Amazon Trip Report - the following is a composite of our fantastic 2015 - 2024 trips.

The Amazon Basin is a huge place, almost as large as the lower 48 states.  Since it's often referred to as just "the Amazon", many consider it to be one large and perhaps monotonous patch of "rainforest".  From a distance, this seems to be the case, but from the ground it's a different story.  Up close, one finds the Amazon packed with diverse microhabitats, countless waterways, a varied climate with very wet areas, surprisingly dry areas, localized patches of bamboo forest, unique sites of white sand forest, seasonally flooded forest, high and dry terra firme, countless river islands, marshy backwaters, and of course lots of tall stature rainforest.  Amazonas, the largest state in Brazil, is about the size of Alaska.  It is sparsely populated and, with more intact rainforest than any place on Earth, its biodiversity is tremendous.  Amazonas is also famous for being the meeting place of the world's largest river, the Amazon, and its largest tributary, the Rio Negro.

I've had a love affair with Brazil since 2004 when I spent 3 months working as a guide at the incomparable Cristalino Jungle Lodge in Mato Grosso.  Since that initial experience, I've had the good fortune to have led almost 20 trips there and also to have explored and led trips in the Atlantic Forest.  Having gotten to know those areas well, I was looking for another jewel in Brazil's biogeographic crown and zeroed in on central Amazonia.  In addition to harboring many of the microhabitats mentioned above, the area is at the heart of one of South America's most illustrative biogeographic principles, namely the role of large rivers in determining the distribution of many species of mammals, birds, reptiles and insects.  In looking at these distributions, especially in those range maps in your field guide, one clearly sees sharp boundaries along the Amazon and its many tributaries.  For perhaps a multitude of reasons (the most important one probably being exposure to predation), many species have evolved to shun large open spaces and instead prefer the deep, dark forest environment.  Those behavioral habits, combined with river sizes and the shifting of river channels over long periods of time, have likely contributed to the extensive speciation process that has created the most biodiverse area on Earth.  In Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, the two largest rivers in South America come together, creating a hotspot for black-and-white species boundaries and a great opportunity to explore the area's diversity.

Our trip begins in the bustling city of Manaus.  Begun as a small fort during Portuguese colonization, Manaus grew enormously during the famous rubber boom of the mid to late 1800s.  Though the rubber boom collapsed in the early 1900s and was then revived briefly during World War II, Manaus persisted as a port city, and then began its modern growth spurt in the 1960s when it became a free trade zone, attracting large amounts of foreign investment.  Today it's a city of 2 million people with many factories and a thriving shipping industry.  Despite its modernity, there is still a lot of nature-based commerce (especially fish and also local fruits) with a large dependence on the Amazon and Negro Rivers.

In Manaus we stay at the Hotel Novotel where a small patch of adjacent forest attracts quite a few birds.  We've seen over 50 species here, and while most are the more common and widespread species tolerant of some habitat disturbance, it's fun to do some easy birding on the grounds.  Orange-fronted yellow-finch, red-capped cardinal, spotted tody-flycatcher, southern mouse-colored tyrannulet, fork-tailed palm-swift, green aracari, turquoise tanager, and a nice bunch of parrots (scarlet macaw, canary-winged parakeet, orange-winged parrot, and sapphire-rumped parrotlet) have been the main eye candy.  Though rare, we've also seen the beautiful pied tamarin, one of the world's rarest and most range-restricted primates, right on the hotel grounds.

At about its midpoint in the long journey from the Andes to the Atlantic, the Amazon is about a mile wide in the Manaus region.  That width, combined with the enormous load of sediment and debris it carries, has created countless river islands.  While some are small, some (especially at the river's mouth in Belem) are larger than some small countries.  Over time, vegetation becomes established and tall stature forest may develop.  Many islands are a mix of early successional species (mainly grasses, Cecropia and Melastomes), later successional shrubs and small trees, and taller stature flooded forest.  As is typical in Amazonia, and perhaps because there are just so many islands, these areas have become a hotspot for colonization and specialization by many species.  Of course one expects to find birds that prefer open spaces and edge habitat, and bluish-gray saltator, yellow-headed caracara, lesser yellow-headed vulture, yellow-browed sparrow, chestnut-bellied seedeater, and blue-gray and palm tanagers are fairly common.  And, since there's quite a bit of open water and marshy habitat one also finds purple gallinule, yellow-hooded and red-breasted blackbirds, black-collared hawk, snail kite, black skimmer, southern and pied lapwings, and large-billed and yellow-billed terns.  But it's the river islands specialties that we're always searching for.  There are no less than four parrot species - festive parrot, short-tailed parrot, tui parakeet, and green-rumped parrotlet - that make this unique habitat home.  And there are a whole bunch of spinetails - red-and-white, yellow-chinned, Parker's pale-breasted, dark-breasted, and rusty-backed.  While we usually see most of these, interestingly, we often don't see another spinetail for the rest of the "land-based" trip.  Lesser hornero, river tyrannulet, black-and-white antbird, oriole blackbird, bicolored conebill, Amazonian black-tyrant, and riverside tyrant are other specialists that we've had good luck with here.

