gryllosblog   Gryllo's (aka Ian Lewis') blog. All things to do with travel, wildlife especially birds, history, architecture and anything else that interests me.

Our full three days at Mbaracayu were spent on narrow forest trails, some near the lodge, some further away or driving to more distant cerrado habitat for specific birds.

Heavy rain had made some trails rather wet ….

…. and the bridges just got dodgier ….

…. and dodgier.

But we were rewarded with some excellent forest birds like this Surucua Trogon ….

…. the very vocal, yet elusive Bare-throated Bellbird ….

…. and two enormous and rare woodpeckers – Helmeted ….

…. and Robust.

A lot of time was spent in this area of cerrado trying to locate the elusive Occelated Crake.

Although I saw it, my views weren’t as good as those had by most. A few of the group returned one evening (it was a 90 minute drive from the lodge on rough roads) but I declined to go as I thought I stood a better chance of goodies down by the river, but they got cracking views of the crake and several owls and tinamous on the return drive! You can guarantee that when there is a choice to be made in birding location that I will choose the wrong one!

We all got great views of Collared Crescentchest in the cerrado ….

…. and flocks of migrant Plumbeous Kites were all over the place.

The kites were probably feeding on the winged termites or alates which emerged from the many termite mounds.

Using flash it was possible to see that the mounds were covered with flightless worker termites ‘waving goodbye’ to their winged siblings.

Mbaracayu was an amazing place for insects, some, such as legions of biting mozzies and sand flies were unwelcome but we also say a wonderful array of butterflies ….

…. crickets ….

…. and back at the ledge, a praying mantis ….

…. and enormous numbers of superb moths ….

…. and butterflies ….

Our nocturnal drives produced several nightjar species and the much wanted Black-capped Screech Owl ….

…. but we were hindered by a tree that had fallen across the track, which had to be removed by brute force.

The trees in the clearing by the lodge were very good for birds including a nesting pair of Black-crowned Tityras

The lodge is adjacent to a girl’s school where they teach the girls, among other things, the tourist trade. The girls who served us our meals were very pleasant and cooked a cake for Dani, one of our drivers ….

…. as it was his birthday.

The lodge at Mbaracayu, the girls and leaders Paul and Rob.

The long drive south to San Rafael was broken by a night at the Hotel Tirol near Encarnacion. The hotel fell into the category of ‘faded elegance’ and seemed to be a series of rooms and buildings connected by endless red-brick arches.

…. and the hotel had a stand of Atlantic forest in its grounds which allowed us to add birds like ….

…. Ruby-crowned Tanager ….

…. and Euler’s (pronounced ‘oilers’) Flycatcher to our lists.

At our next destination, San Rafael, we stayed in fairly basic accommodation (made more basic by the fact that there was power failure) at an adjacent farm.

The farmer cuts the sedges in the meadow twice yearly to provide grazing for his cattle and apparently crakes often run out of cover as he does so. Conveniently he had planned to do this on our arrival.

He leapt off his tractor and was able to catch this guinea-pig or Brazilian Cavy before releasing it in an area of sedges away from the meadow ….

…. but the highlight was this wonderful views of this Red-and-White Crake that paused briefly before legging it to a nearby ditch.

The reserve consists of a large tract of Atlantic forest surrounding this lake where we saw excellent species like the newly split Purple-crowned Plovercrest ….

…. and White-spotted Woodpecker.

Much further away we birded in an area of grassland where we saw the fast declining Saffron-crowned Oriole ….

…. and after dark saw the amazing Giant Snipe (see my account of north-east Brazil in February for photos of this wonderful bird)

The last stop on the tour was at Yacyreta, an area of mesopotamian (literally ‘between rivers’) flooded grassland close to the Paraguay River and the border with Argentina. Many species were seen here including the rare Dark-billed Cuckoo ….

…. and Ochre-breasted Pipit ….

…, from the back a species that is reminiscent of the Palearctic (and vagrant to the UK) Pechora Pipit.

I’ll end this account with a photo of one of the commonest birds in all of Paraguay, Monk Parakeet. Their giant stick nests are everywhere, on power pylons, telegraph poles, trees etc. There is a small population of released birds in the UK, if they ever get established, expect some objections from the electricity and telephone companies.