Serra dos Tucanos: garden hummers

So, I reckon, these deserve a post in their own right – what do you think?

Yeah, I know, pretty awful, no?

The garden at Serra dos Tucanos features around ten hummingbird feeders, topped up regularly with sugar water, and these attract a more-or-less constant stream of birds. The commonest, and dominant, species is the Sombre Hummingbird, a Brazilian endemic:

… though both Violet-capped Woodnymph and Brazilian Ruby are pretty regular too – shown below in near-identical poses!

The Brazilian Ruby above is a female bird – quite distinct from the male’s iridescent plumage illustrated below, and at the top. I never did get a shot showing the ruby-coloured throat patch, though; this is only visible when the bird is completely head-on, and the light is on the throat.

Another couple of species were also seen around the feeders less frequently – a handsome Black Jacobin that I never caught with the camera at all, and the Atlantic Forest endemic Saw-billed Hermit. I only managed a very dodgy flight shot of the latter – enough to show the impressively long bill, though.

 

Flight shots were difficult, unsurprisingly… though borrowing another guest’s external flash for half an hour was an interesting experiment. If I’d known what I was doing with it, things might have got quite productive! As it turns out, this shot is probably the best I managed – taken with natural light only.

Serra dos Tucanos: Atlantic Forest garden birds

So… after a busy week with little time for blogging, it’s back to the apparently never-ending photos from Brazil.

As mentioned previously, one of the highlights of staying at Serra dos Tucanos is the range of stunning birds that visit the various feeders in the garden. You can sit in comfort on the veranda with a cold drink (Caipirinha, anyone?) in one hand, binoculars in the other, and take in some of the amazing species shown here as they feed on discarded fruit. There’s also a little photo hide overlooking one of the bird tables, where although the strongly dappled light is tricky, views are very close indeed!

First up, iridescent Green-headed Tanagers – one of the commonest species at SdT, though endemic to the Atlantic Forest nevertheless. Far too easy to get blasé about these!

Another relatively common species with a somewhat similar colour scheme: Blue-naped Chlorophonia. One of our guides suggested that this should be adopted as the national bird of Brazil, given that it features all the colours of the flag…

…and has got to be better than the comparatively common and drab Rufous-bellied Thrush (the current title-holder)!

Returning to the luminously bright colour-palette, this immature male Blue Dacnis was a smart bird in very obvious moult…

… heading towards the utterly stunning adult plumage!

Green Honeycreeper is another bird to make you go ‘Wow!’ the first time it appears, though like the Dacnis, fairly regular around the garden:

The final bird in the ‘blue’ theme is a Sayaca Tanager – we did also see the similar (rarer, and bluer) Azure-shouldered Tanager in the garden, but they didn’t hang around long enough for photos.

Before you start thinking all tanagers feature blue plumage… here’s the counter-example, a Brazilian Tanager:

And finally, this rather more sombrely attired little guy is a Chestnut-bellied Euphonia – still pretty smart!

I should also make mention of the range of other birds seen in the garden, but not photographed. These included Channel-billed Toucan, Slaty-breasted Wood-rails (under the feeders at dawn and dusk), Plain Parakeets, Blond-crested Woodpecker, and Sharp-tailed Streamcreeper!

You might be wondering about the absence of a particularly smart family of birds that are often seen on feeders in the Americas… they’re coming next time!

Pantanal Jaguars

Let’s forget that this is usually a blog about birds for a moment… because based on the conversations I’ve had with people about our time in Brazil, and feedback on yesterday’s introductory post, there’s only one thing that people want to see photos of: a certain spotty cat!

For a few years now, the river system near Porto Jofre has become well known as probably THE best place in the world to see Jaguars – indeed some tour operators have been known to offer a money back guarantee if you spend enough time there in the right season. We had three nights in the Hotel Pantanal Norte, and options to have up to two full days on the river, depending on how things progressed.

The following map illustrates the general area:

The Piquiri and Cuiaba Rivers do get Jaguars with some regularity, but the key area for sightings at the moment seems to be the Three Brothers (‘Tres Irmaos’) River, which branches off the River Cuiaba about 10km NE of Porto Jofre. In particular, the area around the island about 15km up the Three Brothers is well worth checking out.

