We have two items on our itinerary today: birds and fish. Our appointment with the fishes was at 11:00am, so we had to get up early to drive out to the bird location, a sink hole on a farm which has been converted to a well-kept ecotourism spot. We hired our Embiara driver to accompany us throughout our Bonito excursion so now we have an easy ride to each of our destinations and back to the airport tomorrow. His English, however, is nonexistent, so we were pleased to find that the Macaw location had an English speaking guide ready to lead us around.
The particular bird we were going to see is the Red-and-green Macaw. I say "going" instead of "aiming" because there's really no question that you would see the Macaws. We had already seen a few on Embiara. The cool thing about the sink hole, other than the fact that it's huge, is that it's a nesting grounds for the birds.
We walked around the rim of the sink hole and stopped at the first lookout location. At first, we just heard them as we marveled at the immensity of the sink hole.
After a few minutes, we began to see flashes of color swooping below us.
Pretty soon, pairs of Macaws were whizzing back and forth across the sink hole. As it turns out, these birds mate for life and then seem to hang out constantly.
They were so clingy that if we saw three birds flying together, we looked around for the fourth...
... but I suppose somebody's gotta guard the nest.
The Ibis frequents this sink hole as well.
They are not so obviously in pairs though.
Sometimes the Macaws will just sit up in a branch squawking.
Toucan play at that game.
More than other birds, the Macaws strike me as intelligent, curious and even playful. Here's a couple falling off a branch together.
It was so nice in the shady overlook that we stuck around a while and practiced our photography skills...
... starting with some action shots ...
... and concluding with a close-up...
... or two.
We spotted an owl on our walk as well.
And a Motmot... again, it's a bit hard to see the cool tail here.
I've seen these birds before...
Then we were there. It was somewhat sunnier on this side, without the trees giving us shade.
It occurs to me now that we should have asked more about the geology that goes into making a sink hole.
More and more Macaws began to appear. This is not a fruit tree:
Here's a shot of some Macaws flying close to our previous photo-spot.
There's another nest in the rocks here, I'm assuming.
It gets hot out here pretty early, but I'm always impressed with birds' ability to grin and bear it.
Where's the fourth?
Another happy couple.
Oh there's one by itself.
Just kidding!
Are these bird photos getting a little monogamous for you?
Must be rough to be a single Macaw.
We wrapped up our tour of the sink hole with plenty of time to spare. Our next adventure wasn't until 11:00am and it wasn't even 10. I was kicking myself for not getting an extra hour of sleep, but I suppose that it was good because people were beginning to arrive and tour the grounds. We got lucky having our own private guide.
This post is getting a little long, and we took just as many fish pictures during the next excursion. Thus, I think I'll make a separate post for the fishies. Here's a little preview of our next destination since it is in keeping with our bird theme anyway:
This post is getting a little long, and we took just as many fish pictures during the next excursion. Thus, I think I'll make a separate post for the fishies. Here's a little preview of our next destination since it is in keeping with our bird theme anyway:
A group of parakeets hung around the headquarters of the snorkeling operation.
... probably because they were baited with these seeds.
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