I Posted My Brazil Trip List to eBird

I was in Mato Grosso Brazil earlier this month with my friend Doug Futuyma, sort of a scouting trip/practice guiding trip. I even saw a couple lifers.

Each evening we went over the list of all the birds we saw and heard, and I entered numbers on a spreadsheet on my iPad, trying to keep separate lists for each area we birded. This morning, after about 5 hours of working on it, the spreadsheet was ready to be uploaded to eBird – all 56 separate lists, and a total of 490 species.

One photo highlight below is the Crested Eagle that Doug spotted on a very distant snag from the New Tower at Cristalino Jungle Lodge on June 15th. I took perhaps 50 digiscoped images, and most were dross. Even this one is barely worth keeping, but it's the best there is. What made this rare sighting all that more memorable is that it came just moments after we watched a magnificent Harpy Eagle disappear into the distant canopy with what was probably a partially eaten young White-cheeked Spider Monkey. It was a great morning on the tower.