For our second and final day at the Amazon Conservation Association http://www.amazonconservation.org property of Villa Carmen http://www.acca.org.pe/espanol/investigacion/Villa_Carmen/generalidades.html, just off the Manu Road (near the town of Pilcopata), we ventured up onto some of the bamboo-choked ridges dotting the property. Outlying ridges at the base of the Andes like this can be special, potentially holding some very rare species (Shrike-like Cotinga anyone?). Unfortunately, our birding did no pay off in this hoped for way, but we still had a "pucker" day, with a stunning, rare highlight right at the death, a short time before dusk. Before we had got out of the clearing that morning - the site of the new lodge development - we were admiring my first lifer of the day, a marvelously confiding Slender-billed Xenops. As we got closer to the forest edge a party of three Blue-crowned Trogons provided a splash of vivid colors. Our morning was spent sweating and trudging our way up to a ridge, some 700m higher than the surrounding flatlands. As usual, a Cinereous Tinamou managed to toy with me on the way up, sounding oh so close, but never giving me even the slightest of glimpses. On the way up we came across a pair of vocal Golden-bellied Warblers, and on the crest of the ridge were rewarded with a brace of smashing antbirds: a striking Spot-backed Antbird preceding a pair of Hairy-crested Antbirds. The latter are known as "obligate ant followers", being rarely seen away from the army ant swarms they follow (to prey on the insects that flee in their wake), although strangely we could not find an ant anywhere around them, so presumably they were just moving through. It is hard to avoid passing through large spiky, almost aggressive, stands of Guadua bamboo at Villa Carmen, that frequently attach to your clothes, and leave their marks behind on your field gear. And such stands held Dusky-cheeked Foliage-gleaner (perhaps better referred to by its other name, Bamboo Foliage-gleaner), as well as Flammulated Bamboo-tyrant and Johannes's Tody-tyrant, as well as a striking male Scarlet-hooded Barbet.
Near the end of the day we returned to site of yesterday's Amazonian Antpitta, an old dirt road flanked with rich forest, and walked into a Razor-billed Currassow prowling the road, which was later also graced by a Gray-necked Wood-Rail which gave me a fright when I thought it might just be a tinamou at that distance! We scanned the skies above the Rio Pinipini for macaws (we were both hoping for a lifer Blue-headed), and then returned to the lodge, exhausted, at another long, though imminently rewarding, day in the field. We were just about beat, but managed to stumble onto the best bird of our two days at Villa Carmen on the return journey, just moments before dusk began to fall, when we bumped into a Gray-bellied Hawk sitting brazenly in the open, and calling regularly (we both got recordings of this). Thanks to Rich Hoyer for firing off some shots of this exceedingly rare raptor...
More from Manu to come, as we headed deeper into the lowlands...
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