Brilliant Brazil
A host of wonderful species await birders on a trip to this exotic part of the world
A host of wonderful species await birders on a trip to this exotic part of the world
Brazil’s south-western Amazon region remains little explored by birders. The area is vast and much of it remains inaccessible, but the BR-364 highway, constructed along its western edge skirting the borders with Bolivia and Peru from the 1960s-1980s, has opened up part of it: the state of Rondonia along the border with Bolivia and the state of Acre further to the north-west.
The road has brought massive deforestation, particularly in Rondonia, where the coming of small-holders, loggers and ranchers means the jungle only remains in protected areas; but the state of Acre still retains 80% of its forest cover. However, given the current political situation in Brazil, Acre’s forest is threatened. Brazil’s president Bolsonaro intends to open up the Brazilian Amazon as much as possible to agriculture.
Acre state is just across the border from Peru’s world famous Manu National Park. The lowland forests of Acre are part of the same ecosystem – one of the richest, if not the richest, in the world, in terms of biodiversity. Until now it has been hardly visited by ecotourists. Acre state’s environmental agency – SEMA – is keen to change that. They want to encourage birdwatching as a low-impact way of bringing awareness and revenue to some of the remote areas that they have the job of protecting. It was in this context that I was invited by SEMA to visit one such area – the Chandless State Park.
The Chandless
The Chandless State Park is right on the border with Peru. It is based around the Chandless river, named after English explorer William Chandless, who was one of the first outsiders to visit this region in the 19th Century. The area is so remote that deep within the park there are still so- called ‘isolated’ Indians, that is, native Amazonian Indians who, while aware of the existence of ‘civilisation’, seek to avoid all contact with it and the disease and violence that it brings.
Getting to the Chandless from the state capital Rio Branco required a three-hour car journey, an overnight stay in the town of Manuel Urbano and a seven-hour boat trip up the huge Purus river, and then up its tributary the Chandless. I was in the company of Ricardo Placido, an ornithologist who works at SEMA.
Ricardo hopes that the south-west Amazon endemics that can be found in the jungles of the Chandless, will attract dedicated neo-tropical birders. The most difficult to see of these endemics is an extremely shy bird that has only been photographed once – the aptly named Elusive Antpitta. Ricardo has put a lot of effort into seeking out this bird in the Chandless, and we would dedicate some of our time there in trying to see it.
The headquarters of the Chandless park is situated on the edge of the park’s territory, surrounded by hundreds of miles of jungle.
When park staff are not there, a family of cabocolos – river dwellers – have their home nearby. Between the headquarters and the Peruvian border there are a couple of cabocolo dwellings not far further up the Chandless river and then nothing but hundreds of miles of primary jungle. Accommodation at the headquarters is basic – bunk beds in shared quarters with mosquito meshing across the windows, but the food served to visitors is good, the water in the showers is refreshing and there is even WiFi four hours a day, run on the electricity of a generator. We visited in April 2019.
Day 1: Exploring
The park is used by zoologists to study Amazonia fauna and to do so they have cut paths through the vegetation. It was these paths that we used for birding. At ground level visibility is restricted to a few yards, or birds can be seen on the branches of trees high overhead.
The forest is full of the sound of birds and Ricardo uses voice recordings with his mobile and a small portable speaker to lure the birds from the vegetation close enough for observation. Given how remote the Chandless is, and that many of these birds have possibly never seen a human being before, I do not think that this method of observing them has any negative impact. Even if more birders come to the Chandless, they will still be too few to impact on the birds’ behaviour in any significant way.
It was hot and humid as we walked along the forest paths, but shady under the trees. The first bird that Ricardo lured into view was a Yellowbrowed Tody-Flycatcher, with whiskers beneath its beak, a bird of the southern Amazon region.
We saw an Elegant Woodcreeper climbing up the huge trunk of an ancient tree, like a big tropical ‘version’ of our own treecreepers. Beautifully marked in black and white, an Amazonian Streaked-antwren perched on a twig and angrily sang its defiance to the sound recording that it mistook for a rival. Next was a speciality of the Western Amazon, a female Plumbeous Antbird with its distinctive blue eye patch.
