After three days of boat rides and drives, it felt good to go for a walk this morning. We walked from the lodge along the road for about a mile, through re-planted forest. We saw 10 new bird species and about 30 species we'd seen before, as well as a new type of capuchin monkey. In this type of forest most of the trees are slow-growing or fruiting. Then we drove to a "cordillera" forest, made up of fast-growing tree species that emerge in the dry ridges between runoff channels during the rainy season. These forest strips stay dry all year, but include the palms whose nuts are the primary food for Hyacinth Macaws. We learned more about the Macaw project, which will be the subject of of a future entry.
This afternoon and evening we drove to new areas of the reserve. While we didn't see a lot of new species, we did get wonderful views of ones we'd seen before; it really felt like many of the animals and birds were posing for us, including a pair of macaws beautifully positioned in front of the setting sun. We also watched a troop of capuchins cautiously approach a small watering hole. In the end, only three of them actually drank from the pond, perhaps because a small caiman was watching their every move from about three feet away. We also saw our first Red-legged Seriema, a grassland bird about half the height of a rhea, with elegant face markings and a delicate mincing step. Seriemas were used as the initial model for the creation of the velociraptors in "Jurassic Park".
On the night portion of the drive we saw three separate tapirs (a large male and two females) and a family of pacas (nocturnal agoutis, quite unusual to see), so our luck continues to be good! We also saw a crab-eating fox, which patiently waited for his picture to be taken (unlike the five previous encounters where they each scampered away in the dark).
Pictured: Greater Rhea, Crab-eating Fox, Hyacinth Macaws at sunset, Red-legged Seriema
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