The body parts of a dragonfly

This week one of my clients asked about the body parts of a dragonfly. Textbook error.

Thanks to my very witty client George Go for capturing me in all my idiocy.

Antonio

Antonio is a kindly man, with sparkling eyes and a ready smile. Though of an age at which most Europeans have turned their thoughts to retirement, he is wiry and strong and still works long days in the thuggish heat of the Pantanal. He is a truck driver, our truck driver, at SouthWild, the company which owns the Santa Tereza ranch where my group is staying until tomorrow.

This evening, as we sat at dinner, Antonio's voice was heard from outside the screen window of the dining room. 'Uma onça,' he said. Almost before my brain had registered the thought, I said to my group, 'There's a jaguar,' and ran barefoot through the door and across the grass. Torch beams shot to the forested far side of the river. A green-white eye, as bright as Antonio's, sparkled there from the hyacinth mat at the water's edge. I now ran the other way, to fetch my binoculars, and reaching the river again I could clearly see a jaguar's face above the water.

What came next was confused, for me at least, as I had passed my binoculars to my clients to give them a better look. According to colleagues, the jaguar grabbed a young capybara, then dragged it from the water and into the woods. All the while the breathy alarm barks of the hapless capybara's family could be heard in the night;

Having sat. incredulous, at the table again, and eaten pudding, we went on a drive through the night to look for mammals and birds. We were driven, of course, by Antonio, a kindly man with a ready smile who an hour before had found a jaguar and stood by the screen window of the dining room matter-of-factly announcing. 'Uma onça.'

A jaguar emerging from the Pixaim river with a young capybara
photographed by my quick-witted client George Go

Cats seen in 2015
cheetah Acinonyx jubatus fearonii                3
serval Leptailurus serval serval                    3
leopard Panthera pardus suahelicus            2
lion Panthera leo nubica                              78

snow leopard Panthera uncia                       3
jungle cat Felis chaus                                   2
tiger Panthera tigris tigris                            13

leopard Panthera pardus fusca                    4
lion Panthera leo persica                              7
leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis           15
flat-headed cat Prionailurus planiceps          1
wildcat hybrid Felis silvestris grampia/catus  1
jaguar Panthera onca                                    8

Pixaim

In the past couple of days, along the bank of the Pixaim River, I...

1) Watched a mating pair of jaguars at the water's edge. Though the jaguars here are far less often seen than those at Porto Jofre, we know from photos that the female was Tereza, named after the Santa Tereza ranch where we are now staying. The male is unidentified. They were jaguars six and seven on my Big Cat Quest and caused the species to be renamed shaguar among the members of my group.

2) Was astounded by the sight of a habituated family of giant otters bringing their very young pup to meet us.

3) Wandered over the fallen blooms of a Tabebuia impetiginosa in the garden.

3) Saw an exquisite agami heron, a family of boat-billed herons, a singing sunbittern and a surfing sungrebe along the river.

4) Eyeballed a dozing (or feigning dozing) great potoo in a tree in the savannah.

5) Got thoroughly soaked in the rain while visiting a fledged great horned owl and its parent in a giant fig tree.

6) Still soaked, met Blue, a dippily friendly young hyacinth macaw which fell from its nest and was raised by the people of the ranch.

7)  Sat at the desk in my room, penning this blog post, listening to guira cuckoos outside, remembering them in our garden in Bolivia long ago.

Tabebuia impetiginosa blooms at Santa Tereza

Rain!

A marsh tit and a macaw

Cats seen in 2015
cheetah Acinonyx jubatus fearonii                3
serval Leptailurus serval serval                    3
leopard Panthera pardus suahelicus            2
lion Panthera leo nubica                              78

snow leopard Panthera uncia                       3
jungle cat Felis chaus                                   2
tiger Panthera tigris tigris                            13

leopard Panthera pardus fusca                    4
lion Panthera leo persica                              7
leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis           15
flat-headed cat Prionailurus planiceps          1
wildcat hybrid Felis silvestris grampia/catus  1
jaguar Panthera onca                                    7

Two

We almost saw no jaguar today. We searched all long, hot afternoon along the creeks and inlets where they live. Hundreds of southern rough-winged swallows, of white-winged swallows, of tropical kingbirds and of great kiskadees met us on our way. But no jaguar.

