cooperative for photographs so we had to take quick shots as they passed us by.

 

 

Night drives were actually quite productive, but I have to say I didn't come away with many worthwhile photos.  Here's a Brazilian Rabbit.  We also saw several crab-eating foxes and the occasional crab-eating raccoon, but generally fairly distant.

 

 

Of course capybaras were highly prevalent, but it's a bit of a challenge to get a different photo of them.  They would come onto the lodge grounds during the night to afford some protection from predators, which allowed us to see them very early in the morning.  Here's my attempt for a bit of an artistic capybara shot.

 

 

And maybe an honorary mammal (or at least, a non-bird) - we did find fresh jaguar tracks at one point and tried to follow the animal (ultimately with no luck) but along that track we came across this confiding red-footed tortoise.

 

 

 

[janzin]

The fires are disastrous this year   Another organization accepting donations is the Jaguar Identification Project. https://www.jaguaridproject.com/fire-fundraiser 

It is easy to donate in US funds and you can use Paypal or credit card.

[Zubbie15]

Thanks for the other option @janzin!  I realized I'm not very smart, there's a pretty obvious PayPal button on the SOS donation page that I somehow missed completely...

[Zim Girl]

That Red-footed tortoise is very cute!

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @Zim Girl, he was definitely a nice subject to photograph.

 

Some more birds around the Pousada.

 

Great Potoo

 

Yellow-billed Cardinal

 

Egret hunting in the waterhole beside camp

 

Yellow-chevroned Parakeet

 

Cocoi Heron on top of on Ipe tree

 

Great Black Hawk (juvenile) at sunrise

[Zubbie15]

Sunrises and sunsets around Piuval:

 

Sunrise, out looking for Giant Anteaters

 

Sunset, also looking for Giant Anteaters

 

Cormorant tree pre-sunrise

 

Sunset from near the tower..  Egrets and Ipe trees.

 

I brought my wide-angle lens specifically because Henrique wanted to try to do some light-painting at night of the Ipe trees along with the stars in the background. Unfortunately none of my photos came out - the mosquitoes after dark were absolutely unrelenting and after about two shots I gave up, and of course both shots weren't properly focused.  Cool idea for sure, but one that I didn't execute properly.  

 

That puts an end to the Pousada Piuval section, we really enjoyed it here and would happily return.  Next stop Araras.  

[offshorebirder]

Thank you for this trip report @Zubbie15

 

I really must get to Brazil before long.

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @offshorebirder, it's definitely an amazing place.  I've actually been thinking the same thing about Alaska while reading your report.  Too many places, not enough time (or money)...

 

So next stop was Araras, which was a really nice spot but as mentioned I started to feel sick shortly after arriving and so I didn't take as much advantage as I would have liked.  The first afternoon I was feeling ok though, and I spent a fair amount of time on a boardwalk that they have that heads out over a marshy area.  The light was pretty harsh, so I tried to take advantage of various spotlighting opportunities to at least work around that.  

 

My main target was a pretty confiding juvenile Rufescent Tiger Heron.

 

 

I'm pretty happy with this one

 

A pair of Jabiru Storks also showed up for a bit, although they were a bit shier and wouldn't come too close to me.

 

 

The lodge has a pool, and in a large tree right beside it a nest box that had a pair of Hyacinth Macaws.  They ignored the people, but seemed to be actively incubating eggs as in general we'd only see the tail of one sticking out of the nest box while the other was off foraging.  So it was really necessary to be there are the right time, when they switched off who was sitting on the nest and would spend a minute or two bonding.

 

 

The lodge offered afternoon tea before the afternoon activity, and would put out some feed to attract birds.  While not natural it was nice to see some rarer species up close - unfortunately there was a large group of birders there with no photo etiquette, and after the third time someone stepped into my shot I gave up on trying to get any shots.   The one I did get was of this Seriema, you can see how close they get.

 

 

We didn't see a lot of photographable birds while on game drives, with one exception.  Our second afternoon was very hot, and when we headed out not much was going on except for this Jabiru trying to keep cool in the sun.  I feel like I could have done a bit better with this shot, but that afternoon I was feeling the worst and so didn't really work the opportunity particularly well.  

