Nauta & Pirahña Caños & San Francisco village
This morning we had an optional early wake-up “knock-knock” at 0600 and most of us boarded the skiffs at 0630 for a wildlife-searching ride along the entrance to Nauta Caño. Birds in the flooded rain forest are colorful, noisy, abundant and obvious, and we were able to observe and identify many new species this morning, notably a long-billed woodcreeper, a cream-colored woodpecker, a brilliant orange troupial, two rarely seen limpkins, and several white-eared jacamars. Several raptors (birds of prey) were also sighted: black-collared hawks, yellow-headed caracara and a roadside hawk. We caught a glimpse of the “Elvis Presley” bird—the male umbrella bird which sports an unusual punkish patch of feathers on the head. Perhaps we will see this unique rain forest species again later…
One skiff found a couple of sloths and a green iguana and we all saw many greater anis, flycatchers and yellow-rumped caciques. We were back on the boat by 0730 to have breakfast and an hour later headed out again, under welcome cloud cover, to explore Nauta Caño, which is a major tributary that drains the Pacaya-Samiri Reserve.
We passed a flooded ranger station—the ranger on duty was sitting in his canoe, tied to the flooded building—and entered a beautiful black water stream, Nauta Caño. For a while we were pleased to have cloud cover and relative coolness, but the sun shone bright later, and combined with the humidity, made for a hot late morning. However, the list of wildlife species we saw made it well worth the sweat we spent: caiman lizards, green iguanas, three-toed sloths, horned screamers, a black-throated hawk on its nest, several monk sakis, and saddle-backed tamarins were all seen by one or the other of the boats.
Back on the Delfin II at 1130 we went over our wildlife list with naturalist Reny (we have 75 species of birds already!), and then I gave a short presentation on the nine most common primates of the Reserve. Lunch and siesta were enjoyed thoroughly by all of us and in the late afternoon we went out to explore Pirahña Caño. The afternoon started out hot as we motored down the wide and muddy Marañon, but before long we left the main river and entered a lovely, narrow stream called Pirahña Caño.
Magnificent white barked ficus trees—some more than a hundred feet tall—and elegant, smooth barked gray capirona trees lined the creek and provided cool, welcome shade. Capirona is a hardwood that grows straight and fast and it has only recently been used for furniture. It is a sustainable species because of its fast growth. Much of the Delfin II is made from this lovely, pale wood.
This afternoon naturalist Luis found a noisy group of squirrel monkeys, and between all three of the boats we observed many others species. Most exciting for me were two more umbrella birds that we got good looks at this time, and a horned screamer’s nest, with four large eggs in it, made of floating vegetation. We also saw several beautiful masked crimson tanagers, and some of our guests saw a caiman lizard and a sloth. We all enjoyed the lovely, narrow, and shady creek and the surprisingly large and peaceful mirror-like lake from which the creek was flowing.
Late in the afternoon we motored over to the village of San Francisco where we enjoyed buying very nice handicrafts and taking photos of the locals. We returned to the boat as the sun set in glorious splendor, illuminating billowy clouds with pink and orange. Captain Remigio had the deckhands untie the boat and by the time we had showered and come up on deck, we had reached the confluence of the mighty Amazon River—where the Marañon and the Ucayali join. We will spend the next few days exploring the tributaries of the Ucayali and the southern side of the Pacaya-Samiri Reserve.