The radio crackled and news came that close to our floating hotel a jaguar had been seen. We raced back but, long before we reached the site. Manuel's motor came to a stop on a long bend with a high bank to one side. There on the top of the bank, under palms and fallen branches, Manuel's smiling eyes had found a resting jaguar, waiting, looking, watching. We too watched, as thrilled as we have been by every jaguar we've seen these past three days. He yawned and turned and rolled; walking a short distance he revealed the scar behind his left ear which told us this was again Maxim. Then he walked through the curtain of palms and we saw him no more.

Straight away the radio crackled again. The same jaguar to which we were heading had been seen again. We flew to the site and there in the distant shade at the back of a marsh was a spotted shape flat to the ground. This was all that we saw but it mattered nothing. Troupials sang and caimans surfaced around us; caciques clicked and stuttered in their nest tree and far away the woods rang with the evening hoots of tinamous. A jaguar lay panting in the shade, hardly visible, and in the flame-bright light of the setting sun we each listened, and looked, and smiled.


Cats seen in 2015
cheetah Acinonyx jubatus fearonii                3
serval Leptailurus serval serval                    3
leopard Panthera pardus suahelicus            2
lion Panthera leo nubica                              78

snow leopard Panthera uncia                       3
jungle cat Felis chaus                                   2
tiger Panthera tigris tigris                            13

leopard Panthera pardus fusca                    4
lion Panthera leo persica                              7
leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis           15
flat-headed cat Prionailurus planiceps          1
wildcat hybrid Felis silvestris grampia/catus  1
jaguar Panthera onca                                    5

Macaws

My colleague Dan in the Naturetrek office is a good man. In addition to being a real friend, he is a fine professional and he cares very greatly about our clients. He cares about the wildlife they see, he cares whether they're getting the photos they want, he cares whether the seats are comfortable enough for them. In short he cares. He cares enough to send me half a dozen messages on WhatsApp before I get up each morning, asking whether everyone's ok. He cares enough to send me another dozen messages while we're out in the morning, and a dozen more over lunch. He cares enough to send me questions, messages for the clients, warnings of problems which need heading off. He really cares.

He also drives me up the wall. In the way that only a good friend can.

This morning we decided not to chase jaguars. We chose instead to go to Pousada Piquirí in search of hyacinth macaws and the six-banded armadillo who lives under an Attalea palm in the garden and is often seen there in the morning.

It was a good plan. As we went downriver we saw giant otters for the third time: a different family, of four smaller individuals. One caught a fish and delighted us by hauling it to the riverside and chomping it in full view, accompanied by the rest of the family. The whole time black howlers growled noisily above.

A little further a pair of capped herons landed in a bare tree overhanging the river and burst into exuberant display, the male pointing his noon-blue bill to the sky, puffing the barely apricot feathers of his throat and bowing, flicking forward the two silver plumes which quivered from his black cap. In my eighteen years of watching capped herons, and Fiorella's more than thirty, neither of us has ever seen this dramatic display before.

There were capybaras too, just feet away, one with a smooth-billed ani on its back. There were pied lapwings, anhingas and cocois. At Piquirí the friendly staff of the lodge poured a sack of crushed maize on the ground by the verandah. Every bird in the garden made its way to visit: many white-tipped doves trundling across the neatly-kept grass, chestnut-bellied guans skipping from the shade of the trees in excitement, a piping-guan dropping down on sickled black wings. Among them all wove saffron yellow-finches, yellow-billed cardinals, ruddy and scaled ground-doves. A pair of hyacinth macaws, strangely silent, slipped to a dead tree above a trough and came to drink, taking turns to lower and again raise their great bills; peering at us the while with their strange, yellow-lidded, questioning eyes.