 

[Kitsafari]

those B&W photos provide quite a bit of ambiance to them so you certainly turned them into positive opportunities! what a beautiful mama and baby Giant anteater. 

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @Kitsafari.  We were really lucky with the Giant Anteater, it certainly would have been easier to find them in the Southern Pantanal (I spoke with people who had seen 12+ in a few days at Pousada Aguape).

 

Continuing along, when we arrived at Araras Henrique did warn us that the lodge could be a bit hit-or-miss depending on luck, and that he'd had some really great sightings there but also some slow times as well.  We unfortunately hit on a fairly quiet stretch, but there were still a few nice sightings.  There were a lot of caiman around the lodge, and so I did take some advantage to photograph them.

 

 

Hiding in the vegetation

 

Blocking the path

 

Driving around, we really didn't see a lot of mammals although it seemed like it would be great Giant Anteater habitat.  I was happy that our first morning we came across another Southern Tamandua walking along the track, unfortunately this one wasn't nearly as confiding as the previous one I saw but I was happy the rest of the family were able to see it, if only for a few minutes.

 

Quick snap - very low light!

 

We did see this brocket deer (I think this is a Gray, but not confidence). We also saw some red brocket deer, but it was too dark (and they were too shy) to get any photos.

 

And there was a fairly large family of capybara that were always in the same area (near the farm buildings) but never really doing much...

 

 

While walking wasn't really possible with the kids, we did get out of the car for a couple of shorter paths. In particular a short path through a patch of forest gave us a couple of nice sightings, first a Tegu checking us out.

 

 

And then a family of Capuchin monkeys in the canopy, although there were hard to get a clear view!

 

 

We also did a hike from the lodge along the raised walkway, leading eventually to one of their towers.  We didn't see much (there were some macaws briefly), but appreciated these butterflies which Google tells me are called Zebra Mosaic.

 

 

So that was our time at Araras, a nice lodge even if we didn't see as much as we might have hoped.

 

I'll add on the end of this just a quick note about our trip along the Transpantaneira.  We didn't really see much that was worth stopping for, and the kids took fairly long naps which we didn't want to interrupt, so we only stopped a handful of times.  The only photo I've processed at this point is of a Marsh Deer in some decent light, that did pose for us for a minute or two.

 

 

 

[Atravelynn]

Fantastic Giant Anteater with "pup."  You conquered the low light.  The first shots of the Tamandua look like an animated children's show. Nice to get it in the tree too.  You saw such a variety.  Did you go in July or August as you originally planned?  Glad it worked out for you eventually.  You started feeling sick?? Yikes. A short-lived bout I hope.

Edited December 9, 2023 by Atravelynn

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @Atravelynn for the comments.  We went in mid-August, which seemed to be popular with a lot of tour groups.  I think we were lucky in getting some of our reservations sorted out.  The sickness lasted for a while, but wasn't enough to keep be back in camp/bed thankfully!

 

So arriving in Porto Jofre in what amounted to the dark, we weren't able to really get a layout of the lodge too well.  We were in a room that was one of the farther ones from the restaurant, facing the river.  It was a pretty cool spot, being able to hear the soft lapping of the water competing with the loud squawks of the macaws in the trees.  

 

The next morning we headed out on our first adventure in the boat.  I have to say I wasn't sure what to expect, especially with the kids, as it's a fairly long time in a quite cramped location, but they did great.  One thing we did struggle a bit with was departure times, as hard as I tried it seemed that we were typically heading to breakfast at about 5:45 (the first boats were leaving around 5:30) and only getting out on the water around 6:15.  It's not what I would have done if I was alone, but compromises are expected when the little ones are with us!  I don't know if we missed anything, but it made us efficient as by the time we were out others had located various sightings so we could choose where to go (not always, but if we didn't find anything on our own it was easy enough to go somewhere else).  

 

Somewhat like a trip to India, where there's a clear target species, obviously the majority of people staying in Porto Jofre are there for the jaguars.  I felt pretty confident we would find them with the 4.5 days of safaris we had, and it wasn't long before we had our first sighting. One thing to note, we do have a list of names (based on the Jaguar ID project), but I'm not sure it is 100% accurate so feel free to correct if needed (I know Henrique has a complete list and I've asked him for it but I don't have it yet, so I may make some corrections).  Henrique suggested we get the jaguar sighting pressure relieved right away, so we fairly quickly followed the radio calls to a cat on the river bank.  This turned out to be Marcela, a fairly well-known jaguar who is remarkable for her eye color.

