Sunday, December 9, 2018

Pantanal birds

Finally found time to edit part of the many images I took during my trip to Brazil. In this batch I will post the better photos I took in the Pantanal. I did try to document as many species as possible, but many of these photos aren't worthy of blogging. All photos are on my eBird checklists and linked Macaulay Library account.

Most birds we encountered in the Pantanal were on Pantanal Nature boats searching for Jaguars. Bird photography conditions out of a boat are never ideal, but I did my best to produce some worthy photographs. Most species photographed off the boat are aquatic, or species that favour open or riparian forest. Additionally, we did a couple of drives through the campos around Porto Jofre and along the Transpantaneira road, and added a few species at the Panthera Brazil compound where we stayed.

Kingfishers were abundant along the Cuiaba river and its tributaries. We had five species, I got photos of four:

Amazon Kingfisher


Green Kingfisher

Ringed Kingfisher

American Pygmy Kingfisher

Three tern species were seen along the river, mainly sat on sandbars:

Little-tern-like Yellow-billed Tern

The magnificent and vocal Large-billed Tern

Black Skimmer


Plenty of herons, egrets and allies too:

The bizarre-looking Capped Heron

Cocoi Heron

Rufescent Tiger Heron


Striated Heron - oddly this is the same taxon as in the Old World

Jabiru - punk youngsters

Big daddy

Limpkin

Surprisingly few true shorebirds:

Capped Lapwing

Southern Lapwing

Very few ducks on the fast-flowing rivers. Good to see this without the eBird insult '(Feral)':

Muscovy Duck (Wild)

Quite many raptors along the river and tracks:

Southern Caracara feeding on grubs - que super-predator!

Great Black Hawk - parent and infant

Infant - similar to the one cruising around North America at the mo

Black-collared Hawk

One of my most-wanted - Swallow-tailed Kite

Some exotic-looking South American stuff:

Bare-face Currasow - crazy hair day

Blue-crowned Trogon (female)

Rufous-tailed Jacamar

Chestnut-eared Aracari

Smooth-billed Ani in golden light

Great Ani

Guira Cuckoo

Stunning White Woodpeckers

Yellow-rumped Cacique - common and noisy

Yellow-billed Cardinal - very common

Grayish Saltator 

White-headed Water Tyrant 

Grayish Baywing feeding on mango fruit at the camp

The large Brown-chested Martin 

And the small White-winged Swallow

 Common Tody-Flycatcher

Common Pauraque - common on the Transpantaneira after dusk


Silver-beaked Tanager

Yellow-chinned Spinetail

2 comments:

  1. Great photos as usual. Two comments
    You are correct in saying your heron is striated. It is not the same species as the Green Heron in Wales. The species pair have odd distribution. I always thought as Green being new world. However it is only in North and Central America through to northern part of South America. In Pantanal, it is the same species as the old world.

    You have labelled the Caraca as Crested. Again, with splits this should be Southern Caraca. Crested is the northern of the two species

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