A Great Potoo was the first bird I heard this morning shortly after my alarm went off at 5:00 AM. It was going to be a good day.
At dinner the previous night Luis, Laura and I had come up with a plan for our full day at Explorama Lodge. We would begin by taking the boat downriver to a small channel leaving the Amazon River called Cocha Bondi. The birding can be dynamic here at dawn and it would give us a good chance at several of my target species before breakfast, including Red-and-white Spinetail, Pearly-breasted Conebill and Brownish Elaenia. As the first hints of daylight appeared in the night sky, we loaded ourselves into the boat.
There is something about being on an Amazonian watercourse at dawn. The mist rising off the river, the sky lightening as the sun is getting ready to peak over the horizon. The incredible dawn chorus of birds, while parrots and macaws fly high over the river to their feeding ground. Everything seems so alive and vibrant.
Our morning at Cocha Bondi was amazing and in less than two hours we tallied over fifty bird species including all three of my targets and much more.
We found two singing Brownish Elaenias in mid-aged cecropias around the wetland. Though far from the most iconic Amazonian bird, it can be a tricky one to find and so I was happy with the great views we had.
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| Pearly-breasted Conebill - Cocha Bondi, Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
Of course there was so much else to see in a habitat like this at dawn. Laura spotted a Sungrebe sneaking through the water hyacinth. Sungrebes are not closely related to grebes and they do not like the sun. Sungrebes are one of three bird species in the family Heliornithidae, the others being the Masked Finfoot (of Asia) and the African Finfoot (of, you guessed it, Africa).
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| Sungrebe - Cocha Bondi, Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
Black-capped Donocobius was a common species in the riverside vegetation. I never tire of these ridiculous birds which are the only species in the family Donacobiidae.
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| Black-capped Donacobius - Cocha Bondi, Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
Spinetails were quite vocal. We noted Red-and-white, Plain-crowned, and Dark-breasted.
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| Dark-breasted Spinetail - Cocha Bondi, Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
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| Dark-breasted Spinetail - Cocha Bondi, Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
We spent a few minutes on shore here and quickly turned up a few more bird species, including this Castelnau's Antshrike. This is yet another river island specialist, but one that we had seen previously in Ecuador.
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| Castelnau's Antshrike - Cocha Bondi, Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
We found a pair of Plain-breasted Piculets here as well, improving on our sighting from yesterday afternoon.
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| Plain-breasted Piculet - Cocha Bondi, Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
It had been a very productive morning, and we headed back to the lodge for a well-earned breakfast. Following that, it was time to walk around the trail system at Explorama. Maybe our luck with the Orange-eyed Flatbill would improve this time.
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| Apioscelis sp. - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
The birding was slow as the dawn chorus had long-since concluded and we also had to deal with annoying mosquitoes. However, being from Canada (home to the world's worst mosquitoes!) this was not much more than a minor nuisance. We spent almost three hours on the trails and came away with some great sightings.
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| Taygetis thamyra - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
Our rarest find was a pair of Lunulated Antbirds which we first heard and then eventually saw well since they came right in to the tape. This was a species that I was not at all expecting, as there are only a few records on eBird for the area and it is generally scarce across its limited range.
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| Lunulated Antbird - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
It was around this point that I began having camera issues. I noticed that my camera stopped being able to focus on a subject. The focus would just zoom in and out and the camera was unable to "lock on". I figured it must be caused by the excessive humidity here, as I have had humidity create issues in the past.
Continuing on, we later found a Lanceolated Monklet at an area where the forest transitions from varzea (seasonally flooded forest) to terra firme (upland forest). This is a rare species that we had only seen once before so we were pretty happy with the encounter. I am a big fan of puffbirds, and this is one of the smallest, cutest puffbirds out there. Unfortunately, it stayed high in the tree and, combined with having to use manual focus, my photos did not turn out very well.
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| Lanceolated Monklet - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
We also found a few gorgeous Red-backed Poison Frogs along the trail. This beautiful species is only found in a small region of Amazonia in northern Peru.
