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