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This inaugural run of the Rio Aripuana proved to be very productive and lots of fun, and gave us more than a few surprises. Right off the bat, we had to make a couple of shifts to our itinerary, but we had built-in the flexibility for just such happenstance and everything worked out very nicely in the end. The most significant change was that we would need to return to Manaus not via the speed-launch but aboard our big boat, the Tumbira, which meant leaving the Aripuana a couple of days ahead of the original plan to work “whitewater” habitats downstream on the Madeira and then up the Amazonas. We started with a long day of river time on a speed-launch out of Manaus. After making our way through the throngs of passengers awaiting early launches to many towns up and down the Amazon, we squeezed in a typical Amazonian breakfast of tapioca wraps filled with egg, cheese, tucumã (palm shavings) and crumbled Brazil Nuts, with coffee and passion fruit juice. It was challenging to balance handfuls of food and drink on narrow railings over the Rio Negro with people bumping into us left and right, but most got breakfast down without mishap and we settled into the front 13 seats of the speed-launch for an on-time 06:00 departure. Eleven(!) reasonably comfortable hours later, we were met at the boat dock in Novo Aripuana by Junior and Micah Riegner, with the beautiful Tumbira, which I’d sent a couple of days ahead from Manaus. What a GREAT feeling it was to move straight into our rooms, and get settled for the coming nearly two weeks of delicious boat travels! That evening we enjoyed a sunset swing around the huge river island in the Madeira in front of Novo Aripuana, which we would bird toward the end of the trip.

We awoke that first morning on the Aripuana at the mouth of the Juma (“Amazon Yeti” – no, we didn’t see any) River, where there is a massive terra firme forest bluff above the right bank of the Aripuana. We accessed forest there behind a fishing lodge of sorts and found some great birds, among them a small flycatcher I am still at a loss to place into a genus. After reviewing the nice video clip I made of the bird through the telescope (it hung around for us for perhaps 3 minutes, silently) with a number of experienced Amazonian guides and other ornithologists, there is no consensus except that “It’s very interesting!”. I’ll place the video into the triplist, below, and I’d appreciate hearing thoughts or opinions from anyone who has them ([email protected]). We reckon the best fit of a square peg into a round hole is Gray Elaenia (Myiopagis caniceps), but the bill is wrong (in particular, the upper mandible is markedly arched and there is a fair amount of pinkish around the base of the bill), the margination on the upper wing coverts is not typical of Gray Elaenia (although it is conceivably passable), the bird is too yellowish through the breast and belly, and it was alone, not with a mixed-species flock (again, these departures from the norm are conceivably within the range of variation but now we are getting too far from what’s conceivably passable, all vagaries considered together). The answer to this riddle will likely require return to the region on a scientific expedition to focus on recording and collecting some of these small flycatchers, including Myiopagis, Tolmomyias, and Zimmerius species. The good news is that the habitat is in excellent condition out there, and whatever this little flycatcher is, it will be a common bird, not a rare one. Even though I still can’t identify it for you, this was certainly a fascinating event to have unfold on our first morning afield!

Our plan was to continue to work well upriver while water levels were ideal, then move back down to bird the lower, generally deeper sections later. It was perfect! We managed to get as high on the Aripuana as I’d dreamed, some 300 kilometers from the mouth at the Madeira. Much of this territory had never been investigated by botanists or biologists, and I cannot describe how exhilarating it was to be there with you guys on those many beautiful, predawn landings on remote, unexplored riverbanks (both banks!) and islands, where we were privileged to open our ears and eyes to learn what birds were present there, and – very importantly – whether certain species might be absent. On the other side of the ledger, we witnessed local destruction of habitat around some clandestine logging roads we took advantage of to access terra firme forests. As discussed at our evening checklist sessions, we documented significant range extensions for several species, and we saw a number of birds that I believe will be described as species new to science in the next few years, after the Aripuana is more completely explored ornithologically. I won’t specifically mention most of these in the triplist, below, but stay tuned for details!

Our most memorable stop on the lower Aripuana was at the village of Nova Olinda, on the left bank, where we saw lots of birds right around the community and some of us watched a jovial soccer game that included some of our boat crew and Micah, who had brought the kids a new ball from Manaus. There was a nest of Bar-breasted Piculets right beside the noisy playing field, with both adults feeding their three little ones, just then fledging from the nest cavity. Unfortunately, however, water levels were still too high there, the best trail for the rarely seen Dwarf Marmoset was underwater, and we missed seeing these little primates. In fact, primates were unusually few, even though we had seen pretty good numbers of them in the weeks ahead of the tour while putting in trails at several sites. Perhaps the unusually dry conditions had something to do with this; we had remarkably little rain the entire trip.

