August 4, 2015
We have our
five full days here at Cristalino Jungle Lodge planned out, morning and
afternoon outings written down on the white board in the leaders office in
order to not overlap with the many other tourists here. This is our morning on Tower
II, the one completed in early 2011.
We had a fun
morning here, with great views of Spangled Cotinga, Paradise Tanager, Kawall’s
Parrot perched close, a fabulous close troop of Curl-crested Aracaris, and a
chance to look down on a Dwarf Tyrant-Manakin. The only birds close enough and
in the most perfect light for my camera were these courtship-feeding Blue-headed
Parrots.
We birded
the 900-meter (0.6-mile) trail back to the lodge, where this most cooperative
of all Pavonine Quetzals perched not too high for several minutes. There’s very
little light in the forest understory, so I actually had time to switch my
camera to my tripod (changing the metal plate from the scope), and configure it
to a low ISO and very slow shutter speed with a timer on the shutter release.
When we got
back to the lodge, it was time to take a look at the butterflies on the beach.
A wonderful puddle party of sulphurs and many others had gathered.
This is one
of the several kinds of eighty-eights, Diaethria
clymena.
The gorgeous
Doxocopa zunilda, Zunilda Emperor.
Then just a
short ways down the path was this handsome Yellow-footed Tortoise, Chelonoidis denticulata, the first I’ve
seen here in a while. Apparently it’s been hanging around here for a few days.
During the break
after lunch, I spotted these apparent dog-like bats, Cynomops sp., roosting in the little telephone house.
I then
checked the Phenakospermum by the old kitchen and found these Uroderma sp. tent-making fruit
bats right where I had left them last year.
I also
walked down the Taboca trail on my own, wanting to see the destruction from a
microburst that felled a big swath of forest last September. The damage was
amazing, but it holds promise for all the birds and animals that need that kind
of disturbance. I saw lots of butterflies but taking pictures only a few. This Calycopis sp. hairstreak may never be identifiable
to genus.
This metalmark
is probably Euselasia hygenius,
typically landing upside down under a leaf.
A very common metalmark along many of the trails at Cristalino is the lovely Semomesia croesus.
In the
afternoon we went to Francisco’s bird bath a hundred meters into the igapó forest downstream, and we saw some
great birds – but too dark and too fast to get photos. They included the
recently split Xingu Scale-backed Antbird and a pair of local Bare-eyed Antbirds,
among several others. While we were sitting and standing very quietly behind a
palm-leaf screen in the coming evening darkness, a heard the heavy buzzing of a
crepuscular skipper darting around the group. I quickly placed a white tissue
spit was on a vine behind me, and in landed this ruby-eye skipper, Thracides cleanthes.
Finally, we
did a short night walk to the secret garden, first looking at the lights along
the pathway to the restaurant. This is where I found this ghost moth in the
family Hepialidae, a very primitive and relatively small family. This one has
been identified as Phialuse palmar. John
Grehan has an amazing website on the family at http://johngrehan.net/index.php/hepialidae/.
This is a tailless
whipscorpion, an arachnid of a different order than spiders or scorpions, one I
never fail to see on the trails here.
This ichneumonid
wasp (notice the very long ovipositor) was sleeping on the side of a tree.
We also saw
the Azara’s Night Monkeys a couple of times, and while looking for a very close
Tawny-bellied Screech-Owl (which we never saw), I spotted this unknown bat hanging
by one foot very high in a tree. It’s probably a fruit bat, next to a fig tree
that is just becoming ripe, but the super high ISO setting erases many details
that would be needed. I thought the distinctive hooded color might give it
away and am still hopeful I might eventually get a name for it.
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