More birds

Life at Laguna Blanca is often unpredictable. For the past week we've been without internet, we have no fridge at the moment and this morning at 4am the power decided to cut out and didn’t return until 4pm. Paraguay is definitely no place for the impatient. I found the best way to deal with the unpredictability is to adopt the Paraguayan attitude and just relax – the power returns when the power return and hey who needs internet anyway? This approach served me well on mine and Dutch intern Fi’s most recent attempt to get the bus to town to get some much needed fruit and biscuits. Having woken up at 6am, power walked/ ran down the half hour dirt track to reach the bus stop for 7am only to be told by a local man who watched us sit by the side of the road for an hour, that the bus wouldn't be arriving for another 3 and a half hours. The news didn't surprise me and my mind began pondering what fun things I could now do on my morning off as we headed back down the red sandy track. Fi on the other hand has yet to adopt this approach and swore pretty much the whole way back. That would have been me a month back so I feel obliged to thank Paraguay for a more stable blood pressure.

Since my last blog I've been out mist netting on 3 other occasions, still in the cerrado but with some smaller but less holey nets.

Untangling a little nightjar (Caprimulgus parvulu), these are one of my favourite species of bird, they have cryptic plumage and huge gape for catching insects at night.

 Chaco earth creeper (Upucerthia certhiodes)

Narrow-billed woodcreeper (Lepodocolaptes angustirostris)

Sayaca tanger (Thraupis sayaca)

Red pileated finch female (Coryphospingus cucullatus)

Huming bird -Planalto hermit (Phaethornis pretrei)

 Ruddy ground dove(Columbina talpacoti)

Tropical kingbird (Tyrannus melancholicus) - despite looking ominous the bill of these fly catchers is soft an light. 

The next few days will entail more mist netting, trail maintenance and the arrival of the new primate volunteer Alexa.

I have plenty more wildlife pictures to upload but the internet is slow and the pasta mush is ready so I'm, afraid they'll have to wait. 

Mist netting for birds

 Myself and Intern Tom (herpetologist in the making) set out this morning at 4am to open up two mist nets we had set up yesterday evening in some sandy scrubland next to the cerrado.
We chose a spot that was between two patches of bush with a few trees, hoping to catch those that decided to flit between the bushes. The sun began to rise at around 05:20, with a cup of tea in hand we sat and waited out of sight for the 15 minute interval between checking the nets.

The nets had been previously used for catching bats, since bats struggle when caught and chew the nets frantically- the nets were full of holes and we were told not to be disappointed if we caught nothing.

To our surprise, on checking the nets we found 5 birds had been caught in 1 net at the same time. We quickly got to removing them carefully. The birds must be removed feet first, once the feet are free these can be held onto and the rest of the bird untangled safely. The net is incredibly fine and is sometimes hidden underneath the feathers so removing the birds safely can be pretty tricky.We caught 3 spot-backed puffbirds (Nystalus maculatus) and 2 narrow-billed wood creepers (Lepidocolaptes angustirostris).

When caught in the net most birds relax and wait calmly to be untangled.  The puff birds were very patient and easy to remove; one looked as though it had fallen asleep.The wood creepers however were less cooperative which made taking measurements much harder.
After the first 5, we returned to our cold cups of tea and waited for more birds but by 8:30am no more were caught and the morning window of bird activity was over and so we headed back to base and put the kettle on.

Bats

Thursday night I helped out Ruby with her bat inventory. We had previously set up 5 nets in the Transitional forest but left them closed so we headed out just after dinner at 7pm to open them up and start catching bats! 

The Transitonal forest is to the North of the reserve along the edge of the lake. Here is another beautiful sunset seen from the edge of the TF reflected on the lake.

The plan was to stay out until 12am or until we had caught 12 bats as we only had 12 bags. The first catch of the night wasn't quite a bat but still made for an interesting find.

A not so happy tropical screech owl 

We caught 10 Artibeus, 1 platyrrhinus lineatus and 1 sturnira lilium. These are all type of fruit and insect eating bats. 11 different species have been caught here so far by Ruby.

Bags full by 11pm we headed in early. I plan to leave the mist nets up to sample the bird species in the area in the next few days so watch this space for birdy photos.

Iguazu Falls

The last week has flown by and I’ve loads to catch up on so I’ll start with my trip to Iguazu falls! Georgia had to do a boarder run to get her passport stamped before her 3 month tourist visa ran out and having heard the falls were ‘not to be missed’ I decided to join her. So on Monday we got dropped off in the nearest town of Santa Rosa and waited for the night bus to Ciudad Del Este that we were told would arrive between 11pm and 1am. One of the volunteers had to be dropped off at 2pm to catch a bus back to the capital to carry on his travels so we had a long wait. We had been warned not to attempt to get a ticket too early as the guys at the bus station would try selling us tickets for an earlier bus. At 10pm we headed down to pick up our tickets only to be told our bus wouldn’t be arriving until 7am the next day. We narrowly avoided being sold tickets to god-knows-where to get a different bus, it turned out this was just another attempt by the bus men to sell us the wrong tickets. Our bus came at 12am and 5 hours later we were in Cuidad Del Este where we got a taxi over the boarder to Brazil to get our passports stamped then over to Argentina. We visited the falls on Wednesday. No picture can do it justice but here are a few to give you an idea of how amazing it was.

The area surrounding the falls is a national park with plenty of wildlife. Thanks to the public feeding them the coati have become pests, the capuchin monkeys we saw were minding their own business until some tourists got out a banana and offered it to them. Georgia and I watched them much longer than the average tourists wishing our troop at Laguna blanca could be as habituated as they are.

Some other wildlife we encountered:

Snake necked turtle

Cavy

 Coati 

Giant catfish AKA Monocholo 

Black Tegu 

Capuchin

Spectacled or dwarf caimenn

We also saw toucan and the boat guide told us there are cougars and leopards in the park.

The second day we visited Guira OGA wildlife sanctuary. Located in the middle of 19 hectares of protected forest, the sanctuary acts as a buffer to the forest surrounding Iguazu falls. We waited at reception for the transport to rock up.

After a 10minute ride into the forest in we met a tour guide who spoke in Spanish and then in English about the different species. The animals on view would never be returned to the wild for a variety of reasons and were being held captive now for educational purposes and for captive breeding programmes. She explained how they used training such as falconry to prepare some rescued animals for release.

Hornbill

Capuchin

Tamandua

Eagles

Howler monkey

The overly friendly howler monkey was due to be released when a fellow fever outbreak hit Northeast Argentina and postponed his release and caused him to habituate. Released on-site he now comes back to visit and assist with tours by posing for the tourists.  

The way back to Laguna Blanca went smoothly until our bus broke down 3 hours away from Santa Rosa. The bus had just enough life left in it to reach a mechanic where we waited 4 hours for the bus to be repaired. At around 2am we made it to Santa Rosa, we walked half a mile to find a hotel that wasn’t shut. I don’t think security guard at Hotel Crystal was expecting to young white girls to arrive at 2am and he looked at us though he had seen a ghost. Not knowing exactly when the bus back to Laguna blanca would arrive, we headed to the bus station at 9am but the bus wasn’t until 11:30. One 38degree, bumpy bus ride later we were back looking pretty bedraggled but relieved to be back at Laguna Blanca.