August 1-14, 2025 with Marcelo Padua
The Amazon River is the largest (and the longest by some accounts) river in the world, with three of the ten largest rivers in the world emptying their water into it. And nowhere else is the might of this river as impressive as in its mouth, where its delta is approximately 200 miles wide.
This tour focuses on the mouth of the Amazon, and we started in Belem at the south side of the mouth of the Amazon, and birded some forest fragments around this metropolis of 1.4 million people. At the Gunma Reserve just outside the city, we were joined by my friend Danielson Aleixo, who led us straight to the best sites to look for some gems like Dot-eared Coquette, Vulturine Parrot, Hooded Gnateater, Opal-crowned Manakin and Smoky-fronted Tody-Flycatcher. This freed up time to bird in other areas, such as the river islands around the city, where we found a few excellent birds including Crimson-hooded Manakin, Pale-tailed Barbthroat, Willis’s Antbird and Purple-throated Fruitcrow. We also enjoyed a visit to the reintroduction site of the Golden Parakeet in the Belem area, where we got to meet the ornithologist in charge of caring for these critically endangered birds and saw some of the free birds coming into the feeders early in the morning.
We then hopped onto two chartered airplanes, and flew over three quarters of the delta to Mexiana Island, an island that is crossed by the Equator line and is a very birdy place to spend some time. We had a little over 24 hours on the island, but managed to pick up a total of 113 species, including some specialties like Blackish-gray Antshrike, Scaled Spinetail and Festive Parrots, as well as some species that are more widespread but nevertheless are always fun to see, as is the case of Jabiru, Chestnut-fronted Macaw, Black-chinned Antbird, Common Potoo and all five species of Kingfishers found in South America.
Our next stop took us away from the mouth of the river to a mosaic of conservation units that preserves approximately one million hectares and holds nearly 600 species of birds, making it the site with the highest diversity of bird species in Brazil. Carajas National Forest was like a treasure chest where we birded intensively for four days, connecting with a variety of very rare species including Black-bellied Gnateater, Peruvian Recurvebill, Kaempfer’s Woodpecker, White-tailed and Purple-breasted Cotingas as well as Bearded and White Bellbirds, not to mention the spectacular sightings we had of Guianan Red-Cotinga. What a treat!
Our last stop had us at the coast in an area with a heavy influence of the Amazon river, and we relaxed for a couple of days, enjoying good food, and some shorebirds that were visiting from the north such as Whimbrels, Ruddy Turnstone, Spotted Sandpiper, Willet and many others. But we also enjoyed some local specialties like Scarlet Ibis, Tricolored Heron, Rufous Crab Hawk, Bicolored Conebill, Little Wood-Rail and Plain-bellied Emerald.
This was an intense tour with long days in the field and hard-core birding, but our efforts paid off and we came away with 382 species of birds recorded and I would do it all again with each of you in a heartbeat. Thank you for joining me and I hope we get to bird together again someday in the future.
In addition to all the great bird sightings, we had we also had some wonderful Mammal sightings.
They were:
Proboscis Bat (Rhynchonycteris naso)
Greater Sac-winged Bat (Saccopteryx bilineata)
Greater Bulldog Bat (Noctilio leporinus)
Lesser Bulldog Bat (Noctilio albiventris)
Western Black-handed Tamarin (Saguinus niger)
Guianan Squirrel Monkey (Saimiri sciureus)
Red-bellied Titi (Plecturocebus moloch)
Eastern Red-handed Howler (Alouatta belzebul)
Black Bearded Saki (Chiropotes satanas)
Brown Capuchin (Sapajus apella)
Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus)
Greater Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris)
Common Red-rumped Agouti (Dasyprocta leporina)
South American Coati (Nasua nasua)
You can see my complete trip report on eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/tripreport/440659
You can download a combined PDF of this page and the eBird report at this link: https://fieldguides.com/triplists/max25TRIPLIST.pdf
-- Marcelo Padua