Breakfast at 5am was followed by a 25 minutes journey to Veracel Reserve again and we enjoyed another excellent morning’s birding. At the entrance we scoped an endemic Red-browed Amazon perched at the top of a tree, and we followed this with Swallow-wing, some Reichenow’s Parrots flying over (split from Blue-headed Parrot), Black-necked Aracari, perched Peach-fronted Parrot, and then we called in an endemic Black-cheeked Gnateater.
 |
| Black-necked Aracari |
 |
| Peach-fronted Parakeet |
Walking along the sandy track, a cracking White-crowned Manakin posed nicely, and shortly after we found one of the rarest endemic hummers in Brazil – Hook-billed Hermit perched next to the track. Wow! We then spent some time scanning the edges of some open clearings for cotingas and eventually we had a couple views of endemic male White-winged Cotingas. Oh yes!
 |
| White-crowned Manakin |
 |
| Hook-billed Hermit - endemic |
Probably the weirdest find of the morning was a very young and recently fledged white-fluffy Common Potoo perched in a trackside tree. This spot also held Ochre-bellied Flycatcher, Red-legged Honeycreepers and some Blue Dacnis. At the next clearing a Zone-tailed Hawk and a King Vulture flew over.
 |
| Common Potoo |
The next spot we checked out along a side track held 4 species of manakin: a male Blue-backed, female Red-headed, female White-bearded and male White-crowned. Nearby a pair of Sooretama Slaty-Antshrikes showed well.
 |
| Sooretama Slaty-Antshrike |
Moving on we found 2 Screaming Pihas, called in an Eared Pygmy-Tyrantand a Wedge-billed Woodcreeper. By now it was 10:45am and the temperature was up in the 90’s so we headed back to the hotel for a long siesta.
In the late afternoon we headed back to the reserve and staked out an open area but didn’t really have any joy with parakeets coming in to roost. However, we walked a side trail and had fabulous views of a very bold Black-cheeked Gnateater that called and called from a branch very close to our astonished faces.
 |
| Black-cheeked Gnateater - endemic |
A short distance away we had some decent looks at a Ringed Woodpecker. Interestingly, HBW splits this species into Amazonian and Atlantic Black-breasted Woodpeckers – the bird we saw being the latter species. We saw a few other common species but basically we waited until dark before calling in a fantastic Black-capped Screech-Owl that posed beautifully in a dense tangle.
 |
| Black-capped Screech-Owl |
We literally had to crunch our way across the dry leaf litter to get into position and it didn’t care a jot! Ecstatic with this, we had just returned to the main track when a Mottled Owl began calling and sure enough, and yes you guessed it, this bird flew in and stared balefully down at us….. giving great views!
 |
| Mottled Owl |
A nice end to a good day… yet another on our NE Brazil tour..!
No comments:
Post a Comment