3 August
On the River

The birds of the Amazon

Seeing parrots in Brazil is every visitors dream, especially the red and green macaws. These birds are truly spectacular sights, as they fly across the river with the sun reflecting the vivid colours of their wings. Equally entertaining are the flocks of green parrakeets that blitz to and fro, shouting to one another. They settle among the sheltering trees, obstinately refusing to come out of hiding, to be identified by the poor ornithologist, who is usually valiantly trying to spot them through a pair of binoculars.

The Rio Madeira is quite wide after it leaves Porto Velho and accurate spotting of birds can be difficult. However, there have been plenty of black vultures, snowy and great egrets, large billed terns, skimmers, and swallow-tailed kites. More recently we have seen olivaceous cormorants, and Amazon and Ringed kingfishers. Raptors have not been quite as prolific as we had expected, but there have been sightings of mantled hawk, plumbeous kite, roadside hawk, and black collared hawk.

We also had an early sighting of a large flock of Maguiri storks on a sandbank. Herons are well represented, and the Rufescent Tiger heron is particularly common. The smaller birds are numerous and difficult to spot in the canopy, but the yellow billed cardinal, bank swallow, greater ani, and ruddy ground dove have been seen. It will be interesting to compare the difference in the diversity of the bird species now, with the numbers in the more
populated regions of the Amazon.