Each morning, about a dozen or so motor boats set out from the hotel, heading for different bits of the river network to scout for Jaguars. Most are linked up by CB radio – so unless you’re lucky enough to find your own Jaguar, the typical experience is to have a fairly gentle cruise (at about 12-15km/h, say) interrupted by a garbled CB message in Portuguese, an instruction to hold on(!), and then a quick blast along the river (up to 40 km/h – pretty breezy stuff) to the spot where someone has been lucky enough to find the target.

For us, the first such experience was a frustrating one – we arrived to find half a dozen boats already jostling for position in a very narrow channel… and no sign of the Jaguar. It had simply laid down in the long grass and disappeared from view – very anti-social. Fortunately, though, another sighting came through in short order, and this time, a female Jaguar was visible, resting in a sunny patch on the riverbank. Fantastic!

Less helpfully, she too disappeared into the riverside vegetation rather quickly, leaving us with only intermittent ‘bits and pieces’ views when the bobbing boat happened to line you up with a tiny gap. Eventually, though, after the other two or three boats had departed, we found a clear angle, and enjoyed close views of a resting Jaguar – when you were in the right spot, the entire field of view through binoculars was taken up with a Jaguar’s head gazing back at you!

After a while, we heard of yet another Jaguar – this time a large male, apparently more active. But by the time we got there, just a few minute later, he too had decided it was time for a gentle snooze. Must be a hard life…

After a while, though, he was back up and about, wandering steadily along the riverbank, sometimes out of view, but always reappearing in the clearer areas and emerging onto some of the sandy beaches.

Thanks to the experience and fieldcraft of our guide and boatman, a couple of times we were able to second-guess roughly where the Jaguar would emerge from cover, position the boat accordingly, and enjoy superb views down to 20m as he crept out of the undergrowth and settled down for another breather.

This pattern of alternately wandering and resting continued for quite some time – getting on for an hour, I guess. Though clearly I’m no expert, the Jaguar always seemed relaxed and relatively unconcerned by the c.8 boats and c.50 people following its every move. A couple of enormous yawns (now in the heat of the day, late morning) revealed an impressive set of teeth…

As the Jaguar got up to move from the final beach along this stretch of the river, we assumed that would be the end of the excellent views for a while – but there was one more photo opportunity in store, as the cat strolled right down to the water’s edge for a drink. Not far different from the typical household tabby lapping from a bowl of milk!

After this fantastic experience, we had little expectation of seeing any more Jaguars (surely our luck was exhausted!) – but an evening drive back to the hotel after a birding session for owls and nightjars (photos of these to follow another time) resulted in not one, but TWO more sightings. The first was a very brief affair, where I think only the guide and I really got identifiable views of the back of a Jaguar walking off the edge of the road and disappearing down into dense vegetation.

But the second was stunning again. Out of nowhere, Ricardo suddenly shouted “Jaguar! Jaguar! Jaguar!”, and as the driver jumped on the brakes, another male cat emerged from the verge on the left and walked purposely across the road no more than 10m in front of us. We had a flashlight on hand to spotlight this final Jaguar as it dropped down into short grass just off the road, then turned round to pause and look straight at us. After a few seconds’ stare, and a series of murmured “Wow!”s from inside the minibus, it turned tail, and bounded away into the Pantanal night.

Does it get better than this?

We love Brazil!

Suzanne and I got back from our first trip to South America on Sunday night, after 17 days in Brazil. What an amazing country!

I’ve got literally thousands of photos to sort out in the coming weeks, so this is probably the first of numerous posts, and I’ll just set the scene for now.

We focused on two of the many fantastic wildlife destinations in the country, kicking off with eight nights at the excellent Serra dos Tucanos lodge in the Atlantic Forest, about two hours drive north of Rio de Janeiro. This has been set up and run by Andy Foster, a British birder who moved to Brazil over ten years ago, and he was good enough to put together a package offer for us including accommodation, all meals, free cachaca at dinner (!), and guided excursions every day to good birding areas within an hour or two’s drive. We saw almost 250 species in total, almost all lifers, and including a good number of regional endemics.

One of the major selling points of Serra dos Tucanos is the excellent range of bird feeders around the large garden, which draw in many of the local specialities. These include a range of outrageously coloured tanagers on over-ripe fruit…

Green-headed Tanager

… and a fair few hummingbirds on and around nectar feeders.

Violet-capped Woodnymph

From here, we took a couple of internal flights (pretty cheap, booked with TAM) across to Cuiaba, and met up with Ricardo Casarin, a guide for Boute Expeditions. Ricardo led us, and another British couple, around the Serra das Araras region to visit a Harpy Eagle site (more of this later), and then down the Transpantaneira highway through the Pantanal to its end at Porto Jofre. The birdlife was again superb, featuring loads of close raptors….

