I saw three different kinds of macaws on my Brazil trip — the hyacinth, greenwing and these guys, appropriately named blue and yellow macaws. They generally mate for life and you usually see them flying in pairs — often times synchronized in flight.
This one goes out to my young friend David Koffler who really appreciates his reptiles. The reptile in this case is a yacare caiman. The butterfly I haven’t been able to identify yet but it clearly likes to live dangerously.
Here’s another one from Brazil of a capybara and a pale-legged hornero bird. As you can see, capybaras aren’t only the largest rodents in the world, they also happen to be great at keeping secrets.
A quick break from Brazil for a shot I took yesterday in Baxter State Park in Maine. I flew up on Saturday morning hoping to catch bull moose in the fall rut. Of course, what I didn’t know is that Saturday also happened to be the first day of moose hunting season and as any self-respecting bull moose knows, this is no time to be showing one’s face around town. Instead, I had to settle for landscape photos of mooseless — but nonetheless spectacular — fall color. That’s Mount Katahdin in the background, the northern end of the Appalachian Trail and Maine’s highest peak.
Black howler monkeys aren’t always so black. They can be lighter in color too, like this guy here who was enjoying a few delicious pink flowers for breakfast one morning along a river in the Pantanal.
Apparently, Brazil’s crab-eating fox is also quite fond of bananas. Each night, at least one of these little guys came sniffing around the lodge looking for hand outs (and getting them). They seem to be pretty common as we saw quite a few on a night drive. They’re definitely on the smallish side, even for a fox, with their short, stocky legs.
Brazil was definitely all about the birds. And of all the birds I photographed, the white woodpecker was definitely one of my favorites. There was just something about this white and black bird with the yellow eye patch that commanded attention. In addition to simply being cool looking, the white woodpecker is beneficial to farmers as it eats the irapua bee, a pest of citrus growers.
It was the end of the dry season so I didn’t do much in the way of landscapes when I was in Brazil, but I was intrigued by the termite mounds that seemed to be everywhere. This one was taken first thing in the morning just outside the lodge I was staying at in the Pantanal.
It was the end of the day and we were in a boat exploring a small tributary of Brazil’s Pantanal. I always try to get these types of pictures at this time of day when the light is low and reflecting the colors of the landscape off the surface of the water. This is the same yacare caiman, shot three different times a few seconds apart. As we slowly floated past, green leaves were reflected in the water, followed by red clay shoreline, and finally some yellow foliage. As for the caiman, over 10 million of the yacare species are estimated to live in the Pantanal, making them what is believed to be the largest population of crocodilians on earth. More on these guys in a future post.
One of the highlights of the Brazil trip was seeing three baby white-tufted-ear marmosets. Marmosets are small to begin with and these three were babies so they were even smaller (about the size of the average squirrel, if that). I never did see the adults but was able to get quite a few photos of the little guys before they disappeared back into the forest. After looking at the photos, I realized that they were sticking their tongues out in about half of the shots.