This past
week I’ve had a chance to go birding on my own between two tours I’m leading in
Mato Grosso, Brazil, the most biodiverse state in this huge country. I drove up
and over the continental divide (a whopping 556 meters or 1824 feet elevation)
to visit the weekend resort and ecological lodge called Jardim da Amazônia
(Garden of the Amazon) about 12 kilometers south of the town of São José do Rio
Claro.
Despite its
fragmented nature (which all happened before our very eyes in the past 30 years
only), the forests here are still full of birds and wildlife, and in just 2 ½
days I logged 225 species of birds.
Since I
wasn’t with a group, I chose what hours I went out birding, and I found it hard
to stop. On my last day, I did something I’d probably not do with a group and
set out at 2:45 p.m. to walk a trail, went until it started getting dark, and
then slowly worked my way back to the lodge to have dinner at 8:15 p.m. before
they closed for the night. It was fun, though tiring. Dusk was interesting as I
stood stock still for 25 minutes: I heard and recorded a very close Gray
Tinamou (with absolutely no desire to see it) but saw its shape as it flew 15
meters up into a tree to roost and continued to sing. I accidentally recorded
the one evening song of a Red-billed Woodcreeper (a bird I’ve seen once
before), and before long was surrounded by tooting Tawny-bellied Screech-Owls
and whirring Ocellated Poorwills. On a tiny sapling in the middle of the dry
forest as I started back was this tree frog, probably in the genus Osteocephalus.
I continued
to hear Ocellated Poorwills, Common Pauraques, and Blackish Nightjars on my way
back, seeing a few eyeshines dart off as I approached. But when one bright pair
of eyes off the side of the trail didn’t budge, I knew what I had: an Ocellated
Poorwill on a nest.
Then just
about a couple hundred meters later, an eyeshine about 6 meters off the ground in the forest midstory had
me puzzled. Only when I fully sized up the creature did I realize it was a
Long-tailed Potoo, only the third I’ve ever seen. It’s darker than Common
Potoo, with a more contrasting white wing patch (not so visible here) and whisker mark, but it’s the very
long tail that’s the clincher. It looked to be on a nest as it didn’t budge,
but I wasn’t sure. When I was about 150 meters away, I played song to see if
the male was in the area, and he came in almost right away, singing from the
opposite direction of the nest and perched right over me and sang both song types, one sounding much like an owl. I presume then that the
female was the one on the perch.
Then I went
back the next morning, as getting good photos with flash is always tricky. I’m
glad I did. The Ocellated Poorwill was still there, but this time looking a lot
more rufous. This is probably the female, while the grayer male had incubation
duties at night.
I don’t know
if the potoos have similar roles in nesting. But during the day, this bird took
on a much more cryptic posture and shows the more prominent wing patch. Maybe this one is the male. I should note that I walked right past both of
these birds the day before with the charming local guide Marcio, who I think
has gone back to see the potoo by now.
When I moved
around to get a view of the bird’s amazingly long tail, it shifted a bit and
revealed a tiny downy chick. Precious. There are a couple online photos of
Long-tailed Potoos on nests in SE Peru and in Ecuador, as well as a scholarly
article describing the first nest from French Guiana, but I can’t find any
mention of a nest in Brazil. It’s a pretty uncommon thing to find in any event.
But then how many people go walking in the forest at night?
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