Speaking of mammals, Micah and his friend from Spain, Albert Burgas, had come down the Aripuana ahead of the tour, installing a dozen lightbeam-triggered camera traps at strategic points to capture images of mammals. These were great fun to review most evenings, and we got to see some pretty amazing shots on the big screen in the dining room of the boat, everything from curassows and trumpeters to armadillos and peccaries to Mountain Lions, an Ocelot, and a Jaguar (and even an unsuspecting, shotgun-toting hunter). Probably our most exciting mammal encounter on the tour was a Giant Anteater that came right up to us (within 15 feet of me, at the head of the line) before finally realizing there was a big bunch of people standing there, then snorting and shuffling off into the forest – check out my iPhone video embedded in the list, below!

Back on the great Rio Madeira, it was time for more improvisation. I noted a side stream coming in on the left bank, opposite Novo Aripuana that looked interesting, so we took the small motorboats up there to check it out. Despite getting one of them pretty nicely hung up on a partially submerged log, then eventually pulling free, we made our way into some good trail birding with the help of a new friend living in the nearby community. We quickly found Plain Softtails (race obidensis sure to be split from the rest) at their nest, and got to watch a Streak-throated Hermit busily weaving spider web into the pendant cup of its own nest. The hermit and a Yellow-browed Tody-Flycatcher were also stealing material from the softtail nest even as the owners were adding fresh material! That was a fun morning of birding, and the local folks were pretty surprised and delighted (as were we) to receive a troop of gringos out of the blue! I’d have to say that place was “a keeper”.

Moving down the Madeira the next couple of days, we birded some islands perhaps never birded before, and also Ilha do Borba (Borba Island, in front of that old river town), where we paid particular attention to the perplexing plumage variation in Castelnau’s Antshrikes, making a point of seeing them well, and we found a new spot for the little-known Scaled Spinetail. A top-deck breakfast on the gorgeous Rio Amazonas marked an unforgettable start to our last day aboard the Tumbira. The boat excursion we made through the flooded forest there was beautiful, relaxing, and very birdy (video below). That was a new locality for Klages’s Antwren, too.

I am planning to offer this “Great Rivers of the Amazon: Rio Aripuana” tour again in 2017, but in a somewhat different format and time of year. We’ll go in the low-water season, but perhaps at a slightly rainier time of year. This will mean that we’ll not reach the uppermost several stops on the river that we visited this time, but it will give us a bit more time lower, where I think we might best concentrate our efforts; I don’t think we’ll need to cover so much of the length of the Aripuana. Additionally, I hope to get things set up with local folks to maximize our chances of seeing a Dwarf Manatee, a recently described species known only from there. We were apparently too early in the year (early August) for a high chance of seeing one, but the guys out there tell me that we’d have a reasonable hope in early November. It’s an area we want to bird thoroughly anyway, so heck yeah, let’s go for it! We’ll take the speed-launch out but stay on the big boat for the return to Manaus, as we did this year, making some of the same productive stops and some brand-new ones along the way.

I want to send out a special thanks to all of you for coming on this exploratory tour. It takes a real spirit of adventure to jump aboard a trip like this one to the remote Rio Aripuana! A special thanks to our invitational co-leader, Micah, for his enormously helpful presence before and during the trip, and to the crew of the Tumbira, for instant-installation of steps and handrails at every one of our numerous steep ascents/descents from the river to the much more level terra firme terraces. We truly could not have done this trip without your great teamwork! Our fun group made it a pleasure to bird together every day, and I personally had a wonderful voyage with you all. Enjoy reliving some fun times through the photos and videos I’ll drop into the list. Speaking of which, included in the list are numerous photos and a few videos from David and Judy, and also Romney and Rick, for which I am very grateful.

Grandes abraços para todos vocês -- Bretche e Jay

KEYS FOR THIS LIST
One of the following keys may be shown in brackets for individual species as appropriate: * = heard only, I = introduced, E = endemic, N = nesting, a = austral migrant, b = boreal migrant

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

Totals for the tour: 431 bird taxa and 16 mammal taxa