Today we have part 7 of Robert Lang‘s collection of photos from a visit to Brazil’s Pantanal region last year. His captions are indented and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Readers’ Wildlife Photos: The Pantanal, Part VII: 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). Here we continue working our way through the alphabetarium of common names.
Fork-tailed flycatcher (Tyrannus savana):
Gray-cowled wood rail (Aramides cajaneus):
Great black hawk (Buteogallus urubitinga), adult:
And a great black hawk juvenile:
Greater ani (Crotophaga major):
Great kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus):
Guira cuckoo (Guira guira):
Hyacinth macaw (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus). This is the largest macaw and the largest flying parrot; they are spectacular birds. They are threatened and diminishing due to the pet trade and, particularly, habitat loss. They need large cavities in old-growth trees for their nests and specialize in eating only a very small number of types of palm nuts. However, organizations in the Pantanal and some of the local ranchers are putting up nesting boxes and planting their preferred palm trees, and we saw several of the birds hanging around some of the places that we stayed at that had mature palms of the right type:
Two more hyacinth macaws, probably a breeding pair. The female can often be identified by its curved tail feathers; they develop a curve from being cooped up in the nest hole:
A jabiru stork (Jabiru mycteria), just caught a fish:
Jabiru stork, juvenile:
More birds to come.
Great birds; I especially liked the cuckoo. I didn’t know about the curved tail feathers of adult female macaws. Very useful to know!
“And a great black hawk juvenile:”
I can’t resist using this as a real-world example of why biologists should capitalize the proper names of birds and animals, no matter what editors and English professors try to force us to do.
Is that a Blue Tit or a blue tit? It matters.
🙂 It was you that converted me to using capitalized names. I see the light.
Yes, I remember our exchange! If each of us converts one other person, and they each convert one, etc, the numbers will grow exponentially, and eventually sanity will be restored.
Noted… 😁
Somehow the Fork-tailed flycatcher looks to be right in its element in the top of that twiggy plant. Beautiful compositions in this set!
Beautiful photos! All the birds look like they modeled for the photo to compose a great bird portrait.
Thanks!
Also noted: Hyacinth Macaws display solidarity with Ukraine.
Cool factoid about the tail feathers, too.
Very nice! I don’t know how I’d keep track of all those names from the field.
Nice collection. Love the parrots!🦜
Delightful – perfect timing too.