There were many macaws at Piquirí this morning, their shouting loud in the palms. Twice five of them came to the same frond and boisterous blue disputes ensued. The noise of a dozen cameras was drowned for once by the bleats of these tremendous birds.

Reaching our floating hotel in the painful heat of late morning my phone picked up wifi and my WhatsApp buzzed with Dan's habitual, kind-hearted questions. How had we got on? Was everyone happy? Were the macaws good? Did the armadillo show up?

I replied that the armadillo had not appeared but, surrendering, as I always do with friends, to flippancy, I told him that we had had a total macawgasm,

A message came back, equally flippant, that I must use this new word on my blog. Dan, Dan, you can't make a challenge like that and expect me not to take it up.

A total macawgasm by my lovely client
Nikki Humphrey

Cool

This afternoon the heat broke and a blissful cool came in the thunder and in bursts of fat rain. We sheltered under beach umbrellas in the lee of the bank while the rain passed and we bubbled with excitement and joy.

Joy because for the past half hour we had been watching Maxim, yesterday's male jaguar, as he walked silent-footed on the shore of a creek, waded through mats of water hyacinth and sat on the sunny sand staring past us to some unseen interest on the far shore. In a year of thrilling encounters with cats this was a new highlight. There is a pale intensity to a jaguar's eyes, a power in his paws, a witchcraft in the velvet squiggles on his back. We watched enchanted.

I believe now - and it is widely believed here - that the interloping male on our first afternoon was Cage. He has often been seen this season with Peter and, briefly today, just as we were leaving Maxim, he was seen again, nuzzling Peter's neck, These two inseparable males were apart for as long as Peter's interest in Bianca was greater than their friendship. This morning we saw Bianca alone. This afternoon Cage was again by Peter's side.

These jaguars, the only ones in the world which allow such close observation, are giving a new view of the life of this breathtaking cat. Each sighting adds to the story, Each day sees new questions arise. To be here, as the story unfolds, is remarkable. An honour and a joy.

Maxim this afternoon by Naun Amable

A tree frog on my arm today by Venetia Caine

Hot

News came soon of a jaguar this morning, though not before we had spent many minutes watching a slippery knot of otters and their pups outside the mouth of their new holt. They flashed their spotty apricot throats at us and yawned widely, baring harsh teeth and startling pink mouths. We were glad to be a respectful distance away as, even from here, we could smell the fishy tang of their breath.

The jaguar we saw was a neat, petite female: light gold with clustered black rosettes, finer by far than the big black blotches on the back of Maxim yesterday. This lovely cat was almost certainly Bianca, as we were close to where she has been for days, though her identity has yet to be confirmed from the photographs taken. She padded along the wet bank and waded in the muddied waters. It was hot.

We moved upstream to the shade but, having lost herself in the dense marsh grasses of the river's edge, she never reappeared. Instead we listened to ashy-headed greenlets fluting in the tree above us, watched masked gnatcatchers at their impeccable nest, and sweatily reflected on the privilege of being in this marvellous place.

Maxim

I'm tired tonight and the words won't come. Sometimes, quite simply, they don't.

What did come this afternoon was Maxim, a powerful young male jaguar. Or rather we came to him as he stalked a sandbank on the river's edge. One of the east Bolivian names for the jaguar translates as wool-foot, because of the silent lightness of its tread. Maxim's tread was of wool and his gaze absolute as he approached a knot of roots. He froze, intent, determined, his mottled muscles tight, then bolted, but blundered through the roots. His capybara prizes launched for the river around us, sending up waves and barking their terror to the heat of the afternoon sun.

Maxim looked to us, a look which feigned confidence, tried to persuade this had all been part of the plan. Then he wove along the shore, in and out of the great green grass and the scrub, always looking to us, always his eyes questioning, unsure. And he was gone.