Savanna Hawk

… heaps of kingfishers and other waterbirds…

Amazon Kingfisher

… and a range of parrots, parakeets and macaws – including these enormous Hyacinth Macaws!

But it would be a huge oversight to focus only on birds in the Pantanal! Our time around Porto Jofre resulted in us seeing no fewer than FOUR of these wonderful creatures:

As a result of an hour-long encounter with one especially showy riverside Jaguar, there are plenty more photos where that came from… so watch this space!

Turkey: a quick summary

Over half-term week, Suzanne and I were lucky enough to spend eight days in Turkey – primarily to enjoy Rhiannon and Simon’s beautiful wedding down in Bodrum, in the far south-west of the country, but we also added a few days travel in the east of the country onto the itinerary for variety and a bit of birding. As many birders have done before, we focused on the Birecik area, along with a few other bits and pieces within a couple of hours from here.

I’ll write up a trip report in due course with a few more details and a full trip list – but for now, here’s a quick summary of what we saw, and some pics. (In general, I spent very little time on photography, since the light was generally extremely harsh, and I also had relatively little time, so concentrated on seeing the target species rather than photographing a subset).

If anyone wants more info on the following, please drop me a line, or leave a comment here.

Key birds (personal highlights in bold!)

• Black Francolin: one heard early morning at Birecik north gravel pits, not seen
• See-see Partridge: one seen well from a tractor ride into steppe country near Yeni Akpinar, conserved by the Doga Dernegi charity (I think). Another briefly in flight from the car nearby,
• Pygmy Cormorant: many flying up and down the R Euphrates in and around Birecik
• Bald Ibis: at least one pair nesting in the wadi not far from the Ibis Centre in Birecik – hard to know whether these really are wild or not!
• Pallid (Striated) Scops Owl: one visiting an apparent nest site at the far end of the tea gardens in Birecik after dark – look for a tree with a broken top immediately beyond the blue fountain. However, this was completely surpassed by one that sang from a hole in the wall of our hotel in Halfeti, right above our room!!

• White-throated Kingfisher: at least a couple south of Adana, around the well-publicised site

• Blue-cheeked Bee-eater: at least 20 birds around the breeding colony at Estagfirullah were absolutely awesome! None at the site to the SW of the Ataturk Baraji.

• Bimaculated Lark: one or two near Yeni Akpinar, but better seen song-flighting east of Isikli, west of Gaziantep.
• Rufous Scrub Robin: common in suitable habitat

• White-throated Robin: numerous around Durnalik and Isikli – e.g. at least six seen both times we visited

• Finsch’s Wheatear: a couple at Yeni Akpinar – stunning birds!
• Graceful Warbler: easy at Birecik north gravel pits
• Menetries’s Warbler: pretty easy around Birecik and Halfeti
• Upcher’s Warbler: best seen above the ibis wadi, and also near Durnalik and around Birecik
• Eastern Rock Nuthatch: easy a couple of miles outside (old) Halfeti. Also near Durnalik
• White-spectacled Bulbul: various sites around Birecik and Halfeti. (Note that a small group of White-eared Bulbul had been present at Birecik Tea Gardens a week or two before we visited – believe this is only the second record for Turkey)
• Iraq Babbler: pretty easy early morning around Birecik north gravel pits
• Dead Sea Sparrow: easiest in the cemetery on the track towards the Birecik north gravel pits, where rather abundant; also seen around the pits themselves
• Yellow-throated Sparrow: just north of Birecik, around pistachio plantations
• Pale Rock Sparrow: seen on both visits to Durnalik, and also one at Yeni Akpinar
• Desert Finch: a small group were the only ones seen, in pistachios on the minor road leading east out of (new) Halfeti towards Sutveren
• Cinereous Bunting: just one, at Durnalik.

… and of course there was no shortage of other, more widely distributed species either!

Arctic Norway & Finland Trip Report (March / April 2012)

… and about time too, I might add!

Several people have been asking me recently about the trip I did with Jono and my Dad up to the far north of Finland and Norway last year – I guess Tormod’s speaking tour around the country with Martin Garner may well have much to do with this! The trip feels like ages ago now, but the memories are still fresh and fantastic. We saw some stunning birds, beautiful landscapes… and actually didn’t have to spend that much money (in what can be a terrifyingly expensive part of the world) to do it. Nor did we come across many other birders, or need a guide to find most of our target species – if you’re prepared for the weather with good gear, it’s not a difficult proposition to do an awesome self-drive trip.

