Great comfort birding

Spectacled Caiman Caiman crocodilus also known as White Caiman. Photo: Gunnar Engblom.

This top-end eco-lodge should be a great alternative for birders who don’t want to join a tour and maybe have a non-birding spouse.  There are good birding guides such as Jesus and Percy. All that InkaTerra does is thought through to minimize the impact on the environment. The rooms are spacious and equipped with eco-friendly soaps, repellent, aluminium bottles you can refill with drinking water. They even grow some of their food themselves and sell organic wine in the restaurant. The main attraction for birders is the canopy walkway and the fact that the localized Black-faced Cotinga is relatively easy to see.

We arrived in the afternoon yesterday, and I was pleased that the transfer very short before we got on the boat. No need to wait for other passengers. We were taken to InkaTerra’s butterfly house which also house the Puerto Maldonado office.

Then an hour’s boatride down the Madre de Dios River. 

There is Wifi internet available at dining room, but sadly for me Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were blocked on the server. Too much bandwidth is used with this service which slows down everyone else. Fair enough, I will just have to blog on my Posterous blog instead and have the blog sent automated to Facebook and the other services.

This first day my family and I visited a new InkaTerra project at Concepcion. Here a new lodge is being built which is part of InkaTerra’s new brand By InkaTerra, which will be the budget brand of the company. Here is a good creek for paddling silently watching the wildlife. We saw Hoatzin, Spectacled Caiman, Yellow-spotted Side-necked Turtle, Gray-necked Woodrail, Sunbittern, Black Caracara, Sungrebe, Black-fronted Nunbird, Gilded Barbet, Pale-legged Hornero, Great Kiskadee, Fork-tailed Woodnymph and Band-tailed Antbird,

There is also some good Bamboo nearby which is good for species such as Fasciated Cuckoo, Manu Antbird, Peruvian Recurvebill and Rufous-headed Woodpecker. Once this lodge is completed I think the two lodges will be a fantastic combination for birders.

Here are some pictures taken yesterday and today.

Sunbittern Eurypyga helias lurking in the shade

Band-tailed Antbird Hypocnemoides maculicauda is a bird which is common in creek and lake edges, but which can be difficult to see. This one was lured out by playback.

Black-fronted Nunbird Monasa nigrifrons is common in the forest edge and secondary forest.

Fork-tailed Woodnymph Thalurania furcata I took about about 20 pictures of this perched Hummingbird - and all but one were very dull, except this one where the bird stretched its neck out and all of a sudden all the throat feathers were aligned to break the light so the green gorget could be seen. Hummingbird colors are structural, so if the light does not fall right, they appear all colorless.

Gilded Barbet Capito auratus female eating a Guava fruit.

Great Kiskadee Pitangus sulphuratus

Sunbittern Eurypyga helias again coming in for landing spreading out its beautiful wings.

Hoatzin Opisthocomus hoazin. Fasinating bird with pre-historic looks.

Spectacled Caiman Caiman crocodilus again.