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Pure tranquility at Jau National Park. Photo copyright Bret Whitney.

This, the second of Field Guides’ 2016 Manaus tours, was a wonderful trip! We had a most congenial group of birders, good weather (in spite of unusually prolonged, recent rains), decent if not ideal water levels, and generally great luck finding birds, with relatively few endemic species “slipping through the net”. We got underway with a leisurely but productive afternoon of birding on the grounds of the Tropical Hotel, which is situated in an area of forest just above the Rio Negro. This was an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with lots of the most common birds of the area, but a Green Aracari stayed put for prolonged scope viewing, and we found a male Klages’s Antwren(!) singing away. This bird was known from five specimens collected in the early 20th century near Santarem (Para state) until its “rediscovery” in about 1993, in the Anavilhanas Archipelago on the Rio Negro above Manaus. So, finding one at the Tropical Hotel was quite an exciting surprise – and we had fine views of the bird (which we saw well a couple of times later, on the Anavilhanas)! Also that afternoon, we saw a family group of the handsome Brazilian Bare-faced Tamarin, which has a tiny world range centered on the Manaus area, and a couple of Two-toed Sloths. We enjoyed our first caipirinhas and roasted Tambaqui (a vegetarian member of the piranha family) that evening, and we were off to a perfect start!

Just ahead of the tour, I had done a couple of days of scouting with my co-leaders, Pepe Rojas and Marcelo Barreiros. We especially wanted to try to locate the nest of Rufous Potoo at Reserva Ducke; Marcelo had found a nest there almost exactly one year earlier, which we had been thrilled to see on our 2015 tours. We suspected that the pair of potoos would again be nesting, not far from the previous site. Sure enough, we found the nest, just the night before the start of our tour! It was FABULOUS to be able to walk up and scope the adult bird perfectly as it incubated its single egg. Yip Yip Yip!! And that was just the closer for that fine morning of birding at Ducke, which started with a Black-faced Hawk, perched Red Fan and Caica parrots, and Guianan Toucanet, then continued with great views of Amazonian Pygmy-Owl, Paradise and Yellow-billed jacamars, and a gorgeous male White-fronted Manakin. That afternoon was also really good, highlighted by a very low and close male Purple-breasted Cotinga (check out the photo in the list, below!).

Early (very early!) next morning, it was off to the INPA tower, and Presidente Figueiredo. The recent rains and lack of maintenance of the dirt road into the INPA tower had caused trouble for Field Guides first Manaus tour, so I decided to rent three 4WD pickup trucks (as we had done for the first tour) to ensure we would get in there. This was a good plan, as it turned out, and we had a very productive early morning on the tower with good views of Guianan and Spotted puffbirds, a singing male Black-spotted Barbet, a beautiful Black-bellied Cuckoo, Waved and Golden-collared woodpeckers, some spectacular flyby macaws, and a good number of smaller, canopy flock birds like Guianan Woodcreeper, Spot-backed Antwren, Olive-green Tyrannulet, Glossy-backed Becard (sweet!), Slaty-capped Shrike-Vireo, Buff-cheeked Greenlet, and several honeycreepers and tanagers. En route to Presidente Figueiredo, a fortuitous stop resulted in one of the tour highlights for me (and probably some of the rest of you!) – a point-blank Point-tailed Palmcreeper that flew up to within just a few feet of us. Check out the images in the list, below.

Over the past 12 years or so, Field Guides Manaus tours have based for three nights at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project research camp, well back in the forest, where we have slept in hammocks under a metal roof, with two flush toilets and two showers. Starting this year, we decided to move the tour to a new hotel about an hour’s drive north, outside the little town of Presidente Figueiredo, where we would have air conditioned rooms with hot water, and close proximity to a fabulous lek of Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock. Although I, personally, very much miss the hammock camp and trail system to which it affords easy access, I must say that it was very pleasant to stay at the hotel, and a bit of scouting its environs ahead of the tour enabled me to find territories of most of the “hammock camp” birds, many of which are Guianan Shield endemics. A few of the most important birds we picked up in that area were perched Sapphire-rumped Parrotlets, an exciting show from several Crimson Topaz at their flowering trees, a very cooperative White-winged Potoo (nice, long scope views of a singing bird!), Capuchinbird (very quiet, but a male came in to perch for good views), Pompadour Cotinga (a dashing male in the scopes), superb Chestnut-belted Gnateater and Ferruginous-backed Antbird, Rufous-bellied Antwren, Long-tailed and Red-billed woodcreepers, Rufous-tailed Xenops, White-throated Manakin, Saffron-crested Tyrant-Manakin, Pelzeln’s Tody-Tyrant, Collared Gnatwren, and a fantastic pair of Blue-backed Tanagers -- and, of course, those amazing, incredible Guianan Cocks-of-the-Rock!! Some of them even came to eat fruit at several acai palm trees right beside the hotel dining area – along with an assortment of aracaris, toucans, and other birds. Unfortunately, Guianan Red-Cotinga and Black Manakin, despite being fairly conspicuous during pre-tour scouting, were nowhere to be seen during our stay.

