Brazil Day 3 - Pousada Aguapé (11Aug2022) - Part 2

This post is dedicated to the second half of the day at Pousada Aguape.  As usual, I did not use the siesta and continued to look for birds when I was not stuffing my face with buffet food.

Grayish Baywing

Chalk-browed Mockingbird

Great Kiskadees were super common but I think this might be the only pic I took of one.  

Red-legged Seriemas were frequently too close to get in frame.

Gilded Hummingbird - The guide said he saw a Hermit of some kind at the Firecracker plant near the pool, but I could only find these Gilded.

Crested Caracaras were also super common but again I only ended up with a handful of pics.

As for the Hyacinth Macaws, I couldn't resist taking pics each time I saw them.

Campo Flickers - up to this point we had not seen any of these so I was excited and got some of the others to come look at them.  It turned out they were fairly common.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to get a good photo of Crested Oropendolas but they were skittish.

Toco eating some papayas.

Bare-faced Curassow

Nine-banded Armadillo - I believe you count the light bands, not the dividing darker ones.

Red-legged Seriema strutting its stuff.

Scaley-headed Parrot - this is one of only two terrible shots I got of this southeast South American species.  

Nanday Parakeets on the other hand were very accommodating. 

Lineated Woodpecker - at first glance this photo looks like it needs to be rotated, but this bird was actually clawing upside-down.

As you can probably tell the Lineated is closely related to our Pileated.

White-tipped Dove - same species we get in the Lower Rio Grand Valley.  We also had Gray-fronted Dove which is very similar but has a more contrasting head to body coloration.

After my solo walkabout during siesta we headed down to the river to take a boat ride.  I neglected to take a picture of the boat but it was a basic long and skinny river panga with comfy seats built in for the express purpose of wildlife viewing.

This Golden-mantled Howler Monkey female was waiting for us down at the boat landing.  The females are golden all over while the males are mostly dark.

Crane Hawks are kind of funny looking with their small head to body ratio.

Chestnut-capped Foliage-gleaner - shooting this bird from the boat was a challenge but a few of the many pics came out decent.

Blue-throated Piping-guan - these large birds were quite common in the very tallest trees lining the river but they were really good at keeping sticks between their face and my camera.

Crane Hawk fly-by.

No sticks this time!

Pantanal Caiman

Green Kingfisher

Black-backed Water-tyrant - we had these in Colombia but it was nice to get reacquainted.

Black-collared Hawk 

The boat ride was pleasant but I noticed the bilge (water at our feet) was full of gasoline.  Luckily I noticed this right away and kept my bag off the floor of the boat but despite my warnings some of the others did not and they eventually had to junk the bags or put up with the smell the rest of the trip.

Back on terra firma we noticed some new species of Parrot and Macaws starting to roost in the palm trees outside the Pousada.

Orange-winged Parrot - sadly the best photo I could get in the fading light.

Red-shouldered Macaws - another of the smaller macaw species that we only saw on this one occasion.

After the sun set, it was time for dinner but the wildlife didn't stop for that.

This Crab-eating Fox visited us at dinner presumably waiting for some table scraps.

Here is the Wiki description:

The crab-eating fox (Cerdocyon thous), also known as the forest fox, wood fox, bushdog (not to be confused with the bush dog) or maikong, is an extant species of medium-sized canid endemic to the central part of South America since at least the Pleistocene epoch.^[1][2][4]Like South American foxes, which are in the genus Lycalopex, it is not closely related to true foxes. Cerdocyon comes from the Greek words kerdo (meaning fox) and kyon (dog) referring to the dog- and fox-like characteristics of this animal.

Great times and we have 1 more full day of Pousada Aguape to get through.  Next installment, Brazil Day 4.  Maybe I can get the whole day done in one post now that we got the common species out of the way.

