Estabrook Park with a guest and trip pics part 2

Anne and I hosted our grandson last night, and he wanted to visit Estabrook with me this morning, so that’s what we did. He’s just turned six, so the three-mile hike to the north end and back was a bit of a stretch for him, but the little trooper made it the whole way under his own power.

When we got to the pollinator garden, he spotted a goldfinch digging seeds out of some flowers, while I spotted a house wren on the downed log behind the garden, and I did a better job with the house wren picture, so here it is. I was happy to see a wren because I hadn’t heard them since I got back from Brazil.

When we got to the pond, we counted nine wood ducks, but the big find was our first yellow-rumped warbler of the fall migration. “Welcome back and safe travels!”

We pressed on all the way to the north end, and our reward was watching this great egret catch a tiny fish.

On the way back south, he spotted a northern cardinal beside the Oak Leaf Trail, and this time I was able to get a good picture of the bird he found, and here it is. When I showed him the picture, he was surprised to see that it had a red beak. Cool.

Okay, back to the Amazon. After the first two days in Manaus and its surroundings, we headed farther afield, by car, boat, car, car ferry, and finally boat again, to the wonderful Dolphin Lodge on the Parana do Mamori, which eventually flows into the Amazon River. We were greeted on the dock by this stunning and quite friendly male orange-fronted yellow finch (Sicalis columbiana).

Once we got ashore, there were plenty of lizards skulking around in the dead leaves on the ground, and here’s an adult and juvenile giant ameiva, also known as the green ameiva, South American ground lizard, or Amazon racerunner (Ameiva ameiva) checking each other out.

That evening, we went on a short boat tour of the surrounding waters and spotted this spectacular black-collared hawk (Busarellus nigricollis).

There were also a few fast-moving squirrel monkeys, and this was the slowest one.

I could barely believe I was even seeing this next bird, a hoatzin or hoactzin (Opisthocomus hoazin). It was huge, at over two feet from beak to tail, and “is notable for having chicks that have claws on two of their wing digits.” I kid you not!

The parade of large and fabulous birds continued with this snail kite (Rostrhamus sociabilis).

Besides the river and forest, there was a lot of flooded forest where the trees just grew up through the standing water. At the edge between the flooded forest and open water, big mats of floating grass and other plants grew, and these mats were often inhabited by small families of these long-legged cuties: juvenile wattled jacanas (Jacana jacana). There were four in this particular group…

and one adult, that I could see.

There’re plenty more pictures from day 3, but I’d better stop here and save the rest for later.