We knew this wool-footed cat was Maxim because also here was a biologist. One of the knowers of these magnificent animals, she could see from his blotches and spots who he was, and today she wote down another page in the story of his life along the river.

This evening photos are shared, and stories, broad smiles are worn, and drinks sipped. On my many tiger tours in the past decade I have known this state of my groups as the tiger high. This, tonight, thanks to Maxim and his failed attempt on the life of a capybara, thanks to Fiorella and our outstanding boatman Manuel, is the jaguar high. And I am as high as them all on this new shot of cats, as a remarkable year of my life begins to draw to its close.


Cats seen in 2015
cheetah Acinonyx jubatus fearonii                3
serval Leptailurus serval serval                    3
leopard Panthera pardus suahelicus            2
lion Panthera leo nubica                              78

snow leopard Panthera uncia                       3
jungle cat Felis chaus                                   2
tiger Panthera tigris tigris                            13

leopard Panthera pardus fusca                    4
lion Panthera leo persica                              7
leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis           15
flat-headed cat Prionailurus planiceps          1
wildcat hybrid Felis silvestris grampia/catus  1
jaguar Panthera onca                                    4

Bianca

She was there again this morning among the dust and dried leaves on the river's bank, and with her her scar-eyed suitor. Again they rolled and they licked their paws, they stretched and, when the sun on her face grew too much, Bianca shifted to the shade. Peter followed, the lure of her scent too strong to resist, but her belly-deep growls made it clear she was in no mood for his touch.

I have received two messages about Bianca this morning. The first, on Twitter, came from a Naturetrek guest who was here two years ago, whose group had the privilege of naming Bianca as their photos showed she had never been seen in the region before.

The second was an email from Naun Amable, a Naturetrek leader from Peru who has spent many months watching the jaguars of these rivers, and who will be here with me on the Brazilian leg of my South America's Big Cats tour which begins in Chile in a few days. He was on the river near us this morning and has been kind enough to share this photo of Bianca.

Perpetually smiling Naun

On our way to the jaguars we met the Pantanal's other peak mammalian predator: the giant otter. When I lived in Parque Nacional Noel Kempff Mercado in the northeast of Bolivia, some eighteen years ago, I saw these fabulous animals every day; yet still they amaze me now. Ours today was a group of six, perhaps seven, adults. With them, emerging from their holt this week for the first time, were four small pups, being marshalled through the currents, past the caimans, past the jaguars and the tourists, to a new holt. At times one would be left behind and, realising it, would squeal in indignation. Each time, an adult would turn back, take the pup in its jaws and drag it, above water and below, to the safety of its loud, sleek family.

I have so much more to say, of bare-faced currassows and chestnut-vented conebills, of Mato Grosso antbirds and a little cuckoo; but in a few minutes we leave again for the river, to see once more which of its wonderful animals we can find in the afternoon heat.

Três onças

When you sit in one place and watch, inevitably you see. Wild things come to you, by sound and by sight. This afternoon, in the shirt-drenching heat of the Três Irmâos river, we sat and we waited, and we saw and we heard.

Always there were yellow-billed cardinals and lesser kiskadees along the bank of the river, among the twisted roots of the trees. Always there were ringed kingfishers, sometimes Amazon kingfishers too. Always a cocoi heron fished just upriver. There were many birds I was unable to point out to my group as we were sitting in silence, waiting, watching. Of the birds I saw and heard for my silent self, all were old friends. Rusty-backed spinetails stammered in the overhanging brush and pale-legged horneros shrieked in antiphony from the bank. Grey-headed tanagers bounced over the river calling, and in the trees’ canopy a hooded tanager fed.

