Rheally hungry

The Pantanal is home to the greater rhea (rhea americana). This is a large flightless bird, reaching a height of about 1.7 metres. Rheas are omnivorous, eating a variety of different things, from lizards and grasshoppers to fruits and broad-leafed plants. With the recent floods, we have enjoyed watching these curious birds as they wade through fields of water, plucking leaves from plants and tossing them in their mouths.

Tiger heron family

During the last few months, our lodge has been home to a family of rufescent tiger herons (tigrisoma lineatum). The herons made a nest on the branch of a tree, 3 or 4 metres above the river inlet beside our lodge.
This species of heron gets its name from the white and black lines on its front, which resemble the lined pattern of a tiger. These birds are often found wading attentively beside a body of water. They are carnivorous and have a varied diet, taking fish, reptiles, insects, crustaceans and molluscs. The photo below shows an adult tiger heron gulping down a water snake which it plucked from the shallow waters of a lake.


We were interested to see how the 2 juvenile tiger herons from the nest stayed very close to it, even when they were old enough to fly away. The photos below show one of the juveniles sitting on the nest and the other juvenile standing on a branch just metres from the nest. Notice the difference in their markings from the adult.

Hyacinth macaws

The hyacinth macaw (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus) is the largest species of macaw. It is an endangered species, but is locally common here in the Pantanal in Brazil. At our lodge, we have frequent sightings of all three of the large macaws which inhabit this area (the other 2 species include the red and green macaw and the blue and yellow macaw). The call of the hyacinth macaw is the sharpest and most coarse of these three large macaws, so they can often be recognized before they are seen. Hyacinth macaws love the seeds of the acuri palm tree. Here we see 4 of them ambling beside a salt lake, picking up the nuts of the acuri palm tree from the faeces of animals such as the South American tapir.

Although these birds look a little ungainly walking around, they seem to be quite happy walking around if this means that they will find a tasty morsel of food such as this!

Underwater magic

There is a huge draining field here, which in the dry season is completely dry. But when the surrounding rivers flood their banks, as they have done in recent months, the flood water spreads across this field.

The water sparks a remarkable transformation in the field, as the aquatic plants come to life here. These plants help to filter out any suspension in the water, making the water crystal clear.

The draining field is used by fish from the surrounding rivers as a place to reproduce.

The floods have arrived!

In the space of just over a month, our Pantanal home has been totally transformed by the annual floods. In this time, the river has risen by approximately 5 metres, meaning that many areas that were dry during the dry season, have now been gobbled up by the floods. The photo below shows an abandoned section of river beside our lodge, before the floods arrived...


And this next photo shows exactly the same place after the arrival of the floods...

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