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| Red-backed Poison Frog (Ranitomeya reticulata) - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
We returned to the lodge for lunch followed by a siesta, while I also tried to sort out my camera issues. Despite placing the camera and lens in the sun (which helped remove some visible moisture from the camera), I was unable to resolve the focusing issues. For the rest of the trip, I was stuck having to manual focus. This is nearly impossible with wildlife photography since a subject has to be sitting still, and even then there is no guarantee that you can tweak the focus perfectly for a sharp photo. I decided that I would worry less about photography from here on out and just try to appreciate everything through the binoculars. Later, upon returning back to Canada, it was determined that a particular motor in the lens had failed. Fortunately, it was still covered under warranty. As I write this a year later, I haven't had the same issue since it was fixed.
Laura, Luis and I met at 2:30 PM for our afternoon excursion. We returned to Isla Yanamono to try again for the Ash-breasted Antbird. This time we were successful and we even got one to sit still on a branch for a few minutes. I even managed a sharp(ish) photo with the manual focus!
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| Ash-breasted Antbird - Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
We visited a different corner of the island that had mainly grasses and low shrubs, as well as an area cleared for agriculture. We connected with another river island specialty here, the Lesser Hornero.
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| Lesser Hornero - Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
The birds were very active here and we found a few other neat species, including Olive-spotted Hummingbird, Lesser Wagtail-Tyrant, Spotted Tody-Flycatcher, Orange-backed Troupial, White-headed Marsh-Tyrant and a wintering Alder Flycatcher.
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| Olive-spotted Hummingbird - Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
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| Lesser Wagtail-Tyrant - Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
Laura noticed this Greater Hatchet-faced Tree Frog resting in the shoreline vegetation, a new species for us.
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| Greater Hatchet-faced Tree Frog (Sphaenorhynchus lacteus) - Isla Yanamono, Loreto, Peru |
That evening, after a delicious dinner, we headed out by boat down a small channel near the lodge in search of herps and whatever else we could find.
Right off the bat we found our first snake for the Amazonian portion of the trip, a Brown Sipo sleeping in the trees above the boat. I may have given our boatman a heart attack when I grabbed the snake! Evidently not many of their birding guests do that...
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| Brown Sipo (Chironius fuscus) - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
We also found this unlikely duo: an American Pygmy Kingfisher with a moth (genus Gorgone).
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| American Pygmy Kingfisher and Gorgone sp. - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
The rest of the boat trip was a bit slow sightings-wise, but we found several roosting birds including Varzea Schiffornis, Green Ibis, Gray-cowled Wood-Rail, Lesser Kiskadee and Gray-headed Tanager.
Laura and I still had some energy after the boat trip and so we headed out on the main trail with our flashlights (after confirming with Luis that we could go out on our own). We couldn't turn up any other snakes but we found several frogs, lizards and insects, as well as a Brown-eared Woolly Opossum high up in the canopy that I noticed due to its eye-shine.
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| Unidentified mantis (family Liturgusidae) - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
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| Typophyllum sp. - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
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| Amazon Sheep Frog (Hamptophryne boliviana) - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
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| Brown-eared Anole (Anolis fuscoauratus) - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
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| Ferenta stolliana - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
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| Brown-eared Woolly Opossum (Caluromys lanatus) - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
Before heading off to bed, I quickly checked my moth trap which I had set up near our room. Unfortunately there were almost no insects on the sheet. For some reason I have a really hard time attracting moths in the Amazonian lowlands, while in the foothills moths are super abundant. I'm not really sure why!
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| Molippa sp. - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
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| Argyrosticta ditissima - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
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| Samea sp. - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
February 21, 2024
Our final morning at Explorama Lodge. Though we had done quite well with birds and had found nearly every river island specialty that can be found in this region, we were still missing the Orange-eyed Flatbill. This would likely be our last shot at it, and so that was the goal for the morning. As the dawn chorus began, we headed out on foot.
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| Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
And the third time was the charm! We finally had a response from an Orange-eyed Flatbill and after a tense minute it came into view. As you can see from my photo, this is possibly the most beautiful bird in the entire Amazon basin.
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| Orange-eyed Flatbill - Explorama Lodge, Loreto, Peru |
OK maybe not, but I was still thrilled to have finally found this scarce species! The rest of the walk was fairly slow birding but we turned up a few species including White-eared Jacamar, Slate-colored Hawk, Chestnut Woodpecker and Pale-legged Hornero. We returned to the lodge for breakfast, packed up our room, and by 9 AM we took the boat downriver towards ExplorNapo Lodge. That will be the subject of my next blog post.
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