Yanallpa and Dorado River
This morning's early outing brought us some lovely sightings and sounds. Even before leaving the ship, I could hear an incredibly large number of parakeets gathering in some treetops nearby. The noise was truly astounding, and there had to be thousands and thousands of canary-winger parakeets involved – and more flocks arriving every few seconds. It would have interesting to know the decibel level in the middle!
Later in the skiffs we pulled up next to a tree filled with russet-back oropendula nests in full swing, and the males were displaying and calling next to their chosen abode. The sound is reminiscent of a drop of water falling in a bucket, and the visual display requires the male to drop his head down, put his tail up, open his wings, and hang tightly to the branch while he gives out his distinctive call. All this in the space of one second, of course.
A white-headed marsh tyrant allowed incredible close looks at its dramatically contrasting plumage, oriole blackbirds were all over the place as were many of our favorites and friends by now.
After breakfast, the group split into two, one group having chosen to hike in the forest – not knowing if the trail would be passable, deep in water or not, and the others chose to take the skiffs deep up inside the narrow creek. In this one visit, all three species of cara cara were seen (yellow-headed, red-throated and black), and the sounds were fantastic, from parrots, wrens, cara caras and others. The walkers came back with stories of seeing blue-and-yellow macaws and hearing the rustling of a night monkey in the tree.
Before lunch there was a presentation on Amazonian cultures up on the top deck, which led into a good question-and-answer session about current politics. But lunch soon called which was followed by a great siesta, and by 4:00 pm we had left in the skiffs to go explore the Dorado River. The Ucayali River has been in flood for a time now, the past few days at least. The amount of tree trunks and clumps of vegetation floating down has been impressive. On arrival at the mouth of the Dorado, we discovered it closed in a logjam the size of a football field! However off to one side, the high water had flooded the low-lying fields nearby, and so we cruised in and found a pastureland for horned screamers, wattled jacanas and oriole blackbirds. Several Amazonian waterlily was also found serenely surrounded by water lettuce, water hyacinth, grasses and sedges.
We made out way back to the ship at sunset, and on the way, someone, somehow, spotted a sloth high in the treetops. Just before dinner we heard yet another of the Amazonian legends of the region.
