Readers’ wildlife photos

Today we have volume IV of Robert Lang’s 13-set series of photos from his recent trip to the Pantanal, today featuring birds. Robert’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Readers’ Wildlife Photos: The Pantanal, Part IV: Birds

Continuing our mid-2025 journey to the Pantanal in Brazil, by far the largest category of observation and photography was birds: we saw over 100 different species of birds (and this was not even a birding-specific trip, though the outfitter also organizes those for the truly hard core).

Not all of what we saw was so gracious as to pose sufficiently close, still, and well-lighted to get a good photo, but the Pantanal still offered much better photo opportunities than did the Amazon a few years ago, where most of the birds presented as a tiny black silhouette high in a distant tree. Although I usually try to say a few words about each photo in my RWP contributions, there’s just to many here, so in most, I’ll just give the name and species and move on, proceeding alphabetically by common name. (Species identification are courtesy of our guide, augmented sometimes by Merlin Bird ID. Corrections gratefully accept.)

A female anhinga (Anhinga anhinga), in its characteristic holding-out-the-wings-to-dry pose:

Bare-faced curassows (Crax fasciolata), male on the left, female on the right:

And a female with its crest up:

A bare-faced ibis (Phimosus infuscatus):

Black-backed water tyrant (Fluvicola albiventer). Quite a scary name for such a small, unassuming bird

Black-bellied whistling ducks (Dendrocygna autumnalis):

Black-collared hawk (Busarellus nigricollis), this one flying:

A black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax):

A black-fronted nunbird (Monasa nigrifrons):

And that’s all for this installment. We’re not even out of the B’s. (Heck, we’re not even out of the “black-“s!) More to come soon!