The plan today was to spend the morning birding around the Hotel Mato Grosso, concentrating first on the entrance track to SouthWild Lodge and then a few of the surrounding areas. We started down this track shortly after 6am. At the start of the day the local Parrots tend to commute from roosting areas to feeding areas and so we were treated to what seemed like continual flyovers of Yellow-chevroned Parakeet, Peach-fronted Parakeet, White-eyed Parakeet and Turquoise-fronted Amazon. We also had good views of a Capped Heron and a Great Horned Owl. It is amazing how a simple fairly nondescript dirt track can have so many birds down it - we saw 38 species in an hour or so as well as a pair of Grey Fox.
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| White-tipped Dove |
The plan had to be slightly amended at around 8am when the car broke down again. For those having trouble following the vehicle saga on this trip, Car 1 broke down on Day 2, was replaced overnight with Car 2, and then swapped back to Car 1 late on Day 4. This was now Day 6 and Car 1 had broken again. We had been driving down the aforementioned track, stopped just as we had a dozen times before, and yet this time it didn't start. Brad couldn't believe it and neither could we. Lesser men would have cracked at this point, done a Basil Fawlty perhaps, but not Brad. He didn't even swear even though he would have been well within his rights. I think it was something quite mild like "you have to be kidding me". No drama though, just a quick phone call to get a vehicle from the hotel to come and get us whilst we continued birding.
After breakfast we proceeded on foot into the bush immediately west of the Hotel Mato Grosso. This was essentially birding a loop of the river that we had birding by boat the previous afternoon and it was excellent. A three hour walk produced 65 species with simply tons of birds. Highlights included a pair of Black-fronted Nunbird, Rufous-tailed Jacamar, and a trip target Band-tailed Antbird. Flycatchers were particularly numerous in this dry scrubby forest habitat, with Euler's and Fuscous Flycatcher, Stripe-necked Tody-Tyrant, Pearly-vented Tody-Tyrant, Rusty-fronted Tody Flycatcher and Yellow-olive Flatbill. White-headed Marsh Tyrant was in the water hyacinth on the river, and some fairly tame Bare-faced Curassow were by the end of the airfield.
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| Bare-faced Curassow |
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| Capped Heron |
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| Black-fronted Nunbird |
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| Band-tailed Antbird |
After a quick lunch we packed our gear into Car 3 which had by this time arrived at the Hotel from Cuiaba, perhaps three hours distant at this point. This meant that it would have left within 30 minutes of Brad calling it in. Yes it was a bit of a pain, but it is credit to everyone involved that this and the previous issues were dealt with so seamlessly. We didn't feel we had lost any birding whatsoever.
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| A Piuva in bloom |
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| Campo Jofre |
Now it was time to get down to Porto Jofre, driving the final sector of the Transpantaneira down to the river. This is one of the epic birding drives with hardly a dull moment, things to look at the whole way. I started an eBird list at about 2pm and by the time we arrived at 5.30pm we had recorded 86 species. There is too much to list out - the danger of writing blog posts/trip reports like this is that they become simply a "we went here and saw abc" style and whilst that is all well and good if you were there it simply doesn't translate. This is why I try and add non-bird photos and provide Ant-based asides to spice things up a little. Anyway, Pantanal Snipe, Pied Plover, Purple Gallinule, Yellow-browed Tyrant, Cinerous-breasted Spinetail, Black-capped Donacobius and a great deal sustained our interest over a three hour drive. The best area was Campo Jofre just before the river, a flatter and wetter area carpeted in Limpkin, Snail Kite, Cattle Egret and tons of other Herons. We couldn't linger as we needed to get to the hotel, alternatively known as Hotel Pantanal Norte, or Hotel Porto Jofre. There are a number of places to stay down here but this one is the biggest, is at the end of the road - literally -, and is where a lot of the boats depart from. As we settled into our room it felt like the night before Christmas.
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| A small fraction of the Cattle Egret at Porto Jofre |
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| Snail Kite |
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| Black-capped Donacobius |
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| Large-billed Tern |
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| Tropical Kingbird |
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| Yellow-browed Tyrant |
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| Chotoy Spinetail |
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