Feathers and Fur: The Amazon´s Creatures

Unfortunately for me, raiforest conditions are just about the worst for operating my wimpy camera.  Between clouds taking away sunlight and drizzle, animals being far away and sitting in a rocking boat, I just don´t have that many great shots to share with you.  I will share with you some of the cool things we saw, but please forgive the blurry or flat shots.  

One of our first sightings was of the local favorite: Hoatzin.  It´s a funky, silly lookig bird, who makes a good deal of noise.  There is a flock of about 12 that live around the lodge where we spent our first night.  Most were across the river from us, but one came over to watch us while gorging itself on fresh leaves.

Hoatzin, or locally named Stinky Turkey

Also near the camp was a small group of tamarins.  They were quite high in the tree, so these were the best shots I managed to get with my super zoom.

We saw a number of these nests everywhere, belonging to paper wasps.  Apparently they just keep uilding and building, until finally the weight is too much for the branch and the whole nest falls to the ground.

This is Lianna.  I forget what type of monkey she is, but the lodge bought her from a local who had been keeping her as a pet.  The set her free nearby so that she could have a more normal life.  I´m glad she´s not in captivity, but tell me that she doen´t look at least a bit lonely....?

We saw lots of really cool birds, but usualy they were too quick for me to catch a picture.  Here are some of my better shots.

Scarlet Macaws

Hanging nests of the Oropendulo

Capped Heron

Kingfisher (these guys were everywhere!)

Turkey vulture, saw lots of other vultures (black and yellow-headed), but this guy doesn´t naturally live here.  It was an interesting sighting.

Snowy Egret

Laughing Falcon

At our first lunch stop, I happened to be walking around when my eyes caught sight of this:

 

zooming out a bit...

 

and a bit more.....

It turns out that a jaguar had been trailing a group of Capybara.  The trail died off in the grass, so we´ll never know how that story ends.  We did happen to see a capybara on the shore during our last trip in the canoe!  What a nice treat!  They´re basically  large guinea pig-the size of a medium dog.

 Sloths were a pretty common sighting, having seen maybe 5 or 6 over the course of our trip.  They basically just look like a big dark lump hanging in the trees, that doesn´t move.  On closer look, you can see the splotchy markes on tehir coat.  We saw both 3 and 2 toed sloths, though I couldn´t tell you how he could tell them apart fro msuch a distance.

Our closest encounter of the trip, though, came with this little guy.  There is so much floating debris in the river, that we passed right by him.  Thankfully, Roni has eagle eyes, so he signaled for us to turn around. 

When we came back, we saw that this juvenile sloth was crossing the wide river, now just over halfway across.  We disoriented him though with our waves, as he began to swim in circles to keep an eye on us.  We didn´t want him to end up going the long way back across the river, so we gave him a helping hand.

Not only was this little guy completely waterlogged, but he was exhausted.   He must have been swimming for hours in order to battle the strong current.  The moment we set him on teh bench (right next to me!  yipee!)  he sunk down and closed his eyes, looking relieved.

After much debate, we decided to just shuttle him directly to the side he had approached, as we assumed he had left the other shore for lack of adequate habitat.  Andres wanted to bring him back to the camp, but all of the guests insisted he return to his proper habitat.  As cute as he was, and as content as I would have been to have him ride snuggled in my lap for the duration of the trip, this was not in his best interest.  After whispering some encouraging words and silently sending a plea out into the universe for his protection, we carefully positioned him on a sturdy branch and went on our way.

I´ve thought of this little guy often since then.  I hope he made it safely to the top of a strong, healthy tree, and is flourishing there as I write.  Good luck, little buddy!