Graced again by the presence of a jaguar

Recently, we had two wonderful encounters (two afternoons in a row!) with a big, male jaguar. With the first encounter, we were drifting quietly down river by boat using our electric engine. It was 5.30pm, and as we came around the first bend in the river, there he was on the river bank. Truth be told, I only got to see his rear end as he drifted into the bushes, but the other person on the boat did manage to see all of him. I remember being amazed by how well his markings allowed him to drift into the mottled shadows.
The next day, we returned to the river at the same time, and I was disappointed to see that he wasn't in the same place as the day before (even if the chances of that happening are very small). But then, a few hundred metres down the river, there he was again. He initially stood up to check us out...


but after deciding that we weren't really that interesting, he sat down to have a rest. We spent about 10 minutes drifting past him, before eventually he got up and walked away into the bushes.

Our colourful aerial acrobats

It is not just the big animals that we notice here at our lodge. There are so many amazing smaller creatures here too, which one can't help but to be mesmerized by. We have many different species of dragonfly and damselfly here. They are experts of the air, twisting and turning at lightning speed to catch smaller flying insects. A type of dragonfly called a darner

A type of dragonfly called a skimmer

Lazy bones

A few days ago, we were visited in the early morning by a tamandua. It was looking for ants and termites in the high branches of a tree beside the lodge...

Tamanduas are related to giant anteaters. They are perfectly designed for the creatures they feed on, with a long nose and tongue, a partially prehensile tails and sharp claws for digging. Tamanduas do not actually have teeth. Instead they rely on the strong, muscular walls of their specialized stomach (gizzard) to grind their food down. At the moment, it is very hot during the day, so the tamanduas seem to be more active during the evening. This tamandua was just finishing off its feeding chores. No sooner had we spotted it when it found a nice firm branch high in the tree and went to sleep.

This tamandua is obviously not scared of heights!

That´s a strange looking branch!

Just metres from the accomodation chalets, there lives a very special bird. It sits on the sloping trunk of a tree, and never moves during the day. This is because its feathers are the same colour as the tree it sits on, and so by not moving, it is very hard to see. The bird is called a potoo. Potoos are related to nightjars. They hunt for insects from a perch during the evening. The photo below shows this potoo with a baby. Notice how they both stick their necks out to impersonate a branch...

The Jaguars parade on our hide "cat walk"

Sunday 18th October after lunch, I accompanied our guest Richard Pay and our field guide Joelson to the river as they planned to try their luck fishing from the beach opposite our new hide. Fishing has not been very good this month because the caiman population migrated in great numbers to the river as their lake habitats dried up due to the severe drought we had in our region this year (this has not been seen for 40 years).That afternoon, it was threatening to rain, so I decided to watch from the comfort of our riverside hide. I had left my binoculars and photo equipment at the Lodge as the light was not very good. Richard had little luck with his fishing, so my gaze wandered to the right, and to my amazement, I saw a large animal's silhouette crossing the river not more than 100 meters from where I sat. I quickly realized that it was a large male jaguar. Joelson and Richard also spotted him and quickly we dropped whatever we were doing and reunited in our flat boat propelled by an electric engine to where the jaguar was last seen.

We saw its foot prints but the jaguar disappeared into thin air. Joelson suggested we go up river to the other side of the peninsula, on the other side of the beach. And as we turned the corner after the beach, we saw the male jaguar walking along a beach towards us. It looked at us, paused and crossed the river to our reserve along the river.We went to the beach were we had seen the jaguar and noted that there were other fresh jaguar footprints identified of a female and her cub. They could possibly have been the tracks of the collared (at Barranco Alto) "Barbie" and her cub. This female jaguar and her cub had crossed into our reserve before we viewed the male, and after following the foot prints in our reserve, we concluded that the three jaguars were "relaxing" somewhere in the forest behind behind the Lodge buildings. We left them alone. The next day the field guide of Barranco Alto namely Fernando called us by radio, asking if they drop in with a guest, as their radio seemed to indicate that Barbie (the female jaguar) was in our reserve. We were delighted and got to within 100 meters of her and her cub but the guest preferred to call it a day and return to base. So it appears that Barbie, her cub followed by "daddy" or an other interested male paid us a visit! Although it was quite frustrating not having the right photo equipment to take better pictures of the jaguar. All we had on us was Patrick's small pocket Olympus (used to record his fish catches) but we all walked away with a big smile on our faces as the jaguar was beautifully stored in our memory banks!

Hide and seek

We have a small wooden hide, which sits on a bank overlooking a bend in the river near our lodge. The hide really blends in with its surroundings...

It is a perfect place to wait and see who might decide to stop by...


The other day, we were lucky enough to be visited in the late morning by our family of giant otters. First, they sunbathed for a while on the bank opposite our hide...


photo taken by John Broughton

They then proceeded to hunt on the same bend in the river which our hide overlooks. They initially caught some impressive-sized fish, and then much to our amazement, they caught and ate a caiman.
With the unusual drying out of the lakes caused by a historic drought this year, more caimans have migrated to the river, when normally they wouldn't need to. This has put pressure on the numbers of fish in the river which both they and the otters feed on. Therefore, by killing the caiman, the otters were not only feeding themselves, but were also decreasing the competition for their shared prey.