While the birds are great, we also just enjoy the spectacular beauty of the trip - sunrise on the Rio Negro, towering clouds, quiet igarapes (channels) with classic ribereno dwellings, backwaters inhabited by the enormous and famous Victoria water lily, the impressive scale of the rivers, and, on most trips, not a single piece of garbage.  After the island visits, our river journey continues with a buffet lunch at a floating restaurant and a walk along a boardwalk through varzea (flooded forest).  The flooded forest is an important habitat throughout Amazonia and is home to many specialties, including three woodcreepers that we usually see - long-billed (the world's largest), straight-billed, and striped.  In addition to super cute common squirrel monkeys, we've also had great potoo here.  On our return to Manaus, we cruise through a floating city and of course visit the "Encontro das Aguas" (Meeting of the Waters), where the warm and clear-black water of the Rio Negro meets the cooler and cloudier water of the Amazon.  

From Manaus we head to the north side of the city to visit MUSA (Museu da Amazonia) and the Adolfo Ducke Reserve.  The highlight here is one of the finest canopy towers I've ever been on.  Arriving just before sunrise is a magical experience with views of pristine rainforest and the sounds of the dawn chorus.  For me, there's no such thing as a "bad day" on a canopy tower in the Amazon.  While activity varies, and while each visit is unique, there are always interesting and beautiful things to see, enjoy, and learn about.  We usually see white-throated and channel-billed toucans, green aracari, glossy-backed becard, Todd's sirystes, red-necked woodpecker, red-bellied and scarlet macaws, dusky and blue-headed parrots, Guianan woodcreeper, and Guianan puffbird.  Less common are species such as orange-breasted falcon, Amazonian pygmy-owl, Caica parrot, black-bellied cuckoo, buff-cheeked greenlet, and black-faced hawk.  Sometimes we get lucky and have a mixed flock with paradise, spotted, and fulvous-crested tanagers, black-faced dacnis, Guianan and yellow-crowned tyrannulets, slate-colored grosbeak, and others.

On the forest trails we've had good luck in finding the terrestrial and very colorful ferruginous-backed antbird as well as golden-headed manakin, Guianan, green-backed, and black-tailed trogons, and chestnut-rumped and strong-billed woodcreepers.  In the mammal department, the MUSA area can be good for red howler monkey and pale-throated three-toed sloth.  Another highlight at MUSA is the small restaurant where we enjoy some local specialties.  While I don't really think of Brazil as a serious "food destination" like India, Thailand, or southern Mexico, there are some fantastic foods native to Amazonia.  My all-time favorite is Acai.  Though often sold in supermarkets in the U.S. as an antioxidant "superfood", there is nothing like the real thing as prepared in Brazil by Brazilians.  Made from the thin fruit covering a Euterpe palm nut, Acai, though something of an acquired taste, is to me the "flavor of Brazil".  Another specialty at the restaurant is a dish that uses the pulp of a native palm, Pucunya. Then there are the juices - carambola, cupuacu (a close relative of cacao, but made from the sweet pulp, not the seed), abacaxi (pineapple), and tapareba - all made from plants native to tropical America.  You can't talk about food in Brazil without mentioning THE starchy staple, mandioca.  The tuber of a long-cultivated Euphorbia (also native to Amazonia), mandioca is a bit like corn in Middle America in that you can do a lot with it.  It's one of several foods used for thousands of years by indigenous peoples and now widely adopted by Brazilians.  And finally there are the fish.  The Amazon is the world's largest freshwater fishery with about 3000 known species, and quite a few are delicious - tambaqui, pacu, pirarucu, tucunare, and pintado.

