I decided to try an experiment for this post: see what would happen if I just sat with my notebook and camera for an hour at random, between 10am and 11am on a sunny morning, at the table in our barbecue area. As you will see, it was an eventful hour.
10.00-10.10
As I started to log, the bananas hanging in front of the barbecue area were attracting a lot of Red-rumped Caciques (Cacicus haemorrhous), a member of the blackbird family with a tropical twist, a bright red flash that you mainly see in flight. Also some of the most colourful tanagers arrived in the first few minutes, including this Green-headed Tanager (Tangara seledon) and below a Golden-chevroned Tanager (Thraupis ornata), both endemic species.
10.10-10.20
Some papaya I had put on a stump just in front of me soon attracted another endemic species, this Azure-shouldered Tanager (Thraupis cyanoptera), classified as Near Threatened because its preference for well-forested areas makes it vulnerable to deforestation. I confess I still find it tough to distinguish this species from its more common cousin, the Sayaca Tanager (Thraupis sayaca) which is a more uniform bluey-grey. If I have this wrong no doubt I will soon be corrected! Down on the ground, one of the most common birds in Brazil, the Rufous-bellied Thrush (Turdus rufiventris), pictured below, was rummaging around for food among fallen leaves.
10.20-10.30
Another very common species, the Great Kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus) arrived to join the Caciques on the bananas. It may be common but I still find it a very striking bird with its bright yellow belly and striped head. Despite being basically a flycatcher (one of the 27 species of this family on our list here) it comes quite often to eat bananas, and I have even seen it fishing on the lake. Back on the papayas, meanwhile, yet another tanager species the Palm Tanager (Thraupis Palmarum), pictured below, joined the feast.
10.30-10.40
Halfway through the hour, a Tropical Parula (Parula pitiayumi), a member of the wood-warbler family, came to take a bath in the big bromelia just above the bananas. This is a common sight -- lots of species take advantage of the pool of water that gathers in the base of bromeliads, as do tree-frogs which sometimes spend their entire lives in this micro-ecosystem. On the bananas themselves, meanwhile, Plain Parakeets (Brotogeris tirica) started to gather in their noisy large groups. Over the forest, the shrill whistle of a Black Hawk-eagle (Spizaetus tyrannus) rang out -- later in the morning I saw a pair of them circling just above the canopy.
10.40-10.50
Now things started to get really interesting. First of all, a Blond-crested Woodpecker (Celeus flavescens) arrived on the scene to feed on a bunch of bananas, much to the annoyance of the Cacique perched there at the time. This one is a female, as it does not have the male´s distinctive red patch on the cheek. Most excitingly, a group of Maroon-bellied Parakeets (Pyrhurra frontalis) appeared on the scene, at first scrapping noisily with their Plain cousins, but then feeding calmly together on the bananas. This was a first for me, as the much more colourful Maroon-bellies normally just pass over the canopy and I had not been able to photograph them close to the house before.
10.50-11.00
Having discovered the bananas, the Maroon-bellied Parakeets seemed to be checking out the local lodgings as well. They spent several minutes exploring the holes drilled in a nearby hollow stump by the Yellow-fronted Woodpeckers (Melanerpes flavifrons) last year, and recently renovated apparently in preparation for nesting. This threat of squatters immediately brought some excited chattering from the owners from across the clearing, and after a couple of minutes ...
... the residents had rushed back to stake their claim. This is the kind of competitive behaviour one would expect to see in the breeding season which really only starts in September, but it just goes to show that even the winter here can be a great time to observe birdlife.
Having returned to this area, the Yellow-fronted woodpeckers lost no time in discovering the papayas (see below) and close behind them just before the hour was up, the glorious sight of the scarlet-red male Brazilian Tanager (Ramphocelus bresilius) posing in the sun, quickly followed by his more dull-plumaged mate.
And all this without moving from the spot. I think that´s what they call Fat Birdwatching.
