Our four-day package at Paso do Lontra lodge includes everything from horse trekking to piranha fishing, but our main interest is birding. Already between thunderstorms we have seen dozens of species, seven of them new – and we haven’t even left the boardwalk! My favorites are the red-crested and yellow-billed cardinals. About twenty resident capybaras, those giant pig-like rodents, wander the grounds grazing on the green grass and we watched a family of howler monkeys eating fruits in the treetops.
We breakfasted alone then met Fabiano for a birding cruise on the Miranda. The outboard put-putted upstream at a snail’s pace, just fast enough to thwart the mosquitoes and perfect for spotting birds. The count isn’t complete but we probably added ten new species including the red and green and the golden-collared macaws. Birding by boat is a wonderfully lazy way to cover a lot of ground and see a lot of birds but taking photos from a moving boat is an art that I haven’t yet mastered.
We got another chance to practice, but this time in the dark. The river looks so much different at night – even with a full moon. Hundreds of caiman eyes glowed like red coals along the shore in Fabiano’s spotlight. Birds’ eyes reflected yellowish and he said the green flash was from a cat, perhaps a jaguar. Even at a slow speed a blizzard of bugs streamed past in the light as hundreds of bats darted this way and that slurping them up. The night birds are difficult to photograph but we did manage to see several nightjars and herons.