After four days on land, we were ready for the boat! And what a great time we had on the "Dorinha". Our first morning saw us having breakfast on the top deck, just after a predawn swing in the small boats to see a haunting pair of Spectacled Owls and both species of band-tailed nighthawks. Birding on an island in the Anavilhanas, we saw a lot of species, all really well, then continued our way upriver to visit a family of Three-striped Night-Monkeys (fantastic!), then do a late-afternoon cruise through a narrow cut in a long, linear island in hopes of spotting Amazonian Umbrellabird (which didn’t show for us). We awoke next morning far upriver, at the mouth of the Rio Jau, in Jau National Park. The scene at daybreak was breathtaking, as “rosy-fingered dawn” illuminated the eastern horizon over the mirror-flat waters of the Jau. Large-billed and Yellow-billed terns, and a few Black Skimmers were flying around, and both species of river dolphins were feeding just below us. Pulling up to the dock at the park entrance, we learned that the park guards had been up all night processing a huge, clandestine catch of river turtles that traffickers had attempted to take past the park, to sell in Manaus. We didn’t actually see the turtles, which were all released (more than 500!), but we saw the pictures, which were very impressive. The largest turtle weighed 49 kilograms (over 100 lb), and many weighed in excess of 30 kg.

Two and half days in Jau were very productive, resulting in excellent views of several species of birds rarely seen anywhere, especially Tawny-tufted Toucanet (wow!), Bar-bellied Woodcreeper, Cherrie’s Antwren, Chestnut-crested Antbird, and Brown-headed Greenlet (in the scope!), and we were fortunate to get to see the little-known Black Uakari monkey as well. Those of us who elected to do a post-dinner spotlighting trip one evening under an amazing, starry sky were amply rewarded with both Great and Common potoos, Boat-billed Herons, a Sungrebe on its night roost, only a few feet away, a Blackish Nightjar that sat tight, probably on its nest, a couple of species of arboreal rodents (spiny rats), a tremendous view of a Paca that allowed us to maneuver the boats to within 20 feet of it before it finally walked away, and a couple of species of bats, frogs, and caimans. That was an action-packed hour, for sure!

Our final three days found us birding at a variety of stops along the Solimoes (as the Amazon west of the mouth of the Negro is called) and Amazonas rivers, in “whitewater” island habitats. We did awesomely well at these venues! Among the extensive roster of islands specialties present in this region, we dipped only on Olive-spotted Hummer, which we would have seen had the river level not been too low for us to reach one particular island, and, surprisingly, Scaled Spinetail, which was inexplicably absent from its usual haunt (don’t worry, you’ll get it on the Great Rivers of the Amazon tour ;-). A couple of others came in right at the buzzer (e.g., Lesser Wagtail-Tyrant, River Tyrannulet), but… they showed beautifully!

Back in Manaus, we had one last day to do some canopy birding at the “Museum of the Amazon” tower in Reserva Ducke, and then do a swing through downtown, mainly to see the famous Opera House. Dawn on the tower was excellent, providing us with fine views of many species, perhaps most memorable among them several Paradise and Spotted tanagers that came in very close, a Painted Tody-Flycatcher in the same treetop at eye-level, and a stunning pair of Caica Parrots. We had a relaxing final dinner on the boat, with time to clean up and rest a bit before heading to the airport for easy check-in for flights home.

Thanks so much to all of you for coming with us to Manaus. It was a beautiful tour, and I hope you harbor many fond memories of it. Come back to bird more of Brazil as soon as you can -- we’ll be waiting for you!

I want to send out a special thank you to Ken Havard for sharing his many excellent photos from the tour! I had already prepared most of the media to go into this list by the time I saw them, so I managed to get only a few of them in here. You can view all of Ken's shots on his Flickr account at

www.flickr.com/photos/128294516@N08/albums

Com grandes abracos, Bretche, Pepe, e Marcelo

KEYS FOR THIS LIST
One of the following keys may be shown in brackets for individual species as appropriate: * = heard only, I = introduced, E = endemic, N = nesting, a = austral migrant, b = boreal migrant

We surprised this Sungrebe on its night roost at Jau National Park. Photo copyright tour participant Ken Havard.

We saw this leucistic Common Ground-Dove north of Manaus. Photo copyright tour participant Ken Havard.

Hoatzins! Photo by tour participant Ken Havard.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

Among lots of other interesting fauna, from bugs to bats to bigger beasts, were the Paca mentioned in the introduction, Yellow-nosed Tree-Rat, huge Artibeus(?) bats feeding at dusk in Jau, a big Boa constrictor, Spectacled and Black caimans,Northern Caiman Lizard (Jau), a monstrous tarantula with red abdomen at Jau, several whip-scorpions that Pepe pointed out on an owling walk, a huge White Witch moth (Thysania agripinna) at Reserva Ducke, and, of course, those wonderful fish, the Tambaqui, Pirarucu (Arapaima), and Tucunare (Peacock Bass).

Totals for the tour: 416 bird taxa and 13 mammal taxa