So, here’s the long-awaited trip report, which includes details of the logistics as well as the birds. Click on the grosbeak to open… very topical right now, given events on Shetland!

Also, for a recap on other photos from the trip, browse my previous posts >here<.

If anyone wants more information about any of this, don’t hesitate to leave a comment with your contact email address here, and I’ll get back to you.

South Africa: more colourful gems…

Not too much birding for me this weekend, while I’ve been over in Wales with Suzanne’s family, though a bit of a wander in the back of beyond yesterday lunchtime resulted in a couple of Black Grouse – I really must go back and see them lek again sometime soon. I also got gently reprimanded for not having finished dealing with all the photos from South Africa: fair enough, it was over two months ago now! I’ve finished processing (read: deleting most of) my bird photos, so just the landscapes and some bits of Suzanne’s video to go.

So, in the absence of British bird images, here are some of the Cape’s smartest species…

First up, this is a Black-headed Oriole. Just like the Golden Orioles in the UK, these have a fluty whistling song, a harsh angry cat-like call, and are generally ridiculously difficult to see for a brightly coloured bird, frequently dense foliage in tall trees!

Much easier to see, the Bokmakierie is a type of bush-shrike, fond of sitting up on obvious perches amongst dense scrubby fynbos vegetation.

Sunbirds were probably the most attractive family of birds going on the trip, and we enjoyed no less than six different species. The handsome fella pictured above is the biggest of the bunch: a Malachite Sunbird, pictured in the superb Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Continuing on the theme, the next two shots are Orange-breasted Sunbirds, an endemic to the Western Cape, but relatively easily seen amongst proteas and fynbos. Smart!

… and the following is an even commoner Southern African species, the Southern Double-collared Sunbird. These were seen most days, but still invariably prompted a quick grab for the camera by the end of the trip!

Southern Red Bishops are a pretty common sight along the roadsides, utterly unmistakable even from a car travelling at 120kph! We came across a couple of large breeding colonies in reeds along riverbeds, where many of the males were displaying. This was a general feature of visiting in August, as resident species started to gear up for the breeding season to come.

To finish with, a couple of poorer quality photos of trickier forest birds. One of my most-wanted for the trip was a Narina Trogon. All the members of this tropical forest inhabiting family are really smart, but take a bit of effort to find, hiding their bright colours in shady and often dense forest. I was really hoping to see one, but it was too much to expect anything… So finding this guy perched up at eye level on the trail around Nature’s Valley was one of the birding highlights of the trip! It took a little while to successfully point it out to Suzanne through the tangle of branches and creepers, but the bird was surprisingly confiding, swooping only a few yards through the trees as we moved closer to get clearer views. It invariably seemed to perch with its back to us, peering back over its shoulder like a tired old man!

Another magic moment came along one of the ‘kingfisher trails’ on the edge of Wilderness, creeping slowly and carefully through pretty dense forest, listening to a bewildering array of calls from up in the canopy, and generally seeing very little. This was ‘real birding’ – no pager messages, tour guides or crowds of birders to help find or identify anything! A couple of small thrush-like shapes flicked through the understorey in front of us, and after a moment or two, the first popped out to reveal itself as a Chorister Robin-chat… very smart. The second was harder to pin down, though, never going far but always perching just out of view behind a log, or in a little dip, taunting us…

And then when I finally did get a view: “What the **** is THAT?”. I had no idea what it was! I thought I’d been fairly careful in studying ‘the targets’ in the field guide (what else is there to do on a 12 hour flight?!), but this bird hadn’t figured in my preparations at all. It was stunningly smart, too: bright orange underparts and outer-tail; greenish-olive mantle; dark wings; and a slaty-blue head. Once we’d both seen it properly, and I’d got the dodgy flash-lit record shot you see below, the field-guide came out, and pretty quickly the answer became clear: a White-starred Robin, named for the tiny white spot in front of the eye.

As it turns out, these are merely a tricky bird to see in the area, rather than being out and out rarities. And indeed there were other good birds throughout the trip that played hard to get… but the excitement of working hard to find something new, difficult and beautiful will live long in the memory. That’s what foreign birding is all about, and I can’t wait to do plenty more!