 

 

Eventually she came out into the open for a bit - pretty kitty!

 

 

Once she had melted back into the bushes, we headed off, and not long after came across another jaguar. We have her down a Guaraci, although looking now at the Jaguar ID book I am skeptical that that is right based on the spot pattern on her forehead.  In any case, this felt like a stereotypical Pantanal sighting, with the cat in the lush vegetation.

 

 

She was really comfortable with the boats, and spent a substantial time stretching and cleaning herself.

 

 

But before long she was also off into the vegetation.  It was still on about 7:40AM, so we were off to a good start. This Black-crowned Night Heron seemed less impressed, and to show its displeasure with our lack of attention it refused to move to a position where the branch wasn't obscuring at least some of its face!

 

 

So we were off to a pretty good start!

[Atravelynn]

Glad you saw the jaguar even with the later departure.  I bet your kids were thrilled.

[Towlersonsafari]

hurrah Jaguars!

[jeremie]

I love these last shots of the cats at low angle and the blurred background. This is not the common shot

[Zubbie15]

I have to say we were all thrilled @Atravelynn.  The kids were definitely thrilled, they just had a hard time keeping track what we were seeing (they kept calling them leopards, with the occasional cheetah and tiger thrown in, especially at the start of the trip!).  

 

@Towlersonsafari, yes, pretty much our reaction as well! 

 

Thanks @jeremie, I appreciate it especially from someone who has shown us so many great Pantanal (and elsewhere) shots!  I have to say those are some of my favorite shots of the trip, but there are a few more to come that I think aren't too bad either. 

 

Having gotten a couple of good sightings out of the way, we spent a good portion of the rest of the morning puttering around the different channels, seeing what we could find.  Of course, caimen were our constant companions on the river banks.

 

 

This one caught a Spotted Sorubim, which was cool to see (although he never really gave us a head on view before rapidly returning to the water). 

 

 

It wasn't just the caimen that had caught fish, also this Amazon Kingfisher.

 

 

While this Ringed Kingfisher was looking for its own meal.

 

 

At one point we found this Rufous-tailed Jacamar hanging out - I had seen photos of this species but didn't appreciate just how small they are.  It took longer than I would like to admit for us to finally find it after Henrique found it. 

 

 

Our pilot also pointed out this group of Proboscis Bats hanging out on a tree - I'm not 100% certain but I wouldn't be surprised if this was a known roost that was used at times when things were a little slow.

 

 

But we hadn't found any interesting large mammals for a while... would things pick up before the morning finished?

[Zubbie15]

I have to admit I didn't really mean to make the last post a cliffhanger, I just realized I hadn't processed photos that would tell the story.  We also saw this morning (I also realize I'm a bit out of sequence with these photos, but that's ok) the jaguar Ti with one of her two young cubs.  Henrique had made a point of trying to see the family, as my daughter has a big thing for baby animals and when we heard they were visible we went there pretty quickly to tick that off.  Unfortunately they were the most photogenic, being in an area that was full of long grass - which explains why I didn't process many of these photos.  Here's Ti with her cub.

 

 

Eventually she disappeared in the grass, leaving her little one alone.

 

 

This was probably the best opportunity, if only the blades of grass weren't in the way.

 

 

But before long he or she decided that they wanted to be together with mom, and headed off in the same direction.

 

 

We spent a couple of hours anchored in the river near where they were denning the next morning, but without any luck unfortunately, so it was good that we did get to see them once. 

 

[Zubbie15]

The other animals that we were hoping to see were the Giant Otters, and as we decided to head back toward camp for lunch we saw a fast pair of animals swimming through the water.   These guys were definitely a challenge to photograph, especially initially - lots of photos that either had the tail only, or were completely out of focus, or where the eye autofocus picked up their ears instead of eyes (although sometimes that was alright with the plane of focus being acceptable).

