English - Snail kite
Portuguese - Gavião-caramujeiro
Latin - Rostrhamus sociabilis
The Snail Kite is definitely best photographed under sunny conditions so the redness of the eyes is obvious. The first 2 photos of a male Snail Kite were taken at Passo do Lonta which is a pousada, located in the Pantanal, Mato Grosso do Sul. Because of Passo do Lontras location, in the wet season part of the land is in flood, the accommodation, restaurant, etc are built on stilts. To get to your accommodation you have to walk along a board walk. In most cases there is a swamp on both sides. Anyway I photographed the Snail kite when I was walking along the board walk and noticed it sitting in a tree, very close to the boardwalk. It didn’t seem to take much notice of me as it seemed to be watching something in the water. Suddenly it swooped down, grabbed something from the water and landed back on the railing of the boardwalk, very close to where i was standing. What it grabbed, as its name suggests, was a snail. The 3rd photo is of a Juvenile Snail Kite and was taken next to a canal, near the town of Miranda, Mato Grosso do Sul. This photo was taken late in the afternoon on a cloudy day, so it was taken under a low light situation, therefore the eye colour of the Snail Kite doesn’t stand out as in the first 2 photos.
* Males and females are dissimilar in appearance. The male has bluish black plumage while the female has a white face and the rest of her is brown streaked.
* The Snail Kite can reach lengths up to 48 cm and weigh around 1/2 kg.
* They have a wing span of 1.2 mrs.
* They are found in the southern parts of Florida, in the Caribbean and in parts of South America.
* The Snail Kite inhabit freshwater wetlands, marshes and edges of the lakes.
* True to its name, the Snail Kite feeds almost exclusively on freshwater snails but will also take crabs, crayfish, rodents.
* The Snail Kite calls sounds like a “ka-ka-ka-ka-ka”.
* Snail kites are able to mate all year round.
* Females lay 2-4 eggs, incubated for 28 days by both parents. After 7 weeks the chicks fledge.
* The Snail Kite is classified as s species “of least concern” on the IUCN red list. The main threat the Snail Kite faces is the draining and altering of their marsh and wetland habitats. As you can imagine, a bird that is so dependent on just one prey item for food can be very vulnerable to changes in habitat. If this prey animal disappears, the Snail Kite is left with little to eat.
English - Crested Black-Tyrant
Portuguese - Maria-preta-de-penacho
Latin - Knipolegus lophotes
I think what makes this bird impressive is the wee black crest on top of its head. I managed to photograph this bird in 2 different locations. The first time I photographed it was when we went to Parque Municipal da Serra do Curral on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais. We didn’t plan to visit this park. The park we wanted to see was Parque Municipal das Mangabeiras but it was closed due to the outbreak of yellow fever and the discovery of dead monkeys within the park. I thought this was strange because Parque Municipal das Mangabeiras and Parque Municipal da Serra do Curral are linked together so I would have thought if one parked closed, so would the other one. That’s just me thinking though. Anyway……………….I think the Crested Black-Tyrant was the only animal I photographed that day (photo 1). it was a day I wasn’t really in the “zone” for photography. I think it was because it was a hot but overcast day and we had just walked miles and the only reason I photographed the Crested Black-Tyrant is that it flew past me and landed on a tree close by. The second opportunity to photograph the Crested Black-Tyrant was when I was staying a month at Reserva Ecológica de Guapiaçu. (REGUA) I did a day excursion from Regua to a place called Sumidouro. On the way we stopped near a town called Teresópolis to photograph some other birds and it just happened to be there as well (photo 2) This Crested Black-Tyrant was a lot better to photograph as it was posing in bright sunlight.
* Smallish bird of up to 21 cm in length.
* Is found in Southern Brazil, Eastern Uruguay and in Eastern parts of Paraguay.
* Lives in habitats such as Savannahs, open grassy or shrubby areas, often near groves of trees
* Usually silent during the day, sings more at night with modulated, ascending and descending notes.
* The Crested Black-Tyrant will mainly feed on insects but will occasionally eat berries.
* The Crested Black-Tyrant is classified as a species “of least concern”. It is not globally threatened and is uncommon to fairly common in its range. Appears to have a large home ranges.
English - Piranha
Portuguese - Piranha
Family - Characidae
Thought I would go slightly off track for this blog and tell you about the day I went Piranha fishing. Fishing that day was one of the last things I thought I would be doing. As it turned out, a day that started off with us in a bad situation, ended up being one of the most memorable days ever.
We were staying at Passo do Lontra Parque Hotel in the Pantanal, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Where we were taking an 11 day holiday from our…………………holiday. We spent most of the time at Passo do Lontra after spending 3 nights in Bonito and 1 night in Miranda. The first nine day were great. Did heaps and saw heaps. On the 10th day, (11.08.17) it started off like any other day. Got up, had breakfast. The plan for that day was to drive to Corumbá and back again. A round trip of around 250km on highway BR262.
Anyway………..we left Passo do Lontra early-ish after breakfast and headed down MS184 (dirt road), heading towards BR262 which was about 7kms away. On the way we stopped at a small pond to take photos, went back to the car and the car wouldn’t turn over. Oh………We decided to leave it a bit. After a couple of minutes we tried again and it started. (to our relief) We had 2 options, (A) to return back to Passo do Lontra which was about 3km away or (B) continue to Corumba: go to the car rental place, report the problem and hopefully come back with another car. We chose (B). So we travelled another 3-4km until we hit the intersection of MS 184 and BR 262.(and as we were to find out later on, the last inhabited post) We turned right onto BR262 and were cruising along, looking out for animals, when about the 20 km mark the dash board suddenly lit up like a christmas tree. The car started losing power. We pulled over and stopped and decided to wait a while again like last time. We waited around 10-15 minutes and tried again. This time the car had died. So here we were in the middle of nowhere with a broken car.