A White-shouldered Tanager presented itself well on a low branch. Further along we saw a species which has the Chandless at the centre of its south-west Amazon distribution – the beautiful Bluish-slate Antshrike. We then came across one of the most fascinating sights in the
Amazon – army ants swarming. They were by the side of the path, thousands of them seeking out their prey in leaf litter. Columns of workers hauled back their dismembered insect and arachnid prey by the side of the path.
A Black-faced Antbird had been following the ants for the insects that they flush out from the leaf litter. We were lucky to briefly glimpse an Undulated Tinamou in the undergrowth on the forest floor, while a Black-billed Thrush was an easier sighting. A Southern Amazon Red Squirrel crossed a rotten log lying across the path. Along with the frequent calls of the Screaming Piha – the typical evocative sound of the Amazon jungle, we heard and saw the Russet-backed Oropendula. A small group of chittering Emperor Tamarins, monkeys endemic to this part of the south-west Amazon, with their magnificent white moustaches, considered us for a moment, before moving away
from one branch to another.
Day 2: Antpitta search
The next day we went in search of the Elusive Antpitta. Thrush-sized birds, with very short tails, antpittas live on the forest floor and are never easy to see, and the Elusive is perhaps the most difficult given the remoteness of its habitat and its extreme shyness. Ricardo has only seen it on a few occasions, after many attempts. It is, however, quite easy to hear, if you know where to go.
Although the focus of the day would be the antpitta, we saw other birds in the hours of trekking through the jungle to get to and from its stream-side territory: Dusky-capped Greenlet, a flock of spectacular Scarlet Macaws foraging in the canopy, Fulvous-chinned Nunlet, White-shouldered Antshrike, a Scalybreasted Wren (again, brought out of the undergrowth with a recording), and Amazonian Antshrike. A Fine-barred Piculet, endemic to the region, came briefly to a voice recording.
A Sooty Antbird was very well observed and another Scaly-breasted Wren showed itself skulking in the undergrowth, while a flock of Masked Crimson Tanagers flitted through the canopy. Ricardo knew a place where he had heard an Elusive
Antpitta on previous expeditions to the Chandless and seen it, briefly, twice.
The territory was small, he thought, perhaps 50 x 50 metres, along the banks of a stream. ream. Almost immediately we heard its distinctive fluting high note/low note call and I thought: “this this is going to be easy.”
Two hours later and still no sighting! The Antpitta continued calling, sometimes further away, sometimes so near, particularly when responding to Ricardo’s recording, that it seemed that we simply must see it any moment.
The least bit of undergrowth, or a fallen log, gave the bird enough cover to hide itself from view, all the while calling out. By mid-afternoon, with a fair trek back to the headquarters and the sweat-bees and mosquitos becoming unbearable, we decided to call it a day.
Day 3: Six hours on a platform
The Chandless state park has constructed two tree platforms. I spent the third day on one of these platforms in the company of Ricardo and the technician who constructed both platforms, Mack Willison. Mack is a qualified climbing instructor, tree climber and tree platform constructor; and although I was nervous climbing up to the 28 metre high platform on a rope ladder, I felt perfectly safe with the system of climbing rope attachments.
The platform gave a magnificent vista over the rainforest, with the Chandless river meandering through the jungle in the middle distance.
We spent six hours up there, hoisting our lunch up with us. What particularly impressed me about those hours spent on the platform was seeing the extent to which the rainforest creates its own climate, with water vapour visibly rising from the trees during sunny periods, then falling again as torrential rain and the process repeating itself as the day progresses.
The panorama of the tree tops, some in flower, gave a wonderful viewing arena for birds. We saw Turquoise Tanager, the magnificent Paradise Jacamar, Black-faced Cotinga, a regional endemic confined to region of south- east Peru and adjacent Brazil and Bolivia, which is associated with rainforest mixed with patches of bamboo – as is the case in the Chandless), a spectacular cobalt blue male Blue dacnis, Crowned Slaty Flycatcher, Blackcrowned Tityra, Dusky-headed Parakeet, an endemic of Western Amazon, and shrill and raucous flocks of Blue-headed Parrot. An unidentified eagle flew over the treetops in the distance.
