Diga adeus ao Brasil

On our last morning in the Amazon, at Antonio’s Lodge, I had sort of a magical moment in which I just kept seeing one new bird after another. The previous morning, I had parked in the observation tower they have, in hopes of seeing birds at eye level or below, and I did see that hummingbird and the orange-winged parrot from there, but not much more. Walking around on the ground instead seemed to expose me to a lot more, even though I had to contend with a light sky background.

The first bird to catch my eye was this amazing green-backed trogon (Trogon viridis), and I couldn’t believe how nicely it posed. I had never even heard of “trogons” before. Have you?

This chestnut woodpecker (Celeus elegans), our third woodpecker of the trip, was energetically picking fruit from this tree nearly the whole time, and it was often half buried in leaves or branches, but not always.

When I spotted this stunner, I thought it was another blue dacnis, which we first saw just yesterday, and I even logged it as such. It was only in the process of sorting through all the pictures in order to write these posts, however, that I realized it was a completely different bird, a spangled cotinga (Cotinga cayana), and not even in the same family as the dacnis, though they are both passerines. Note that the color reproduction in my image may look fake or pushed too far to overcome the backlighting, but it is pretty accurate, and the Pedia of Wik describes them as “bright turquoise-blue with a large deep wine-red throat.” You can check out the ebird picture here for reference.

In contrast, here’s the drabbest parrot, a dusky parrot (Pionus fuscus), that you may ever see.

As if the green-backed trogon above wasn’t enough trogon for one day, check out this Guianan trogon (Trogon violaceus) sporting a yellow eye-ring instead of white. It too has a yellow belly, that you can just see a corner of, but it didn’t want to flaunt it.

After all those exotics, check out this familiar face, a red-eyed vireo (Vireo olivaceus) just like the ones we see in Estabrook Park. It appears that some migrate to Wisconsin, and beyond, while some just stay in the Amazon year-round.

This next bird, a chestnut-bellied seedeater (Sporophila castaneiventris), was the last bird I photographed that I knew was new to me at the time. After the “cotinga incident”, however, I should probably comb through all my pictures again, to see what else I might have missed, but not today.

Instead, let’s just enjoy another glimpse of a turquoise tanager from that last morning, …

a fun look at a female silver-beaked tanager digging breakfast out of a local fruit, and …

my last wildlife picture of the trip, of a pretty little Labe satyr butterfly (Vanima labe).

Even if I don’t find any new birds, I still have a few other pictures to sprinkle into future reports, but this concludes the Brazil-heavy portion of our program, for now. Thanks to Anne for planning the whole adventure and making it possible.