Amazon Day 3

I woke on Sunday feeling empty but definitely somewhat better.  I had a very light breakfast of a cup of weak black tea and a couple of slices of bread.  Then it was out once more with Oscar my specialist bird guide.  

We left the lodge crossing the main lake by canoe just as dawn made its first appearance.  Following the main canal, we left the canoe and walked through the jungle back to the Nepo River.  While the Nepo is called the “white water” locally, as opposed to the black silt of the canals and lake around the hotel, it is far from white.  Already wide, it is a pale beige colour due to the mud in the water. 

We once again donned life preservers and headed down river to a parrot lick. This is a large clay cliff viewable from the boat that various species of parrot come to first thing in the morning to eat the nutrient rich clay which gives them the minerals that they need to be able to digest the fruit that they eat.  The parrots were too far away for the 600mm that I had with me - I’m pretty sure that they would have been too far away at 800mm - but it was fascinating to watch even if it has not resulted in strong images.

From here we proceeded to an area where there were Macaws putting on a fine display, before retracing our steps and returning back upriver.  Inevitably the bird life in the jungle is much harder to photograph than it has been on the wildlife.  Finding those bird would be very difficult, the vegetation is so dense, but my guide, Oscar, is able to find things with his bare eyes that I struggle to see through with binoculars or a camera lens.

This does mean that many species that I saw were not really photographable in a way that would produce an attractive and effective image.

But later on when we climbed a 40m high tower built next to a giant bolsa tree about 500 years old, to reach a platform towards its top, there were some opportunities.  I’ve given you the Toucan as my main blip.  I’ve run out of  extras during the course of this trip and have gradually been deleting extras from earlier in the year.   As a result I am also able to bring you the Nightjar,  Grey Headed Kite and finally a Plain Throated Antwren.  The last was an absolute devil to get a clear shot of.

By the end of the day I was able to have a bowl of hearty chicken soup for dinner and while my stomach is not quite right yet, it is on the mend.  The effort of keeping going was definitely worth it.