August 26-September 10, 2024 with Bret Whitney
2024, our third run of Great Rivers of the Amazon III: Tefé, Amanã, and Mamirauá turned out to be more of a spanking from Mother Nature than a showcase of her complex interplay of rivers and forest habitats in the central Amazon basin. She’s a tough old (very old) gal, to be sure, and I so deeply respect her – I just wish we hadn’t coincided with one of her angrier mood swings this time around. (Before about 2005, I’ll posit, MN didn’t have these wild swings, she was just kinda moody, and usually very nice, more like my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Phillips.) To the point, last year (when we did not offer this itinerary) might have been just as difficult, so this was two years in a row of a mad, mad, Mother. I like to think that our little tour group, because we are one with Mother Nature, should have been given a break. But we really can’t blame her for bashing human beings almost everywhere, can we? I don’t think so. We’ve collectively managed to mess up Earth’s atmosphere to the point that now, on January 1, nobody can say what “this year’s” weather will “likely” be. Rather, we have to brace for upheavals caused by brand-new weatherman terms like “polar vortexes”, “heat domes”, “oceanic rivers”, "bomb cyclones" etc., all of which amount to “you asked for it” punishments. I guess some combination of those conditions caused a months-long shutoff of rainfall in the southern Andes, the consequence of which, for central Amazonia, was the passing of a tipping point, a sudden and severe dearth of water. At the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve, on the middle Rio Solimões/lower Rio Japurá, scientists monitoring water levels documented a drop of 5 meters between 1 and 28 August 2024. That is what happened over thousands of square miles of the central Amazon basin! It is simply staggering to contemplate.
So there we were, a half-dozen adventurous souls -- with a best-of-the-best supporting cast of Amazonian guides, pilots, paddlers, choppers, spotters, and yes, cooks and bartenders -- game to make the most of the challenge before us: bird Mamirauá (entirely seasonally flooded forest) for 3 days; bird Amanã Sustainable Development Reserve (a mix of seasonally flooded forest and terra firme forest) for 3 days; bird ephemeral river islands in the Rio Solimões near the town of Tefé; and bird old-growth terra firme forests for 4 days at three villages in the Tefé National Forest. Never mind that that’s not exactly what we did, better to ask, “How did we do?” I’d say the answer to that is, “Pretty darned well in seasonally flooded habitats (várzea, igapó, chavascal, and passable waterways), not so well in terra firme forest, which we could barely access due to near-record low-water levels.”
Mamirauá was absolutely teeming with waterbirds concentrated in narrow, shrinking channels. Among the throngs of Large-billed and Yellow-billed terns, Black Skimmers, Great and Snowy egrets and Neotropic Cormorants and Anhingas were several adult and immature Agami Herons, and Boat-billed Herons. Striated Herons and Jacanas, and caiman of all sizes, were all over the place. Large numbers of Hoatzins and scattered pairs of Horned Screamers, and also lots of Black-collared and Great Black hawks, complemented the rich variety and abundance of waterbirds. Trails there were high and dry, easy to walk (once we got up the steep banks to them!), but incredibly quiet. The dry conditions over the past several weeks had severely stressed the birds, amphibians, and even the insects. To be sure, we saw a fine variety of birds at Mamirauá, it was just tough convincing most of them to show up for us. Highlights on the forest trails included a pair of Slate-colored Hawks, White-chinned Jacamar, a few White-throated and Channel-billed toucans (aracaris and toucans were remarkably scarce), Yellow-tufted, Ringed, Cream-colored, Waved, Chestnut, Red-stained, and Crimson-crested woodpeckers (what a haul!), Festive Parrot, Scarlet Macaw (like the toucans, parrots were very scarce at Mamirauá), White-browed and Plumbeous antbirds, Long-billed, Plain-brown, Amazonian Barred, Striped, Straight-billed, and Zimmer’s woodcreepers, and Dull-capped Attila. The two marquee animals of Mamirauá are White Uakari Monkey and Wattled Curassow. We enjoyed fabulous encounters with the Uakaris (check out the video!), but did not even hear a curassow. They were silent, probably already nesting, and could easily slip away unseen as we walked through the forest. Our hope was to find a pair at the water edge early or late in the day, from the canoes, but no luck.
