And this next photo shows exactly the same place after the arrival of the floods...
Thursday, 7 January 2010
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...
And this next photo shows exactly the same place after the arrival of the floods...
Monday, 14 December 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
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
A type of dragonfly called a darner
A type of dragonfly called a skimmer
Monday, 23 November 2009
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...
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
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!
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!
Sunday, 25 October 2009
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.
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.
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