I could not point them out because, in the blanket of humid heat, we were waiting for movement. On the opposite bank, flat-out and barely half seen, was a blotch-spattered form in the dust. This was Peter. Behind a tree, unseen by the whole group, except me, just occasionally a black ear with a white splotch would move, or the curve of a spotted neck. This was Bianca.

Jaguars. A courting pair, both well-known local cats. For all of my clients, their first. For a long hot time, nothing happened, though Peter occasionally lifted his heavy head and once he yawned. His face was battered and scarred and half of his left ear missing. He was, I guessed, and later Fiorella confirmed, some eight or nine years old. A male at the peak of his strength, with the wounds of battle all around his tired eyes.

Thanks to this strength, beside him lay Bianca, hidden from view by a tree. After two hours she stretched, she stood, she looked, and I could see from her face that she was much younger. I guessed four or five and Fiorella later agreed. She walked to Peter and slumped behind him. All eyes watched, thrilled, delighted, moved.

Sleep; again sleep. Heat. Then, of all the unpredicted turns, another jaguar, a bigger male, appeared by the river upstream, walking towards our pair. No identifying features could be seen on him - too far, too fast - but here, clearly, was an interloper, a young male drawn by the hold of Bianca's scent on his hormones. We heard his padded footfall on the forest’s dry leaves and, in an instant, Bianca stood, roared deeply and bolted downstream. Peter went with her, roaring too.

They turned to the unseen incomer and they stared. A checkered checkmate in the leaf-dappled light of the late afternoon. The suitor desisted, the cats relaxed, and so did we, as the lesser kiskadees looped over the water and the undulated tinamous sang their sad song to the lengthening shadows. As relaxed, that is, as my group of eleven naturalists could be having just seen their first three jaguars on the bank of a river in Brazil.

Cats seen in 2015
cheetah Acinonyx jubatus fearonii                3
serval Leptailurus serval serval                    3
leopard Panthera pardus suahelicus            2
lion Panthera leo nubica                              78

snow leopard Panthera uncia                       3
jungle cat Felis chaus                                   2
tiger Panthera tigris tigris                            13

leopard Panthera pardus fusca                    4
lion Panthera leo persica                              7
leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis           15
flat-headed cat Prionailurus planiceps          1
wildcat hybrid Felis silvestris grampia/catus  1
jaguar Panthera onca                                    3

Transpantaneira

The Transpantaneira is as extraordinary a road as you will find in the world anywhere. Built to bring cattle off the Pantanal, it stripes south in a straight line from Cuiabá to Porto Jofre, crossing on its way the many habitats of the world’s greatest freshwater wetland.

Black howler monkeys and their pale gold females weave through the trees by the road in the cool of morning. Beyond them silvery marmosets skip mercurial along the finest fronds, fizzing loudly as they go. A toco toucan swoops across the road, its bill in the early light the orange of a too-boiled carrot.

In the dying drying marshes egrets crowd and storks, feasting on the corralled fish and crabs. Coatis wave their banded tails in the shade of a palm and laughing falcons scowl – unamused – from the tops of stranded marsh trees.

A pygmy kingfisher – habitually a skulker in the shade – blazes bright on a perch over a small pool and nearby, in the Cyperus stands, scarlet-headed blackbirds blaze yet brighter still; the colour of their heads too saturated to be believed. A marsh deer grazes, leggy and black-nosed, and all the while vultures - black, turkey, lesser yellow-headed – cross the marsh, the forest and the road, hungering for life and death and a meal.

We reach Porto Jofre in fine time, the dirt road having just been graded. Then, from the boat which takes us to our floating hotel in the heart of the jaguar’s crisscross of rivers and creeks, there are black skimmers, pied lapwings, yellow-billed and large-billed terns.

At the hotel there is news of jaguars; a pair which for two days has been courting, resting, mating even, in the forest edge upriver. Whether they will be there this afternoon we cannot know. But we shall be there.

All the better for sniffing with

20th September

In Gujarat, in March, in what seems another life, I wrote a post about animals with big ears: striped hyenas and wolves in Velavadar. All the better for losing heat with. Last night it was the turn of the big noses.

