Days 9 - 11 Amazonia Lodge

In the morning Julia has a nasty tummy bug. Oh no, she'll be calling in sick on this birding morning. Platters of papaya and that light granola and yogurt served for breakfast will do just fine. She kisses Andy good-bye at 6am and sips her coca tea on the deck watching all the beautiful new tanagers at the feeders here. There are Masked Crimson, Silver-beaked, and Blue-gray Tanagers right in the garden. She sees a pair of parrot-looking birds and comparing pictures in our field guide, The Birds of Peru, which Andy has left behind for her, identifies them as Chestnut-fronted Macaws. All the while the song of the Russet-backed Oropendolas is heard which sounds sort of like a pot of bubbling oatmeal only two octaves higher. (Ask her to sing it for you sometime.) They are busy weaving their hanging basket nests and chasing away the Yellow-rumped Caciques who are also trying to nest in these trees just outside our room at the lodge. Both of these large and obnoxious birds also chase away the tanagers whenever new food is offered. While sitting on the porch, she sees many hummingbirds drinking from the beautiful bushes in front of the lodge. These include the Rufous-crested Coquette, Blue-tailed Emerald, Fork-tailed Wood-nymph, Golden-tailed Sapphire, and Amethyst Woodstar.

Julia ventures out the next afternoon on her own. The trails are well marked and it doesn't seem at all scary. There is just a little rustling here and there in the bushes as she passes by. The roots of the trees here are prominent wave-like mountain ranges poking out of the earth. This is amazing, lush vegetation. There is another new bird, which she identifies because it sounds like a jay and sure enough, it is a Violaceous Jay. The kindergarten birder is catching on here. There is a nice stream running alongside the trail. So quiet and serene. Julia has brought along a snack as her appetite is coming back, and she enjoys her little picnic here in the solitude of the rainforest in Peru. And just as she begins to retrace her steps back to the lodge, a Peruvian man carrying a machete passes her going the opposite way on the trail. Yikes!

The first day we go back across the river to bird the open areas along the road. We watch a beautiful White Hawk circling overhead, and are lucky enough to see an Amazonian Umbrellabird perched near us. On the river crossing, Bill and Andy are excited to see an old friend from home, the Spotted Sandpiper. Huw snorts in disgust. In his opinion, all of the 150 species of wading birds in the world should be lumped into 1 species, "the Wader," so they can more easily be duly ignored. This spurs Bill and Andy on to great efforts to seek and point out all sandpipers and plovers the rest of the trip. We are also treated to a Lemon-throated Barbet in the scope.

In the afternoon, as we walk the forest trails around the lodge, an elusive Cinereous Tinamou crosses the trail ahead of us. The rule about tinamous is that only the first few people in a group get to see them, because they dash into the bushes as soon as you round the corner. One of the most productive areas is the bottom of an old landslide. This open country affords us looks at parrots nesting in dead trees, and many species of woodpeckers.

The next morning, the group hikes up into the beautiful mountains above the lodge, in search of higher elevation birds. These long forested ridges that extend out from the Andes into the lowlands act as islands for bird species that don't like the steamy lowlands. This hike featured many antbirds. Antbirds are so named because some of them follow army ant swarms, picking off hapless refugees (grasshoppers, crickets, and other insects) as they flee the marauding horde.

Together again...

In the afternoon, as Julia decides that she is human again and rejoins the group, she discovers that we are now in the land of the antbirds. There are not only antbirds of every color variation (White-browed, Spot-backed, Grey), but there are innumerable antwrens, antthrushes, antshrikes, antvireos, not to mention antpittas. Granted, there are plenty of ants here. Army ants are most plentiful all marching along the banks of the river and up into the trees. It's hard to believe that there are enough ants to feed about eighty species of antbirds. The kindergarten birder is having a terrible time sorting them all out at the end of the day as we go over the List.

A highlight of Amazonia lodge is the canopy tower. We hike uphill a good way to get to it, and then we start climbing. It shakes a little as the group ascends, but everything settles out once everyone is at the top. We have a nice view of some Red-and-Green Macaws flying over, as well as a wealth of brightly colored tanagers and honeycreepers. Dick has a bit of a disagreement about color, and so the Green Honeycreeper is duly renamed the Bluish-green Honeycreeper. Update your field guides, everyone. The worst part of the experience is when the sweat wasps find us, and buzz around us until we finally give in to the evil of DEET. Now we can enjoy looking at their shiny blue metallic bodies as they are no longer in our eyes and ears.

Speaking of highlights, on one of the trails we find Puma tracks. We would love to see the maker of them, but that is extremely difficult.

There is a another tower that overlooks a swamp, from which we try to see the Blackish Rails, but they elude us. We do see the crazy and amazing Hoatzins from here. These primitive-looking birds are born with reptile-like claws on their wings, which they use to crawl around before they can fly. They lose these appendages, much as their ancestors did over the millenia on their way to evolving into birds. We also find a favorite friend here, the Black-capped Donacobius.

Andy's eagle eye spots a Sungrebe very briefly in the still waters of an oxbow lake. Parrots and toucans are plentiful here. The area near the little stream is a gorgeous place (and the tall grass has all been trimmed near the trail, thanks to Mr. Scary Machete Man), and we make two more visits to this water paradise before we leave. We just have to see the elusive Scarlet-hooded Barbet, but we can only mark "heard" on the List. Very near the lodge we spot the Great Potoo looking like an extension of a tree sitting there so still on her nest. The Long-tailed Potoo, aka "Raul" for its call (ask Andy for a demo sound of him) is heard in the night, but not seen. Andy joins Huw, Joseph and Sylvia one early morning at 4 o'clock for a go at Raul and one of the owls and comes back all excited about seeing two Night Monkeys. Amazonia Lodge has our vote of a place we'd love to return to one day.