Amazon Southbank Travels: Trip To Autazes Mario Cohn-Haft - First Week August 1997 |
After lunch we headed out to the woods with just shorts and binoculars to check it out.
Walters caretaker accompanied us to show us the trail. We paddled through some
reasonable-looking igapo to get to the trailhead. There we began walking. The guide
promptly lost track of the trail we were supposed to follow and began hacking a new
trail (which we later discovered closely paralleled the existing one and may even have
crossed it a few times!) Despite the early afternoon heat and the disturbance of our
hard-headed trail blazer, we hadnt walked more than a couple hundred yards in the
terra firme before we heard a bird: Hemitriccus zosterops griseipectus, the bird I was
after! I was instantly sold on the place, and we decided wed stay. When we finally took
pity on our trail-hacker, after about a kilometer, and decided to turn back, we also
noticed a swarm of army ants, increasing our anticipation for returning the next day at
dawn. We might have looked for ant-following birds then and there, but, in addition to
it being real quiet at the time, the mosquitoes were surprisingly bad, so we opted to keep
moving and come back more appropriately dressed.
When we arrived at the house and gleefully announced our success and intent to stay,
Walter insisted we take the master bedroom, fully screened with 2 double beds. The
screens were a blessing because the mosquitoes were really fierce at nightfall.
For the next 2 days, we did more or less the same thing, paddling out to the terra firme
in the dark before dawn, returning to bird the igapo by late morning, and returning to
the house for a late lunch. In what was essentially 2 extended mornings of birding
around his place, we got 164 species of birds and heard some neat monkeys too,
including howlers, which are black on this side of the river, as opposed to red, like
around Manaus.
The terra firme woods were interesting. They are flat and barely above the floodplain. In
fact, some places look like they flood very shallowly for a short period, because they are
slightly depressed and have virtually no understory. Most of the trees are not
impressively large or tall, but theres an extraordinary density of big brazilnut trees. The
area obviously deserves more attention.
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