A post-dinner owling excursion one evening proved to be quite productive, starting with impressive views of Greater Bulldog Fishing-Bats silently passing around our canoes as we left the lodge, and our spotlights revealed literally hundreds of Spectacled and Black caiman. The narrowing waterways concentrated huge populations of fish, including lots of Pirarucu (Arapaima gigas, at 3+ meters in length and weighing hundreds of pounds, the largest freshwater fish in South America). These enormous fish are predators that feed mostly on smaller fish at the surface. Their lunging, gulping attacks in shallow water produced startling, slamming explosions on all sides, sometimes right next to our canoes (not to mention all night around our comfortable floating hotel)! Teeming numbers of lesser fish, ranging from about 5 inches to 2 feet long, provided a different form of entertainment as they jumped out of the water in the spotlights ahead of our canoes, sometimes landing in the boats where they bounced chaotically in our laps and at our feet. We tried to grab the larger ones to toss them back in the river, which was also entertaining! Once up on a trail, and using the thermal imaging scope, we found a close Murine Mouse-Opossum (and possibly another, slightly smaller species), a large Black-eared Opossum, a cooperative Tawny-bellied Screech-Owl, an arboreal rat (strongly dorso-ventrally bicolored with a naked tail, probably Proechimys sp.), and a big, beautiful Amazon Bamboo Rat that allowed us to approach it quite closely as it munched on fresh leaves – fantastic!
On the evening before our departure day from Mamirauá, we learned that Dorinha, our big river boat from Manaus, making the 2.5-day trip upriver on the Rio Solimões, had had to drop anchor for the night, significantly delaying her arrival. Smoke from widespread burning had reduced visibility to the point that risk of collision with other boats, including massive tankers using the same, relatively narrow passages, was high. We used the “extra” morning at Mamirauá to try every trick in the book (and then some) for Wattled Curassow, but the best we could do was a tail feather along one of the trails. To save some time, that afternoon we used a Mamirauá speed-launch to get out to the Solimões to find Dorinha, move in to our cabins, and, early the next morning, start up the Rio Japurá toward Amanã Sustainable Development Reserve. There were good numbers of both Amazon River Dolphins and Tucuxi (the smaller, gray species of river dolphin), especially around the small community of Repartimento. There we learned from residents that Dorinha would have to tie up there, as the waterways leading into Lago Amanã had dropped about 3 feet in the last week and it would be tricky, in one or two places, just to pass through in our canoe with a 30hp outboard motor. We were some 35 kilometers, about 3 hours in the outboard canoe, from our birding destination around the community of Ubim, where residents had opened good trails for birding terra firme forest. We were able to communicate with them, and they kindly invited us to stay the following night, or two if we wished, in houses at Ubim, but the consensus was to pass on their offer.
Thus, we got a very early start the next morning, with a plan for the captain of Dorinha to bring us lunch to have at Ubim. About an hour along the route, we came upon an alarming scene playing out in the middle of the river: a boat about the size of ours had capsized and three men were hanging on to it in an area where a couple of semi-submerged trees created a difficult passage through a rapids. Our local guide knew them, and called out to see if they were OK – and, amazingly, they said they would be fine, so we gingerly navigated this tricky spot (the only one we would encounter, thank goodness!) to continue along to Lago Amanã. After a much-needed rest stop at an Amanã guard station, we entered Lago Amanã. As the morning brightened, we were literally surrounded by waterbirds, with terns and egrets in the hundreds, and there were several thousand Neotropic Cormorants concentrated on mudbars recently exposed by the receding waters of the lake. We reached the entrance to Ubim about 08:30, and made an impromptu stop to bird well-developed chavascal/igapó forest above the lake edge. Getting out of the canoes and up into the habitat was slippery but we made it. There was a fresh set of large Jaguar tracks along the forest edge. Once under the canopy, birds started happening fast – a gorgeous male Yellow-crowned Manakin was first to appear, then, from the same spot, we had good views of Bar-breasted Piculet, Leaden Antwren, and Black-chinned Antbird, and a Blue-crowned Trogon also showed nicely. The big prize here would be Chestnut-headed Nunlet, which had been seen just once on any FG tour (Manaus 2023). I walked the group upslope to the edge of slightly denser woodland with some vines in the midstory that floods every year, but for less time than the chavascal below. I explained to folks that nunlets nest in a burrow in the ground, and should be vocal and probably responsive at this time of the year, especially as dry as it was. I played the recording I had made on the Manaus tour last year. Within a minute, a suspect bird shot past to land out of sight behind some trees. I played the song again, and the bird popped out on an open branch only 6 feet above ground, a gorgeous male Chestnut-headed Nunlet, YEEE-HAWWW! It sat there for about 3 minutes, plenty of time for repeated scope views, lots of photos, and a little video (this was a bad moment for me to run out of battery power after 10 seconds). We heard but did not see the female there as well. I looked around carefully for the nest, but no luck (it remains undescribed). We took a longer route back out to the boat, crossing a tiny forest stream that had a little water in it, where we pulled up both American Pygmy and Green-and-rufous kingfishers, both of which sat close for several minutes.