We were stuck! To compel things, there was no cellphone coverage. My first instinct was to walk back to the intersection of MS 184 and BR 262 and get help from a police outpost. Celia however, wanted to see if we could get a lift there, so Celia tried to stop cars. One car stopped but they had no room in their car but they said they would stop off at the outpost and tell them we were here. We waited a while……….and a while longer but nobody came. So Celia tried again to stop someone. Some cars passed, some trucks passed but nobody stopped and to be fair I didn’t really blame them because it’s quite dangerous to pick up hitchhikers here. Eventually though Celia managed to stop a car. It was 2 men. Once again though they had no room in their car to take Celia down the road but they got out and had a look at our car. As it happened one of the guys had exactly the same car as our rental but he didn’t know what was wrong. What he did have, was an older type cellphone with the right provider and we were able to contact the 0800 help number. Celia phoned and eventually managed to arrange a tow truck to come from Corumba and were told it would be there in about one hour. The 2 guys said that they would stay with us until the tow truck came. An hour passed. We spent the hour swapping life stories. Still no tow truck. Then one of the guys (Carlos) decided he wanted to go fishing. He got his fishing rod out, walked down the bank, casted his rod in and straight away he caught a Piranha. I thought that could be a photographic opportunity so I walked down the bank with my camera and took some photos. Then Carlos asked if I ever went fishing in NZ. I said yes and he said would you like to fish? I said “Ok”. He gave me his fishing rod and he went back up to the car, grabbed another fishing rod and for the next 2 hours we went fishing. 2 hours and about 50 Piranhas later, the tow truck arrived.
At this stage, our journey wasn’t even half way over. We had been on the road for about 3-4 hours and had only travelled around 27 kms. Anyway the car was loaded on the back of the tow truck. We said goodbye to our new friends. (Words cannot explain how grateful we were to those guys). We got into the front of the tow truck with the driver and off we went, heading towards Corumba. The first thing we noticed, getting into the front of the truck was a big crack in the front windscreen. Didn’t seem too bad at the start but when he started travelling at 100 - 120 km/h we started to wonder if the window was going to shatter. The driver though was quite talkative, so some of the time our minds were off the big crack in the window. He asked us what rental car company we were using and when we told him it was “Unidas” he said, “I don’t think they have an office in Corumba”. He said there was only one car rental company in Corumba and that was a company called “Localiza”. The panic button was pushed as we though to ourselves: what do we do if we get to Corumba and there is no office?????? Anyway just over an hour later we made it into Corumba, pleased to say with the windscreen intact. The driver asked, where would we like to go and we said, “take us to the Localiza rental car place”. We arrived at Localiza, said goodbye to the driver, who took our rental to his garage. Now we were alone and carless and about 120 kms from our hotel. In Corumba we did have cellphone coverage so Celia was able to get hold of the people at “Unidas”. We wanted to know how we were going to get back to Passo do Lonta and they suggested a taxi. (paid for by Unidas) We didn’t like that option because the next day we were meant to drive back to Campo Grande and fly out back to Espirito Santo and if we took the taxi, we would have no car to do this. Anyway we decided to see how much it would cost to hire a car at Localiza for a day and because we would not be returning it back to Corumba, it would have cost about R500.00 (ABOUT $250.00NZ). To cut a longer story short we went with the taxi option. The guys who worked at Localiza were also very good to us and let us wait inside their air conditioned office, gave us water, let us use the bathrooms, etc until a taxi arrived. I was quite embarrassed as I didn’t realise how much I had stunk of fish (due to my fishing exploits earlier on) until I went into the bathroom to wash my hands. As we were waiting for the Taxi the tow truck driver pulled up in a car. This was about 45 minutes after he had left us. He asked if this was one of our cellphones. It was mine. He found it on the floor of the tow truck and the only reason he found it was because someone called the cellphone. (Thank you Tony bennett)
We were told that the taxi would be around 1 1/2 hours but after 20 minutes the taxi arrived. At this stage it was getting onto 5pm and I reckon we had the fastest taxi driver around. It was quite scary the way he was driving. Driving at speeds of up to 140 km/h in an 80 km zone. We made it back to Passo do Lonta just after 6pm and that included 2 stops: to see a view of the Paraguay River bridge from underneath; and to see a huge Jabiru nest on the side of the road. (The Jabiru is an up and coming blog) Anyway, we made it back in time for dinner. We said to each other, let’s just relax tonight. Tomorrow’s a new day. After dinner, Celia was talking to a staff member at the hotel, when the phone rang. The phone was for Celia. It was “Unidas”, who advised Celia that at 06.00 in the morning there will be someone at the hotel to drop off a new car for us to get us back to Campo Grande. Great news to end the day.
Our mission that day was to drive to Corumba and back, and in a way we did that. It just took a bit longer than we thought. Even though this blog is about us and what events unfolded that day, it is dedicated to all the amazing people we met that day. The 2 guys who originally helped us and went fishing with, the tow truck driver, the guys at Localiza in Corumba + speedy the taxi driver. We had a great time in the Pantanal but made more memorable by the people we met that day.