 

 

This was a pair of otters - in fact we only ever saw two or three otters together, not any larger groups.  Having looked into this after returning, I guess these in general would have been monogamous pair couples.  I'm not sure why we didn't see any larger family groups, it may have just been luck of the draw.

 

 

They are clearly major hunters, and it wasn't long before one caught a Snow Pleco.  The fish did not last long!

 

 

There was definitely no consideration of sharing the meal, so the one that didn't catch the fish stopped to wait for the other to eat (unfortunately this was done deep under some roots, so no good photos).

 

 

Before long they were back off hunting, and we decided to return to camp. 

 

[Miss Biscuit]

What a cool shot of the otter with a fish, reminds me of shots of bears with salmon. I like the look on the one right after that too.

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @Miss Biscuit, the nice thing about the otters was they were really efficient hunters, if we decided to stay with them for a while we were pretty much guaranteed to see them catch something.  

 

We headed back out after some food and a bit of a siesta, we headed back out on the river.  It was about 25 minutes from the area we were seeing most animals to the hotel, so we definitely used up some time traveling back and forth, but at the same time I'm not sure how happy any of us would have been being out all day in the heat and sun.  It actually wasn't too bad when you were moving at even a slow speed, due to the breeze, but the second we would stop boy would it get hot!  We'd probably had too much luck on our morning out, as this afternoon we only saw one jaguar, and this animal was on a real mission to get away from the boats so I only had time to capture 2 proof photos.

 

 

We weren't able to identify this animal, even Henrique who was able to identify most of the cats wasn't able to.  Whenever he wasn't able to give a name, he would typically text a photo to the Jaguar ID project team and get an answer right away, but if he did for this animal I don't think we recorded the name.  Apart from that, we saw a couple of interesting birds, including this Ringed Kingfisher.

 

 

The other interesting bird, even if it didn't really give much of a photo opportunity, was this Piping Guan.  Guans of various species were quite common, but generally quite show and we'd see them departing whenever we tried to get close. 

 

 

Thinking it had been a fairly quiet afternoon, we started to head back toward camp, only to come across Giant Otters again.  I believe, based on a small wound on the head of one, that this is the same pair we saw in the morning, but I could be wrong.

 

 

Typical hunting pattern, going all over the place and particularly paying attention to underneath any overhanging vegetation.

 

 

Look at my sharp teeth!

 

 

So a relatively quiet afternoon, but we'd had good views of our two main targets on the first day so life was good. 

Edited December 20, 2023 by Zubbie15
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[Zubbie15]

The next morning we headed out, and were rewarded with one of our most memorable sightings of the trip from the jaguar who probably was the one we saw the most of during the trip.  It was Marcela, who we had seen the previous day, but today she was on the prowl for a meal.  

 

 

She gave us a wide variety of photographic opportunities - one I had hoped we were going to get was the traditional jaguar in vegetation style of photo, and at one point she provided us this look.

 

 

When things aren't going well, sometimes you need a brief reset.

 

 

She was on the prowl pretty close to the the floating hotels on the river, so I have to admit there were quite a few boats around.  We were generally about 3 boats deep along the shore, with maybe 20-25 total boats.  So far from a private sighting, but I have to say at this sighting (and honestly, at most sightings and with most tourists) people were well-behaved.  And Marcela clearly didn't care about the boats at all.

 

 

She wasn't having any luck finding anything, at one point she seemed to want to cross the river and the boats all separated to give her an opening if she wanted.  But eventually she decided to continue along. 

 

 

She did see something down by the shore at one point, and launched herself down, but she came up empty whatever it was. 

 

 

There were times when she had to swim in the water to get around thick vegetation - this time we were lucky that she went right past us. With the number of boats, there was a lot of jockeying for position going on.  It was generally respectful, but you'd be in the front row at one point and then all of a sudden in the back row, so it was a bit of luck when you were in the right position (combined with trying to pre-place yourselves in a good location based on where the cat was expected to go).

 

 

Other times she was able to walk behind the vegetation, on the bank. 

 

 

Eventually we decided to move on to see what else we could find, after one final pose.

 

[janzin]

Good to see Marcela doing well, she was the star of our trip the year before too! Along with her brother Rio...did you see him as well?