Meanwhile, our captain from Dorinha had arrived in Ubim right on time, and we enjoyed a relaxing front-porch lunch of fresh tucunaré (Peacock Bass) and grilled meats with potato salad and mixed greens, and plenty of cold drinks. We did a reconnaissance run above Ubim to make sure that we could reach the terra firme trail the next morning, which indeed we did, enabling us to find an army ant swarm that seemed to be just getting underway for the day. With patience, we managed to see Chestnut-crested and White-cheeked antbirds, at least one male Reddish-winged Bare-eye, and Black-banded Woodcreeper (White-plumed Antbird was present as well, but refused to show itself). Also seen nearby was a Black-faced Antbird of the very dark subspecies ardesiaca that is a likely future split. Unfortunately, we had only about three hours to bird the terra firme. We ate our packed lunch as we motored back out to Ubim, reaching the little community mid-afternoon. The schoolmaster there told us that his students wanted to give us a flutofone performance before we headed back to Dorinha. We gathered in the center of the community and sat on a bench as the schoolmaster arranged his students, aged about 7 to 12. Other little kiddos rode their bikes in the background and several older kids and adults, including the matriarch of the community, Raimunda, were in attendance. Their performance was wonderful, and we clapped heartily for them afterwards. I’ll include a video clip in our tour triplist. We then returned to the chavascal area we had birded the day before to try to show Steve (who had not been with us) the Chestnut-headed Nunlet, and to our delight, the male, and also the Yellow-crowned Manakin and Leaden Antwren, promptly appeared again!
By the time we had descended the Japurá to reach the Rio Solimões, we were a day behind schedule. Furthermore, the river had continued to drop to the point that our captain judged it best to avoid the normal routes across the Solimões to Tefé, instead going well downriver to near Caimbé before making it across to the south bank, and back upriver to Tefé. This put us another half-day behind schedule. In communications with the three villages we were to visit on Lago Tefé (south of the city), we learned that the lake had dropped to the point that there was only a very narrow channel of water about two feet deep that might work for us to get to the nearest village, Arraia; the other two villages, Tauary and Bauana, were now inaccessible by boat. To navigate the channel to Arraia, we hired a local pilot and his boat. Arraia went well, and we picked up some terra firme birds, but the trip there and back to Dorinha was just too long and slow to be worth repeating, so we opted to do the rest of our planned terra firme birding by car, outside the town of Tefé. Weather was good for birding, and we found Needle-billed Hermit, Amazonian Black-throated Trogon, Yellow-billed Jacamar, Great Jacamar, Gilded Barbet, Red-throated Caracara, Kawall’s Parrot, Fasciated, White-shouldered, and Pearly antshrikes, Rio Madeira Stipplethroat, Humaita and White-throated antbirds, Long-tailed, Cinnamon-throated, and Elegant woodcreepers, and, at darned near the last minute, a handsome male Chestnut-belted Gnateater.
In sum, this was a difficult tour for all of us. Could we have known how severely restrictive the water levels would become over just the couple of weeks ahead of arrival, Field Guides probably would have canceled it despite everyone having purchased international airfares months earlier. As it was, however, our little group handled the various challenges as best we could, and I think everyone enjoyed much of the tour. Our crew and our "Mothership", Dorinha, were wonderful every day, and so greatly appreciated. Finally, I want to give Steve McInnis a special shout-out for offering to handle our multiple eBird lists every day, and for contributing so many of his professional-quality photos -- thanks for a great job, Steve!
You can see my complete trip report on eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/tripreport/276798
You can download a combined PDF of this page and the eBird report at this link: https://fieldguides.com/triplists/gr324TRIPLIST.pdf
-- Bret