I recently came back from a fantastic few weeks in the Amazon on the Xingu River in Pará, Brazil. The trip was a research expedition run in collaboration between Loma Linda University and a local university in Altamira, built around studying several of the river’s native fish species. I was there to help out with the research, and did plenty of birding along the way.
We spent about 11 days traveling up the river by boat from Altamira, camping at several different spots along the banks and taking day trips out to various sights in the area. Days were split between fieldwork and exploring, which meant a lot of time on the water and at the forest edge — great for birds, if not always for photography.
The Amazon is a challenging environment to photograph in, so I wouldn’t consider the images from this trip as some of my best photography, but there were a lot of interesting species, including all the ant-things (antbirds, antwrens, antshrikes) which are generally pretty secretive. I try to photograph most species I encounter on a trip, and I managed to get photos of 220 of the 232 species I saw. I was also thrilled to add 87 new species to my life list. Here are a few that turned out alright.
If you’re interested in the full list of species and photos, check out my eBird trip report linked above.
