Amazon Trip: The Birds

The Amazon is a bird watcher’s paradise. You wouldn’t be in the Amazon if you didn’t hear the loud squawking of mccaw parrots as they flew overhead. It’s really amazing to see these colorful birds out in the wild, as opposed to in a pet store cage. As loud as the mccaws are, the green parrots are even noisier, particularly when you’re trying to sleep!

Besides parrots, I think the toucan is the quintessential Amazon bird that everyone knows. This may be in large part due to Fruit Loops marketing campaign, but nevertheless, there’s no wonder as to why people admire these birds. This particular bird below flew up to this tree, about 50 feet away from the platform I was standing on, about 5 stories from the forest floor. It then proceeded to fly overhead to a different tree where 2 other toucans squabbled with each other before all 3 took off. What colorful animals!

There are numerous birds on the water that prey on fish or other critters that become vulnerable on the water’s edge. I haven’t a clue what this bird is below, but we saw a fair number of this type around.

Even the Amazon has a common duck. While these ducks are slightly different than the common ducks all over North America, their general behavior is the same.

These yellow-bodied birds can be seen all over the Amazon. We saw especially large numbers of them when we were on the boat, making the trip down the Amazon river to the Rio Orosa.

With all of the insects in the Amazon, it goes to figure that there would be plenty of woodpeckers around.