Our anteater friends

We are always very excited when we catch sight of a giant anteater, but at the moment it is Spring, and rising temperatures and humidity are making it harder to see these curious looking creatures. The reason for this is that anteaters have not evolved an efficient system for cooling down, and so if it is too hot for them, they have no choice but to remain in the cooler shade of the forest, making them much harder to spot. As temperatures drop in the autumn and winter months (May-August), it becomes easier to see anteaters in the open. The photo below shows an anteater in the open with its young hitching a ride on its back...


And here it is taking its first steps on terra firme, as well as negociating its first ant's nest...

The Acuri palm tree in front of the main Lodge building

Our lodge buildings, which are nestled under the forest canopy, have many acuri palm trees nearby (infact, there is one right in front of the main building terrace), and because of the important role that these trees play as a source of food in the Pantanal, so we have been able to observe the different animals that they attract. The acuri palm tree starts to bears fruit in the autumn and continues through the winter and spring.
The agouti which likes to live close to acuri trees, seems to spend its days burying acuri nuts to make sure that it still has food in the leaner months.

The agouti

The caracara

The white-lipped peccary

The feral pig

Other regular visitors of the acuri palm tree included a tapir, coatis, hyacinth macaws and blue and green-winged macaws.

Embiara Lodge had thumbs up from the local Giant Otter community

It all started in January this year when we received the visit of a Giant otter scout party who seemed to be checking out our stretch of the Rio Negro to determine if it was a suitable neighbourhood tohouse the family, bring up the pups, safety aspects and more importantly the food supply well as the months progressed we concluded that we received the finned thumbs up. We have never seen so many Giant Otter families as this year. Just on our stretch of river we located 3 burrows where fmilies hat settled. One morning in May coming down the river in a Kayak we counted 22 giant otters quite an experience. here are some pictures of these encounters. The first picture shows the advance scout party in our oximore in front of our port

and next is one of the burrows with loads of activities

Family affairs at Embiara

Here is a large Rheas family enjoying the empty meadows of Embiara lodge. This meadow is kept unocupied in the rainy seson so that if our floading fields "Vazante do Castelo and Vazante do Periquito" fload which usuallys starts hapening from March onwards we have a place to move the cattle to. This year that has not occured so the field remained unoccupied and the Rheas had the area all for themselves. In one of our many lakes a happy Capybara family or is it a creche for young capybaras are enjoying a swim.

Very little rain fall recorded this year in the Rio Negro region of the Pantanal

In early February this year I took some pictures in the same location as I did a year ago when we had a reasonable amount of rain and the road to Aquidauana closed when the river overflowed its banks. The first picture shows the view from the Barra Mansa bridge looking at the other side of the river where we have the notorious "Boca Quente" or hot mouth in english which is where the main road into town goes through and our road access to Aquidauana closes when the river overflows. This year it never closed becaus the rains never came!

Our port located on the oximore of the Rio Negro is also visibly different and reflects how much lower the river was in February 2009

An other landmark is the "snow white beach located on our river stretch almost oposite to the entrance of our oximore visibly larger this year in february when compared to last year same day.

The drive to the Lodge during the winter season

At this time of the year the road in to the Lodge is much more accessible. This is also called the dry season. Temperatures are very pleasant with a maximum temperature in the twenties (Centigrade) and at night it gets nice and cool and may even want to use a duvet. If you decide to drive in with a 4x4 to the Lodge you probably will get your first glance of the Pantanal diverse wildlife. Last year when I drove in with my son Stefan at the end of July we saw both Giant and the lesser Anteater http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/6098/Anteaters.html

During this time of year the majority of trees have no foliage which allows one to see many more animals. On the drive to the Lodge we saw some amazing trees and a number of the Jatoba Trees were crowned with Jabiru Stork http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabiru nests that contained large families and the chicks were developed and received their final flight briefing from either mom or dad:

As we opened and closed the many farm gates we were waved on by the beautiful and endangered Hyacinth macaws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyacinth_Macaw

Another companion on the road was the Crab eating fox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab-eating_Fox and saw a lovely couple who introduced themselves to us.

As you are driving you will also see many migratory birds flying overhead or having sashimi in one of the road side drying -up lakes joined by the caiman aligators who share the fish eating passion. We also came accross a beautiful Osprey hawk perched in a tree clutching a fish.
Then we located a Tucan, high in the tree showing off its beautiful orange beak accentuated by the last rays of the setting sun. We were almost arriving at the Lodge...

The trip takes around 4 hours (109 km from Aquidauana to the Lodge) because of the many photo opportunities on the way and it is nice to get out the car from time to time to take in the beautiful scenary while stretching the legs.