One last day in the wilderness

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

Our trip is going to end as it started -- with drenching rains falling and clouds scudding low and fast overhead. It was touch and go for a while as to whether our little plane would even be able to land on the muddy airstrip, but it finally arrived. We hustled ourselves and our bags onboard and climbed out of the steamy savanna before the next shower drew close. Sadly, the heavy weather meant we couldn't even see the spectacular Kaiteur Falls, let along visit. Maybe next year!

Surama's little airstrip -- and yes, it's as short as it looks.

Another day, another river

[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.

South to Surama

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

A night of heavy rain turned our battered road into a muddy, greasy quagmire today, and we slipped and slithered our way south to Surama village. A handful of vehicles passed us as we birded along the road and one managed to splash an impressively large curtain of brown slime through an open window into one of our trucks. After that, we pedestrians retreated much further off the road whenever anyone approached, I can assure you!

This snoozing Great Potoo was a late afternoon highlight near Surama; it's amazing how effective its plumage and stance are at camouflaging the bird's outline. (The bird's in the middle of the picture, in case you're having trouble finding it.)

This was one of my many little roommates, which spent most of the evening hanging on a wall in the bathroom. I have no idea what species it is.

Forest primeval

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

The Iwokrama Forest is amazingly huge -- nearly a million acres in the green heart of Guyana. From the top of Turtle Mountain, a 984-foot mountain in the park, we gazed out across a sea of treetops which stretched to the horizon. The range of greens was phenomenal: hunter, olive, lime, chartreuse, kelly, emerald, malachite, teal and a thousand other subtle shades, with the pink and yellow splashes of scattered canopy flowers as highlights. Birds called, insects whirred and chirped and squeaked, the breeze whispered through the trees around us, but -- other than the sound of our voices -- there was not a single human-made sound to hear. How many places on earth can you say that about?

On the road (and river) again

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

We spent another day on Guyana's torturously bad "main highway", traversing the length of the Iwokrama Forest Reserve on our way to the Iwokrama River Lodge. It took much of the morning -- and a goodly part of the afternoon -- but we did stop a few times to stretch our legs, take some respite from the interminable painful bumps and see what we could find. We couldn't match the other day's Harpy Eagle, but we did find a few bits and pieces to enjoy.

A male Guianan Streaked-Antwren rummages through the roadside vegetation.

At dusk, we ventured out onto the mighty Essequibo River to look for nightbirds and caimans. The water, though deep, was as flat and still as a mirror, which made for some nice photos.

Highway birding

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

For those of us who live in the busy parts of the world (particularly the crowded northeastern corner of the US), it's hard to imagine standing for long in the middle of a country's main north-south highway without being squashed flat. But here in Guyana, where the "highway" is a twisting, potholed ribbon of mud (on wet days) or iron hard earth (on dry ones), it's possible to wander for hours without seeing a single vehicle.

These butterflies were clustered along the road, slurping some mineral from a damp patch of soil.

Harpy

[Sorry for the delay in posting my Guyana pictures/diary. Internet connections here are very slow and uploading even small picture files is problematic.]

Ask 100 birders which Neotropical bird they'd most like to see, and I'll bet that a substantial number of them would quickly say "Harpy Eagle". This huge bird of prey is almost mythical -- wary, rare and declining, and generally restricted to the most remote parts of remaining pristine rainforest. And yet, sometimes you just get lucky. Today was one of those days. While bouncing along the narrow, muddy, potholed main "highway" between Lethem and Georgetown, we happened across this majestic sight -- an adult Harpy with the bloody remains of a Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth clutched in its talons. For 30 minutes, we watched as it tried to eat while being dive-bombed by a trio of very fired-up Red-throated Caracaras. It ducked, it dived, it panted, it raised its impressive crest feathers, it tried a couple of different perches, and finally it flew off with the coterie of screaming caracaras right behind. And there were high fives all around. What an awesome bird!

A day in the Rupununi

The Rupununi Savanna is a sprawling, 5000-square-mile expanse in the southwestern corner of Guyana. Most of it is grassland, dried and weatherbeaten at this time of year, lush and green (reportedly) during the summer rainy season. Islands of gallery forest dot the flat plains, and there are traces everywhere of wet season watercourses. Cracked mud crunches underfoot when you walk across now-dry ponds, shorebirds and ducks cluster in remnant pools full of water hyacinth, and islands of gallery forest stand green and lush in low spots and depressions all across the landscape. We're in the very northern part of the savanna, so we can see the ringing hills and mountains, hazy in the distance. After a morning wandering across the sere landscape, we spent another afternoon along the Rupununi River, the main waterway (and highway) through much of the savanna.

A pair of Jabiru, huge "man-sized" storks (as a friend always referred to them), stand atop their sizable nest in one of the savanna's wet spots.

A Cocoi Heron along the Rupununi River.

Dusk along a bend in the river.

On the river

Nothing beats flying in a small plane. Somehow, it feels like you're in a living thing; it dances under you like a restive horse, bowing and coquetting with each gust of wind. We rode a little Caravan on our journey south to the Karanambu airstrip, and the storms around Georgetown meant there were plenty of towering clouds to admire as we climbed from rain into sun.

As Han Solo said about the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars, "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts." The Caravan may be small, but it's comfortable, and got us here.

An afternoon and evening along the Rupununi River gave us some fine scenery to enjoy -- as well as plenty of new birds and a staggering number of Black Caiman. This endangered alligator species is making a good comeback in Guyana.

I have always loved the play of darkened vegetation against a sunset sky.

Mahaica River

Today we arose before dawn and journeyed southeastward on a narrow two-lane highway hugging Guyana's coastline. Our destination was the Mahaica River, one of the country's smaller drainages. Narrow and placid, it flows through scattered small farms, lined with rice fields and edged with the tangled scrubby vegetation that Guyana's national bird, the bizarre, primitive Hoatzin, favors. Unfortunately, the rain was steady and unrelenting through much of the morning.

Our boatman, Narish, is a farmer along the Mahaica. He loves the Hoatzins, and works to convince his neighbors to maintain some habitat for them.

This Limpkin truly was limping; it only appeared to have one working leg. The injury didn't seem to be hindering it much, as it was still pulling earthworms from this wet field with surprising frequency.

An afternoon visit to Georgetown's botanical gardens brought views of a tree full of courting Great Egrets. Those spectacular plumes almost led to the species' demise in the early part of the last century, when it became fashionable to decorate women's hats with feathers. Whole colonies were destroyed for the millinery trade.

Georgetown

Georgetown, Guyana is a bustling metropolis, and our hotel sits at a busy intersection along one of the main roads through town. All day -- and much of the night -- the traffic hurtles past, a constant stream of taxis, minibuses and the occasional horse-drawn cart. And yet, despite all the hustle and commotion, a host of birds uses the shallow channelized river that runs between the lanes of the highway, and the narrow strips of grass that edge the road. There are two baby Striated Herons, their plumage still studded with wispy down feathers, huddled on a branch right across from my balcony. At least four Snail Kites are visiting the canal, flying off with snails clutched in their sharp beaks, then returning for another mouthful. Pairs of Orange-winged Parrots are shrieking overhead, and nearly every television antenna sports a Great Kiskadee or two. We've counted 20 species from the hotel; we daren't venture further under orders from our local guide.

Looking east along Croal Street. There are no buildings higher than ten stories here because of a thick clay layer that makes it difficult to drive footings deep enough to support anything taller.

A young Snail Kite waits its turn at the canal.

This Gray-lined Hawk was hunting in the backyards across the street.