This is the
7th in a series of blogs covering my most recent tour down the Kosñipata Road
and the Madre de Dios River in SE Peru from October 25-November 7. For a
glimpse into my more recent
activities, check out the blog from the Tucson Valley CBC here:
This Peru
blog is a short one, typical of a travel day. I awoke to a major thunderstorm
arriving in the wee hours of the morning, but it was a beautiful sound, with
close claps and distant rumbling thunder and a steady rain. It lulled me back
to sleep as soon as it woke me up. With such a dark and gloomy dawn, there was
no hurry to get out in the field, and I enjoyed this view from within my room.
With our
boat ride scheduled for the early afternoon, we had time to bird at Villa Carmen
for the full morning. The rain ended around breakfast time, and eventually
Susanne and I hit the trail, prepared in case it began to rain again. I haven’t
uploaded any of my photos to Flickr yet, so this green cicada remains
unidentified by my expert contact there. It’s unusual in being entirely green
and rather hairy; the broad, very blunt face and very large, wide-spaced eyes
are unlike any of the all-green Carineta species
I’ve seen.
This is one
of those ants you don’t want to sting you; it’s in the subfamily Ponerinae,
meaning more or less that it can deliver a powerful sting.
I noticed
more prayer plants (family Marantaceae) blooming this trip than usual, so I
took the chance to learn them better. I think this one is the genus Calathea.
My one
mushroom photo from today is another insect parasite, a Cordyceps or close relative. We dug into the moldering wood and
muck but failed to find the dead host, possibly a beetle larva or ant.
Before the
rain began again for another few hours we enjoyed one last bird for the
morning. Noticing a Razor-billed Curassow dart off the trail just ahead of us,
I whistled liked a stranded chick, something that has worked for gallinaceous
birds as diverse as Capercaillie and Mountain Quail in the past. This is what
happened:
After lunch
we had a taxi arranged for us to take us the few kilometers from Villa Carmen
to Atalaya, essentially the end of the road and the beginning of the navigable
Amazon River via the Upper Madre de Dios (with a minor waterfall or two farther
down in Bolivia and Brazil). Our driver knew about the Great Potoo that nested
on an open branch right next to the road, probably the same bird and tree as
last year.
Then came
our three-hour boat ride to Pantiacolla Lodge, above the west bank just on the far side of the bend where the river makes a huge S-curve to go around the imposing
Pantiacolla Ridge. We made one quick potty stop on a river island where I
picked up a bunch of “beggar ticks.” It is a pea in the genus Desmodium, and the unusual pods break
apart into one-seeded segments, each one covered in miniscule hooks like velcro.
This time I noticed it in time to grab some of the pretty flowers too – one
usually discovers the seeds on the pants and socks much later, never
appreciating the whole plant.
We got to
Pantiacolla Lodge in time only to enjoy the noisy bird life right around the clearing
(the Sulphury Flycatchers were especially vocal) and to begin our planning for
the next two full days here.
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