Manu Wildlife Center, the Canopy

This post is a kind of catch-all for all the wonderful experiences and nature around the lodge and the trails.  Next to the canoe rides, which for me were the culmination of being in Peru, the nature available just outside the windows of the Manu Wildlife Center was worth the trip alone.  And the Canopy!  Looking down on the jungle from a platform built on the most mammoth of trees, especially early in the morning, was also a moment to remember for a lifetime.
A lot of pictures, please be patient with me, I can't bare to delete a one.

Arrival from the dock, first view.  We had sunshine everyday of the stay at the lodge.  We had some really hot days, but...

The garden in front was always a guarantee of hummingbirds.

At the dock, looking out on the Madre de Dios River.  A typical canoe, outboard-powered, with perhaps 10 very comfortable seats (at least for the first four hours or so), covered.  Getting on an off board was a plank, which I became comfortable with because Gustavo would whisper "Senor" meaning "help the old fart off", and two guys would take my hands and keep me from falling off.

The beginning of many trails into the jungle.  On the bushes to the left called some unseen bird (always) that sounded like "Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, GRONK" a call I loved. A tree nearby was always covered by Yellow-rumped Caciques, always screaming from very early in the AM.

On the trail, massive trees with attached suckers.

Dinner at the lodge.  From the left, moi, Robert DeKeyser (USA), Nicola Wells, and Pieter Vrey (S.Africa), Gerhard Brἃunlein (Germany), Gustavo Bautista, our expert and very diplomatic guide, Douglas Futuyma (USA), Leonardo Beghellini (Italy), Arden Anderson (USA), and Jean-Francois Bourhis (France).

If you saw the movie "Up" you will remember the "Squirrel!" moment.  Someone has just shouted "Bird!"

The meals was superb , and seemed to get better all week.

The majority of morning we were up at 4:30, breakfast at 5:00 and either in a canoe or on a trail by 5:45.  (Of course, we were usually in bed by 9:pm, resorting to candlelight to shower, crawl under the mosquito netting, etc.
The lodge did fire up generators so that there were times to charge your camera batteries, etc.



My first Trogan, a Amazonian Trogan (f)
(I don't see this in the bird guide, perhaps the guide uses another name?)

This is Maria, an almost-domesticated Blue-throated Piping-Guan that hung around the lodge.

White-chinned Sapphire

Reddish Hermit, seen every day at the lodge.  One of the smallest Peruvian hummingbirds

White-chinned Sapphire

Gustavo identified this as a "Wandering Spider" and said it was "more poisonous than most".

Army ants.  If you look at the jaws of the big one, you can see where the ants were sometimes used as sutures after surgery, to close the wounds.  Honest to God.

Tamarind  Monkey (corrected kindly by Robert DeKeyser).  They regularly visited the lodge and the kitchen workers would throw out bananas, etc. at noontime.

A brown Agouti

Bluish-fronted Jacomar  Regularly returning to the same perch just over the bridge, he posed over and over.

Yellow-rumped Cacique

Pale-legged Hornero, building a nest right next to the bridge

Arden really got a great picture of the Long-billed Tree Creeper.  This was the best I could do, right outside the lodge.

What root systems!

The top of the canopy.  The sheer size of the tree, and the limbs that supported a platform with 10  people, just astounded me.

And the view into the jungle below.

Leonardo, Douglas, Gustavo.
No matter the distance the hike, Gustavo always carried the spotting scope.  The group were adept in taking quick looks through the scope and giving it up to others. I was sometime successful, sometime not, but the groups' efforts to help me see gave me a lot of birds I would not have seen.

Blue-crowned Trogan (f)

This was an amazing sight..  Back at Amazonia Lodge, Douglas impelled me to go with a group to see a Potoo ("you have to see this bird, he is very special; pay attention!" he said,, and I dutifully went and saw this dark lump about a mile away.  I checked it off, but was just ok with that view.  Several days later we were on another canopy tower, and after two hours there, Gustavo suddenly shrieked "Potoo!", and there he was, perhaps 20 yards away, totally invisible to us until then.  This is a Great Potoo.

Absolutely one of my favorite birds of the trip, a Golden-collared Toucanet

Arden, Douglas and Gustavo

Resting before dinner, comparing notes and pictures.
Pieter and Nicola on the left.

and the Reddish Hermit again

The one snake I saw during the trip, swimming under the bridge.  (A small Boa, again Robert's correction) was seen at the lodge, I missed it). My nephew thought it was a Fir-de-Lance, which of course is one of the deadliest snakes in the world, contributing to half the deaths in Amazonia due to snakebite.

So here ends this blog which perhaps more than any other gives an indication what a trip to Manu Wildlife Center has to offer. Other blogs follow with more birds, but MWC gave me the Amazonian experience I was hoping for.  Thanks to Gustavo, and my fellow birders, it was a bucket list experience.