Our final full day at Porto Jofre. I have noticed that we've all become rather taciturn over breakfast- the early mornings are maybe taking a toll.
Octavio and I are again travelling together.For some reason the birds are responding to playback today, and we see a Straight-billed Woodcreeper, and we manage to see a Barred Antshrike. Other than that we see birds we've been seeing frequently on the river, and looking back I took almost no pictures that morning.
The highlight comes when Octavio decides to try the shore again. We're outside the National Park, where this isn't allowed. We land where there's a bit of a clearing in the forest and have a look around.
It's lovely this early, not yet so hot, and bird activity picks up as we walk along the shore a bit. We enter the forest, which to my surprise is much opener than I'd expected. I also note that the trees don't have dense foliage, and that certainly makes bird watching in the canopy a lot easier. It's a bit like a deciduous forest in Europe (but not a managed one), with a greater variety of species.
And then we start to pick up new birds. An Ashy-headed Greenlet makes the start, and then we find a Yellow-olive Flatbill, which Octavio is convinced should be split from the one we saw on Ilhabela. A Masked Gnatcatcher is seen. There's a Rufous-browed Peppershrike, but I just can't get onto that.
We find a path, Octavio suspects one made by cattle (either domestic or feral like the water buffalo we saw yesterday), and it allows easy access into the forest. We decide to explore a bit further. We hear a sound, which Octavio says is Belo, the boat driver, trying to scare us by imitating a Jaguar. I assume that Octavio knows what he's doing.
We go a bit further, and find more new birds. Hooded Tanager, Plain-breasted Ground-dove and Green-backed Becard are found. We come too close to the hive of some thankfully stingless bees and they take umbrage. They strategy seems to be to fly into one's hair and requiring extraction. Once that is taken care of, Octavio suggests we go a bit further, and so we do.
A beautiful Crimson-crested Woodpecker is the reward, so we go a bit further. A Fuscous Flycatcher - nice! Eventually Octavio decides we really should get back to the boat, and we get a few more rewards on the way back. Stand-out bird for me is a Red-billed Scythebill on a tree trunk.
Octavio promised we'd give the bees a wide berth on the way back but he's misremembered the location of the hive and we are attacked again. As we near the boat we find one more new bird, a Chestnut-vented Conebill.
Wow! What a walk. It makes you want to do this more often, although I suspect that even outside the National Park we would be frowned upon. this was strictly a bird watching walk, and I only took a handful of photos, all of a Grey-crested flycatcher - the otehrs were moving around too much, or were too distant to try.
Guira Cuckoos warming up
Grey-crested Flycatcher
Great Kiskadee
Yellow-rumped Cacique in the hotel grounds
ditto
Andrea