1st & 2nd Sep
1st September - we flew from Heathrow with Latam departing 22:15 and landed at São Paulo at 05:55 local time on 2nd Sep. We then caught the 10:00 flight with Gol to the town of Cuiabá, the jump-off point to head by road into the Cerrado and Pantanal via the renowned Transpantaneira dirt road with its many bridges. We arrived at Cuiabá at 11:05 and were met by our guide Enrique Castillo, who is known by his friends as Kike, which is pronounced "Keekay". During our wait at São Paulo airport some of us had our first 'tick' [and lifer for me] in the form of Cliff Flycatcher {Hirundinea ferruginea}, several of which were fly-catching from the airport buildings. We had lunch at a great restaurant very near the airport. It was pretty cold and cloudy for the whole of this day and whilst this was OK as we travelled in our comfortable coach, it became pretty chilly after we had transferred to a open safari type truck once we hit the Transpantaneira proper! Once on this long [147 km] red dirt road, which is also known as MT060 and has 122 bridges in various states of repair, we cruised along in the open safari bus, stopping when we saw anything of interest. We soon saw a Greater Rhea with chicks walking through the long vegetation, although my attempts at photographs weren't too successful due to distance and the vegetation hiding the chicks. Small roadside pools were quite productive and gave us our only sighting of Brazilian Teal of the trip. Large wading birds were a-plenty, with Plumbeous Ibis, Buff-necked Ibis, Green Ibis, Bare-faced Ibis, Wood Stork, and Roseate Spoonbill being notable. We were also very lucky to come across a White-faced Ibis, a scarce bird in this area. We also had a more or less full 'set' of herons with Capped and Cocoi being less familiar than the Night-herons and the like. Larger birds of prey were plentiful, including 6 Great Black Hawks and 6 Snail Kites, and what became the almost daily Roadside Hawk. Smaller birds were of course more difficult to pick out as we travelled along, but 4 Guira Cuckoos were lifers for some, and on the even smaller side we saw White-rumped Monjita, Black-backed Water-tyrant and Grey-crested Cachalote amongst others. Hirundines featured Barn Swallow, 3 American Cliff Swallows, Grey-breasted Martin and Southern Rough-winged Swallow. The pools by the road were often occupied by numerous Jacare Caiman and at one point we were lucky to see a Brazilian Tapir.
Some birds we saw on the way. Click each image for a full sized one then use L>R arrows to move through them. Pointing at each thumbnail image displays the species name.