It is bruisingly hot at Pouso Alegre, far hotter than is typical in late September. Thus it is dry; and the animals of the gallery forest are concentrated around the few remaining water holes. Yesterday evening we went to a water hole in the edge of the forest where Brazilian tapirs regularly come to drink in the last of the light.

Tapirs, as is well known, have big noses. All the better for sniffing with, and snorkelling while swimming in the murky waters of South America's lowland rivers. What comes first to drink, however, out-noses a tapir by far. It out-tails it too. It more or less out-everythings a tapir.

Over the dam of this last water hole trundles a giant anteater and my group is at once electrified. This weirdest of animals pokes its nose through the mat of water hyacinths and drinks, long and deep, then sways off into the scrubby vegetation.

I wish I could wax lyrical, about the anteater, about the young male tapir which followed as the light began to fade, about the three further tapirs we saw by the road after dark, but last night wifi went down (we are, after all, in the far end of dusty nowhere) and I could not post. Right now we leave for Porto Jofre, the river and its jaguars. About silvery marmosets, great rufous woodcreepers and countless capybaras I cannot write more for now.

Last night was about noses. One absurdly long and inflexible, four rubbery and wildly mobile. All the better for sniffing with.

By way of apology

Picture the scene. 40 degrees in the shade (that's Celsius for my transatlantic readers). A campo flicker giggles in the heat and greater rheas pick through the fallen fronds of Attalea phalerata palms (the Bolivian in me wants to call these motacú, but here that would be quite wrong). Here, then, is Brazil, the Pantanal, and outside, despite the heat, despite their having started at four this morning, the Chaco chachalacas chunter demonically.

Brazil. Yes. And your correspondent is perched, barely clothed, in the doorway of his tiny bathroom. Barely clothed because the heat in the middle of the day is unrelenting. In the bathroom because here is my only plug. There is wifi though. Wifi in a place where, when I left South America eight years ago, it would have been unimaginable. And my clients, with better access to plugs, are happy. Happy, to use the vernacular, as peccaries in shit.

I too am happy. In a way beyond words. Because here in central South America I'm home. I lived the other side of the border in Bolivia, yes, but these birds, these mammals, trees, pampas and forest islands are a home I made for myself during ten years here. Yesterday, having flown all night, as we drove from Cuiabá, past Poconé, to the beautiful ranch called Pouso Alegre, the birds, the mammals and the flowers came to me as from my heart. My home.

I have come to Brazil, of course, to look for jaguars. I would understand, though, if you thought I had desisted from my quest. If you thought that cats had dropped from my horizon. I have not written here in so very long.

And for this a few words of apology. I meant to. I had a list of the topics I would cover. Of the cat species I would discuss. Of the conservationists I would contact. Of the breeding programmes I would visit. I had a plan. But when I got home from Asia in May I was contacted by Norfolk Wildlife Trust with requests to lead on two exciting projects - a book and a local TV series - and somehow my summer was consumed by them.

I put down my pen (or, rather, sent my last Word file) on my contribution to the book on Thursday. On Friday I boarded a plane to Brazil, having not picked up a single book on the subject. And on Saturday I was driven, with my group and my superbly talented colleague Fiorella, down the Transpantaneira, yelping with delight as each old friend trotted by the track, swooped through the trees or belched in the water hyacinth wallows by the roadside. Red-legged seriema (the socori of my Bolivian days), toco toucan, yacaré caimans (in their thousands), crab-eating foxes and equally crab-eating racoons, orange-backed troupials (for you Tim: a glorious eye-thump) and - as I type these words their calls blare across the ranch - hyacinth macaws, greatest of all the world's parrots.

I am home. I am happy. I am hot. I will be looking for jaguars and writing here. I gave my word that I would. I would be honoured, on this South American leg of my adventures, if you would follow me as I do.