Belluda Caño & El Dorado Caño
After grabbing a quick coffee, we boarded our skiffs and headed out at our usual early morning time of 6:30. We turned off the Ucayali River and headed up a small tributary named Belluda Cano. The tributary was about 20 feet wide and offered us wonderful personal glimpses of the forest and wildlife. One tree had three parrot species in it: the Tui Parakeet, the beautiful black-headed parrot and the Mealy parrot!
The solitude and peacefulness of drifting along the creek, observing and listening to the forest noises, makes man’s outside world seem so far away and meaningless. Life doesn’t get much better than this. As our skiff slips into the forest, we observed a tree with a hole overhead from which three cute faces were peaking down. These were a group of Night monkeys, the only genuinely nocturnal monkeys. They have a cute owl-like rounded head with immense dark eyes surrounded by white fur, all a good indicator of the creature’s nocturnal way of life. The three monkeys spend their daytime hours cuddled together in this hollow tree hole. At night they forage anywhere from the forest floor to the canopy eating fruits, buds, insects and flower nectar. These three were very inquisitive and brave, peering down and watching us while we watched back. What a special opportunity to see these nocturnal mammals.
We returned for breakfast which was followed by another natural history talk by me on “The Evolution of Birds and the Birds of the Amazon.” The crew followed this with an amazing demonstration of how they use origami methods to fold our towels that they place on our beds every night. A very impressive demonstration indeed and lots of fun including some sleight of hand magic!
After lunch, siesta was longer than usual as we left a 4pm to head up the Rio Dorado for a long excursion returning after dark. On our trip, we saw probably one of the first Jabiru Storks returning to the Amazon for low water and breeding. These white storks are huge topping three feet in height. They have a beautiful bare-skinned black head and neck, the base of which is a gorgeous red throat. This Jabiru, probably a male who had returned early to claim his nesting territory while awaiting a mate. He was absolutely regal sitting on top of his enormous stick nest high up in a tree.
The transition from day to night is an amazing time to see the wildlife transition along the river. As the light faded we used a big spotlight to see nocturnal wildlife. There were types of night jars or night hawks called pauraques that eat insects, and a relative of these called the Great Potoo, a much larger owl-size insect eater. Fishing bats were flying up and down the creek, echo locating for fish off the ripples fish make as they come to the surface to catch insects. We also found small spectacled caimans in the floating vegetation. These are the most common caiman in South American and a member of the Alligator family. Several skiffs also found a variety of frogs and everyone came home thrilled at having experienced the transition from day to night and watching the nocturnal environment unfold.
