Return to Estabrook and trip pics part 1

It was a very nice morning to return to Estabrook Park. The air was cool and still, and the sky was mostly clear. I counted nine wood ducks and one great blue heron on the pond, but the fun really started on the river at the north end. There I found the first eagle I believe I’ve ever seen at ground level. There was also an osprey, but I only saw it fly by and didn’t get a picture.

There were a few herons around, both blue and green, plus this one great egret who nearly stepped over a resting wood duck as it hunted for breakfast.

On shore, there were several little birds in the trees, including an American redstart or two, and this darling female or immature bay-breasted warbler already on its fall migration to the Caribbean or South America. “Bon voyage, little one! See you next spring!”

I hadn’t heard an indigo bunding all morning, for a change, until I spotted this one who appears to be shouting, “now?!? You need a @#$%& a picture now?”

Finally, in one of the little pine trees at the north end of the soccer fields, I managed to get my very first red-breasted nuthatch picture. Aren’t they gorgeous? I’ve been on the lookout for them for years, and I only just glimpsed one for the first time this spring, but today was picture day! Ask the bunting.

Oh, and about our recent trip, if you guessed “Brazilian Amazon,” you were right! Well done! Anne planned us an amazing trip, and we flew into and out of Manaus, a city of about 2 million people and a deepwater port about 900 miles up the Amazon River from the Atlantic Ocean. A major tourist attraction there is the so-called “Meeting of the Waters“, where “the dark (blackwater) Rio Negro and the pale sandy-colored (whitewater) Amazon River” meet. The Amazon is “referred to as the Solimões River in Brazil upriver of this confluence.”

Anyway, from there we took excursions to a couple of lodges on some tributaries, and I took about 2500 pictures. We saw about 70 bird species new to us, plus butterflies, reptiles, and mammals still uncounted, so it’s gonna take me a while to get them all sorted out. For starters, here are some pictures I took right in Manaus or on a half-day trip just across the river and back.

You may or may not already know this, but the Amazon River is home to its very own Amazon river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis), with echo location and everything, and here are two of them surfacing for a breath.

They are also a bit of a tourist attraction, and the boat we were on stopped at a floating dock just off the far shore where you could jump in, if you were brave enough, to watch a lady handfeed them fish right in front of your face. Anne and I chose to watch from the safety of the dock, but plenty of other tourists did join in the fun, and here are two of them. Yikes! That’s a lot of teeth, eh?

Before returning to Manaus, the boat also stopped at a floating cafeteria, which put on an amazing buffet, and then we went for a short walk in the nearby forest, where a troop of capuchin monkeys had grown accustomed to some tourists or guides handing out fruit.

While there are no alligators or crocodiles in the Amazon River, or so I read, there are plenty of caimans, and here is the biggest one we saw, with a jaw about 18 inches long. I can’t see the teeth, but I know they’re in there.

We didn’t see a lot of birds until we stayed overnight in the lodges, but here’s a flycatcher perched just above the caiman, either streaked, piratic, variegated, or sulphur-bellied, and I’m leaning towards the last one for now.

There were more vultures there than I’ve ever seen anywhere. I counted more than a couple dozen kettling together in the late afternoon sky over the city on multiple occasions. They were mostly black, like the ones I’ve shown you from Connecticut, or turkey, like the ones I’ve shown you in Estabrook Park, and here’s a black one on the ground giving its wings a good sunbath.

Finally, they have the common ground dove (Columbina passerina), the smallest dove I’ve ever seen, at about half the size of the mourning doves we see in Estabrook, and here are two of them getting romantic in the pink early-morning light.

That’s it for now, and I’ll have more for you next time.