After our MUSA visit, we head further north to the terra firme and white sand forests of the Presidente Figueiredo area.  Though the lodging at the Hotel Iracema falls is rustic, the food and service are excellent, as is the habitat.  We sometimes find red howler monkeys, tufted capuchins, Guianan saki monkey, and golden-handed tamarins in the forest along with interesting arthropods like aphids being "farmed" by ants, slave-making ants, giant termites, mantids, and walking sticks.  In the lodge clearing are white-thighed swallow, sulphury and variegated flycatchers, the moriche race of epaulet oriole, black-tailed tityra, silver-beaked tanager, red fan parrot, several swift species (short-tailed, band-rumped, and Chapman's), toucans, and more.  One of the local stars is the crimson topaz, one of the most striking hummingbirds in the neotopics and,fortunately, a regular at some flowering Isertia trees on the edge of the clearing. Gray-breasted sabrewing and rufous-throated sapphire have also been seen on the grounds, sometimes being chased away by the topaz!

In the forests at Iracema Falls are a number of interesting birds, including great and yellow-billed jacamars, dusky-throated and fasciated antshrikes, black-headed antbird, black curassow, waved and ringed woodpeckers, sapphire-rumped parrotlet, both black-and-white and ornate hawk-eagles, spangled cotinga, blackish nightjar, green-backed and Guianan trogons, pygmy antwren, cinereous becard, and much more.  It's also a great place to see red-rumped agouti, sometimes carrying off the large nuts of Mauritia or Atalea palms.  Another highlight at Iracema are the falls themselves, and there are several.  While the cascading water in the middle of the rainforest is attractive, what makes these falls more interesting is the fact that this is "black water", the tea colored water of the Rio Negro watershed.  So the water that's actually "falling" has a beautiful reddish orange color, making it seem like an optical illusion.  Adjacent to the falls are sandstone grottos where multiple species of bats can be seen roosting, including insectivorous, fruit-eating, and predatory (the wooly false vampire bat) species.

From Iracema, we head a short ways to the nearby Pousada Aldeia Mari Mari, making a stop at a nice patch of forest outside of Presidente Figeuiredo.  In this patch, the Parque Municipal das Orquideas, there can be some great birds, and in our few visits we've seen the bizarre capuchinbird, rufous-tailed xenops, rusty-breasted nunlet, yellow-throated woodpecker, riverbank warbler, rufous-bellied antwren, red-billed woodcreeper, ringed antpipit, short-tailed pygmy-tyrant, rufous-tailed flatbill, Coraya wren, pink-throated and white-winged becards, and others.  There is an excellent stand of white sand forest here, and it holds most of the white sand specialties – northern slaty-antshrike, olivaceous schiffornis, saffron-crowned tyrant-manakin, bronzy jacamar, rufous-crowned elaenia, and Pelzeln’s tody-tyrant.

Mari Mari (named for a local tree, (Cassia leandra) is a lovely spot run by my friends Ana Paula and Betao.  Their warm hospitality and great food is as good as the surrounding forest through which runs a beautiful stream just made for swimming.  On their property is a large area of white sand forest with all the same specialties mentioned above as well as the main attraction, a lek of Guianan cock-of-the-rock.  If you've been to some of the Andean cock-of-the-rock leks (except for the one in Jardin, Colombia) in Ecuador or Peru and found the viewing to be challenging due to darkness, distant birds, or a long and hard hike, this is not that type of lek.  The Guianans are at eye level, in afternoon light, completely in the open, and practically glowing from within.  While their bizarre calls and flaming orange colors seem attractive enough, they're also adorned with frilly wing and tail covert "plumes".  Though they're not very common, we've also seen capuchinbird here.  A cotinga cousin of the cock-of-the-rock, the capuchinbird certainly has one of the weirdest vocalizations of any bird in the world.