We had endured squalls of rain in the hours we were up there, but by midafternoon thunder clouds started to mass, and the wind was gathering strength so we descended back to the shaded and sheltered forest floor. On the way back we spotted a Black-spotted Bare- eye and, perched on a twig, a beautiful White-bearded Hermit, a large hummingbird of the Western Amazon with a long curved beak.
Day 4: River journey
The following day we took a small boat with an outboard motor further up the Chandless river.
As we chugged up the meandering river we spotted a Black-capped Donacobius, the only member of its family and, unique for South America, related to Old World warblers. A flock of Purple-throated Fruit Crows flew among the branches of a giant tree almost toppling over the eroded river bank.
A Great Black Hawk scanned the river bank from a dead branch. River dolphins occasionally broke the surface. A pair of bizarre looking Horned Screamers with their head tuft and puffy, knobbly legs rose complaining from a sand bank.
A big Black Caiman basked on a sand bank. Swallows – White-banded Swallow and Blue-and-white Swallow – skimmed across the water or perched on the branches or roots of dead trees aground on the river bed. Several times, flocks of Scarlet Macaws flew squawking above our heads, while large Blue-headed Macaws foraged among the riverside trees. A Roadside Hawk flew up from a sand bank. The calls of White-throated Toucans came from the forest either side and they sometimes showed themselves among the branches.
We stopped the boat on a sandy beach and walked 10 minutes along an overgrown pathway to a lake. Here, the pathway gradually petered out but, careful of snakes, we made our way as far as we could along it, through the forest that grew right up to the lakeside. Three or four bats fluttered from out from an overhanging leaf I disturbed, a group of Peruvian Spider monkeys moved away quickly through the high branches, while further on a family group of Black Capped Squirrel Monkeys were less shy, only moving off once they had taken a good look at us. A Wattled Jacana pecked at insects on the lakeside. An armored millipede of the family Polydesmidae, the size of a chocolate bar, clung to the side of a rotting log, while jumping spiders like jewels crept across the leaves.
The path petered out and we decided to head back. As I walked back along the way we came, an intense burning pain on my neck made me think in panic that I had been bitten by a tree snake, but it was only fire ants and the pain, so excruciating at first, soon subsided.
Day 5: Worms and patience
My final day in the Chandless started with a small Boa Constrictor that had crawled into the kitchen to shelter from the previous night’s heavy rain. After the snake had been put back into the jungle, we decided to have another go for the Elusive Antpitta, this time with Mack along with us.
We hoped that with three of us, each strategically positioned, one of us at least should get a glimpse of it… and again we heard it many times, again many times it was close to one or other of us, but not one of us saw it! But I enjoyed the time spent quietly sitting on a fallen tree trunk savouring the atmosphere of the jungle.
Not seeing the bird did not bother me too much, but to attract birders for whom the Elusive Antpitta may be the most difficult target on their Neotropical bird list, Ricardo is thinking of options, such as constructing a proper hide, or paying one of the cabocolos to leave worms out for it and to habituate one or more individuals – but it will involve a lot of worms, a lot of walking and a lot of patience!
We found a Twist-necked Turtle in the shallow stream that runs through the territory of the antpitta. While sitting in the forest, apart from the buzzing of sweat bees, the humming of mosquitoes and the rasping of cicadas, we heard the voices of another of the region’s endemics – the Black-capped Parakeet, and another antpitta, the Thrush-like Antpitta, while we startled a partridge-like Black-capped Tinamou that flew up from the undergrowth.
On the way back, I did my last birdwatching in the Chandless. Ricardo attracted a Rusty-belted Tapaculo to the side of the path, a Whitethroated Antbird, and a Scaly-breasted Wren. A Semicollared Puffbird presented itself briefly. We spotted another bamboo specialist and regional endemic – the Rufous-headed Woodpecker. A flock of Orange-cheeked Parrots, fed in the branches of a tree in fruit. Best of all, a final gift from the Chandless, crossing the path and then foraging among the leaf-litter, where we could watch them were four Palewinged Trumpeters, like small turkeys, rare and shy endemics of the south-west Amazon. They cooed and grunted like pigs, and remained in sight for five minutes before disappearing into the shadows of the forest.
The next morning we left the Chandless and sailed downriver back to the world of cattle ranches, tarmacked roads, and traffic-congested towns. I hope to go back to the Chandless one day, and I hope that the people who are dedicated to preserving it succeed.