[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]
Surama village sprawls across a patch of savanna on the fringe of the vast Iwokrama Forest. This morning, we walked from the village's eco-lodge (one of the oldest in the country) through several miles of tall, dense gallery forest to the Buro-Buro River for a quiet paddle in a big aluminum canoe. En-route, we flushed a Lesser Nighthawk off the edge sandy track we were walking; it exploded off the ground practically under our feet and flashed off to a nearby tree, where it settled on one of the lowest branches (see below). It was only when we finished taking our pictures and started down the road again that we discovered that she'd been sitting on a single, sparsely spotted white egg.
The Buro-Buro is a much smaller river than any of the others we've explored since arriving in Guyana. Narrow and placid, it twists through taller forest, with tree branches stretching down to the water's surface and vines twining overhead. There are traces of much higher waters along the banks -- debris tangled in branches far overhead, the dark shadows of watermarks well up the trunks, the occasional uprooted tree -- but today it was easy going.
Long-nosed Bats clung to the side of a boulder in midstream.
Chattering groups of White-banded Swallows gathered on twigs and deadfall all along the river.
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