Mari Mari's terra firme can be good for the exciting and often fast moving mixed flocks typical of Amazonia.  In working our way through these avian kaleidoscopes, we've seen curve-billed scythebill, cinnamon manakin-tyrant, rufous-tailed and rufous-rumped foliage gleaners, long-winged antwren, wing-barred piprites, buff-throated woodcreeper, and others.  At army ant swarms we've had white-cheeked antbird, Amazonian barred woodcreeper, and the only white-plumed antbirds I've ever seen.  Other birds we've seen in the forest and on the grounds include Guianan warbling antbird, black-throated antbird, spot-backed antwren, double-banded pygmy-tyrant, McConnell's flycatcher, Todd's sirystes, green and black-necked aracaris, black-spotted barbet, short-crested flycatcher, chivi vireo, black nunbird, and variable chachalaca.  Though not to be expected, we once had very good views of white-winged potoo (perhaps the rarest of the six potoo species).

So far, our trip has occurred on the Guianan Shield.  Many of the species mentioned above are endemic to this area, a land mass found north of the Amazon RIver and east of the Rio Negro.  From Mari Mari we cross the Rio Negro to its west bank where we lose almost all of the Guianan Shield birds, but pick up many others.  From the air-conditioned comfort of the Hotel Amazonia Park and Suites, we explore west-bank terra firme, the Rio Negro, and a biogeographic feature unique to the region, the Anavilhanas Archipelago, a series of a huge number of islands, lakes, and waterways in the middle of the massive Rio Negro.  I try to time our trip so that we can experience the archipelago at a time when the water is high enough such that we can only pass through the flooded forest by boat.  This magical experience is made all the more magical by the river island and flooded forest specialties we encounter - Klage's, Cherrie's, and leaden antwrens, Amazonian umbrellabird, greater ani, green-tailed, jacamar, varzea schiffornis, blackish-gray antshrike, black-chinned antbird, ash-breasted antwren, Zimmer's woodcreeper, yellow-crowned manakin, and Snethlage's tody-tyrant.  Of course there are other birds here, too, such as red-throated caracara, brown-chested martin, festive parrot, white-winged swallow, black-fronted nunbird, gray-headed kite, and scaled and pale-vented pigeons.  If that's not enough, there's also a lek of the stunning wire-tailed manakin which can be seen at eye-level and close up.

Our terra firme outings can be productive with many widespread Amazonian species being seen - screaming piha, pompadour cotinga, yellow-rumped and red-rumped caciques, fork-tailed palm-swift, red-legged and short-billed honeycreepers, blue dacnis, and a great diversity of manakins (dwarf tyrant, blue-backed, white-crowned, blue-crowned, and golden headed).  A late afternoon boat trip on the quiet Rio Negro gives us opportunities to see red-breasted blackbird, dense night roosts of ruddy ground doves and orange-fronted yellow-finches, displaying fork-tailed flycatchers (I finally know what they use the tail for), savanna hawk, large numbers of white-eyed parakeets coming in to the night roost, and, after sunset, band-tailed and sand-colored nighthawks and both greater and lesser bulldog bats.

Though the hotel grounds are busy with many common edge species - yellow-browed sparrow, blue-gray, palm, and silver-beaked tanagers, tropical kingbird, and southern mouse-colored tyrannulet - there are a few forest species that make frequent cameos, and we've had some nice views of yellow-tufted woodpecker, gray-crowned flatbill, forest elaenia, and Klage's antwren here.  The grounds are also home to a day roost of Spix's night monkeys which are easily seen.  One of my favorite wildlife highlights here are the large numbers of pink-toed tarantulas.  While I have tarantulas in my back yard and have seen many all over the neotropics, until seeing the pink-toeds, I wouldn't have guessed that there is a large arboreal tarantula that doesn't live in a ground burrow and instead lives in large palm trees where it hides out by day in a silken tube at the bases of the large leaves.  By night they mostly perch at eye level on the palm trunks doing what most tarantulas do, sitting and waiting for unsuspecting prey to pass by.  In addition to the sit-and-wait ambush predation, we once watched one climb a wall and go upside down and crawl across the underside of the roof to get to a cicada.  While this is no big deal for smaller spiders, this is not something that most large and heavy tarantulas can do or can afford to do as they can literally break if they fall.  The tarantula we watched grabbed the cicada which turned out to be a male as it immediately starting buzzing, breaking free of the tarantulas grasp.  The tarantula promptly fell 8 feet to the ground and just walked away. 

I've had a great time sharing this special part of Amazonia with my travel companions and have greatly enjoyed the new experiences and new knowledge that I've found here.  The area is beautiful, the people are warm. talented, and hard-working, the forests are vast, and the species and habitat diversity is world class.  I can't wait to return !

Last updated: July 05, 2024.