Brazil Day 3 - Pousada Aguapé (11Aug2022) Part 1

Our first full day at the Pousada was spent the same way as the previous afternoon, we toured the property with the Beast looking for some of the specialty birds.  In the morning we tried to eat breakfast while being distracted by the feeders.

Plush-crested Jay - I suspect it would take a while of seeing this species before taking it for granted.

Yellow-billed Cardinal

Pale-breasted Thrush

Blue-and-yellow Macaw

Guira Cuckoos!! This species is social and roosted in the tree where we loaded the Beast in the mornings.  They puffed up their rump feathers to catch the morning sun kind of like how the Greater Roadrunner does in the US.

Great Black Hawk

Capybara - pretty darn cute for a rodent.

White-rumped Monjita - our luck with two of the three regular species continued but the third eluded us.

Yellowish Pipit - we only saw a couple of these the whole trip but I suspect they are more comment and we just overlooked them.

Green-barred Woodpecker - we only saw a couple of these the whole trip.

Little Woodpecker - we ended up seeing these a number of times throughout the trip.

Rufous-browed Peppershrike - this was much better looks than I had in the Yucatan.

White-lined Tanager

Pearly-vented Tody-tyrant - I immediately recognized this little guy from my trip to Colombia.

Aplomado Falcon - much nicer looks than I have had previously Texas and Colombia.

Pampas Deer

Grassland Sparrow

Rusty-collared Seedeater - this and the other seedeaters were moved taxonomically from Emberzidae (sparrows) into the Family Thraupidae (tanagers) as part of a big re-org.  Interesting because they behave more like sparrows but I guess from a DNA perspective they are closer to Tanagers.

Bearded Tachuri - this small flycatcher one of those species we only saw once and for a very brief moment that was also consumed by overwhelming call-outs of multiple species. Thus I only have one picture and its not great.  The Wiki page on this species is only a couple sentences.  Someone needs to go out and study it more.

Black-throated Saltator - this bird caused quite a stir right during the Tachuri sighting but in hindsight we saw more later and I wished I had spent more time on the Tachuri. This is where doing your homework ahead of time can come in handy.  If you know what you are likely to get more than once and you have several new species being called out at the same time, you can focus on the more unlikely one.

Rusty-backed Antwren - yet another one that caused quite a stir but we ended up seeing more later.  This one is the female.

Here is the male.

Long-tailed Ground Dove - note to others going to Brazil, this species is hard to get good looks at so get em while you can.

They have an interesting gray forehead which makes this distinguishable even when looking at one head on.

Scaled Doves on the other hand are relatively easy to find and look pretty similar to our Inca Dove.

Burrowing Owl - nothing too special about this one but who (pardon the pun) can pass up an owl picture?

Peach-fronted Parakeet - it started to get easier over time to quickly narrow down species into groupings based on morphology.  Parakeets have longer tails and are generally smaller than Parrots and Macaws.  Macaws have white facial skin around the eyes and beak.  Parrots are shorter tailed and chunkier than Parakeets.   

White Monjita

Southern Beardless-Tyrannulet - easy to ID based on the complete lack of a beard.  I am kidding kind of.  According to one of the Audubon websites, "The name 'Beardless' reflects the lack of bristles around the base of the bill (present in most of our flycatchers)."  However, I am not sure that helps with ID and we normally don't get that close to be able to see bristles.

Barred Antshrike

Narrow-billed Woodcreeper

Turquoise-fronted Parrots in what may be a nesting cavity.

Saffron Finch

Gray-breasted Martin ventral view

and dorsal.

Yellow-collared Macaw!  The little Macaws are super cute.  This one doesn't have a huge range so I was glad to pick it up.

Savannah Hawk

Rufous-fronted Thornbird

Great Rufous Woodcreeper - this is a really big woodcreeper!

Another Savannah

Back at the Pousada for lunch we were always greeted by the boisterous Hyacinth Macaws.  Next post will be devoted to an early afternoon solo walk around the immediate property and then a group boat trip on the adjacent river.