Eastern Bolivia Jul 08—23, 2005
Posted by Steve Hilty
Steve Hilty
Steve Hilty is the senior author of A Guide to the Birds of Colombia, and the recently published Birds of Venezuela, both by Princeton University Press. Other credits inclu...Related Trips
Our Eastern Bolivia trip has always been part birding trip, part adventure and, above all, an opportunity to visit one of the world?s largest remaining intact wilderness areas—Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, some six-and-a-half-million acres of it at present—with hardly a single human inhabitant, except a small staff at the lodges at the north and south ends of the park. This is a region of superlatives, a region remote from the cares and problems of the rest of the world, a region that still pulses with its own natural rhythms.
The park and its centerpiece, the Serrania Huanchaca, a flat-topped, 75-mile-long escarpment that rises some 3,000 feet above the surrounding lowlands, is not, however, the Amazonian rainforest. Although many of the plants, birds, and mammals are found northward in Amazonia, the park lies at the southern fringes of Amazonia, and its flora and fauna is influenced strongly by the Brazilian Cerrado, the Paraguayan Chaco and, to a lesser extent, the Brazilian Pantanal, as well as Amazonia. Most of the park is forested, but large savannas spread across the northern and southern ends of the park and provide habitat and shelter to distinctly non-forest species. There is obvious seasonality here with warm wet summers and slightly cooler, dry winters. Temperatures, however, do not vary greatly between the seasons, although cold southern fronts during the “winter” months of June, July, and August can bring a few days of jacket-wearing temperatures. We did not experience one of these ?surs,? but temperatures were on the cool side of my Coolmax shirt.
Los Fierros, where we started our trip, is at the southern end of the park. Our first day dawned clear and cool, and we got lots of little ants on our trousers while standing at the edge of the airfield (but curiously, no bites). Red-throated Piping-Guans rattled in the dark and whistled, and a Spectacled Owl rumbled in the distance. With the sun?s first rays, Creamy-bellied Thrushes began leaving their winter roost in the tall grass forming the forest border around the airstrip, and these were soon followed by oropendolas, Red-necked Aracaries, toucans, and some noisy parrots perching in high trees beside the lodge and airstrip. During the next few days we visited savannas, quiet forest roads, trails, and wetter forest two hours to the south of our lodge where spider monkeys called and hung by their tails, and peered at the small party of hominids passing beneath them. Ever-present bees were especially numerous during the heat of the day, and we found that was a great time for napping too. We made late afternoon forays birding and long evening spotlighting trips across the savannas and through the forests, where an interesting range of birds and wildlife turned up including potoos, Scissor-tailed Nightjars, and even a paca.
At the northern lodge of Flor de Oro, we exchanged trucks for boats and spent two lovely evenings and a morning cruising the Río Iténez and its bays, walked far into the savanna to watch Aplomado Falcons watching us, wandered in quiet, viny forests and in viny swamp forests, and relaxed or sipped Nescafe as the first hint of sunrise spread pink across the wide and quiet river at our doorstep. One morning squirrel and capuchin monkeys foraged in riverbank forest, a tinamou whistled, and small dark antbirds of retiring dispositions hopped in forest undergrowth. A noisy flock of Peach-fronted Parakeets spent their first hour discussing daily routines, chattering, swirling around trees in a blaze of green at the edge of dry savanna, and leaving only when the sun was well above the horizon. Boat trips provided close encounters with waders, kingfishers, terns, skimmers, sungrebes, sunbitterns and, after dark, a night shift of nightjars, nighthawks, potoos, and critters furry and scaly crawling and lurking in riverbank vegetation. And it was there that we also saw sleeping kingfishers, little feathery balls balanced on slender twigs, and loathe to awaken in the glare of our million-candle-power lights.