For us that work at Rainforest Expeditions, there are at times days when we’re too busy working to get the chance to step out into the marvelous forest around us. But that doesn’t mean nature disappoints, it often does quite the opposite and surprises us with close encounters and fantastic photo opportunities. Here are some of the birds that have come right up to us in recent days at Refugio Amazonas, a great opportunity for birding in the rainforest. (Birding in the rainforest)

Golden Collared Toucanet

Fasciated Antshrike

Rufous Motmot

Semi-Collared Puffbird

This is just the beginning, we also get many hummingbirds, oropendolas, tanagers, jays, macaws, parrots, and others that are called the lodge and its surroundings their home.

So you can imagine: if this is what you see when you’re at the lodge, just wait until you step into the forest.

How to plan your Amazon travel to see birds and other Amazon wildlife

• Go on a hike in the rainforest with a trained guide: They have the eagle eye you need to discover the amazon wildlife around.

By Phil Torres

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The Bridal Veil Mushroom is odd in so many ways…

So, why are these mushrooms so strange? Here’s the countdown:

5. The smell.

Imagine a dead animal mixed with mushrooms and garlic? That’s the bridal veil’s smell. In fact, almost every time I’ve encountered one it has been from tracking down that unique odor.

4. The appearance. 

These images should help prove the point: it is strange and fascinating to look at. The more distinct mushroom look up-top and a cascading eggshell white ‘veil’ down below (called the ‘indusium’), this is a fungus you won’t forget.

Bridal Veil Mushroom at Tambopata Research Center – Photo by Paul Bertner

3. The natural history.

This mushroom is only in this visual fruiting body form for a few days, spending most of its time as a fungus underground feeding on rotting wood. Also, it isn’t just found in the Amazon tropics- it’s found in the tropics throughout the world!

2. What feeds on it.

Why have such an odor? To attract flies that help spread its spores. In fact, some other Phallus species have a different odor that attracts different flies.  Look below and you’ll see that it’s not just flying that feed on it, but moths do too! This is not typical moth food, and it would be very interesting to see what nutrients this moth is getting, as well as what function they serve for spreading the spores.

1. The name

If you know what the term “phallic” means, you’ll see why these mushrooms have the genus name “Phallus!”

By Phil Torres

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Ever wonder what it’s like to ride mountain bikes through the Amazon?

Hint: It’s almost too much fun.

Book with us here! 

By Phil Torres (follow him)

I recently took a video of a White-bellied parrot eating brazil nuts on top of a tree.  It’s very difficult to see this sort of thing since the brazil nuts they are eating are so high up in the tree.

To get the shot I climbed to the top of the 33m tower at Posada Amazonas then used a Canon 600mm f/4 with a 2x teleconverter and a Canon 7D for a total of 1920mm to take the video. Even though the camera was on a tripod I used image stabilization to remove any vibration that was induced by people moving on the tower. I then moved the video into iMovie and stabilized it even more just to be sure that all the shake was out:

A friend of mine asked me «How far away were you?»  I really didn’t know, so I set off to find out. (Photography tip)

To find out how I discovered my distance, read below. And to check out more otherworldly jungle creatures — and even help with scientific discovery — join in our Wired Amazon project!

The spectacular view from our Posada Amazonas canopy tower.

I have some experience with macro photography or photomicrography as it is sometimes called.  I use a high-power lens to magnify objects up to 7.5x.  At this magnification, one can see all sorts of cool things..butterfly wing scales, compound eye structure of ants, etc. (Photography tip)

To find the size of a photo taken with a microscope you use the following technique:

1. Take a photo of the object.
2. Without adjusting magnification take a picture of a ruler
3. Import both photos to photoshop
4. Superimpose the photo of the ruler over the photo of the object using an opacity of around 50%
5. You can now measure the length of the object.

I decided to use a similar technique for the bird.  Here is what I did.

I started with what was known:

• Focal length 1200mm (1920mm with the 1.6 crop factor of the Canon 7D)
• The average size of a White-bellied parrot is 23cm

I then made a scale on a whiteboard that was divided into 10 cm increments.

Using the exact camera setup that I used to take the parrot photo, I placed the scale along the street at known distances and took photos:

I then superimposed the scale over the photo of the parrot:

When the height of the parrot (23cm) was equal to 23cm of the scale I would check the distance that I took the scale photo at and then know the distance to the macaw.

It turned out to be that the photo was taken at a distance of around 150 meters.

That’s basically how it’s done. To learn more cool stuff about photography you can take a photo tour with us!

And as always, to take your own incredible photos of jungle wildlife, book your dream trip to the Amazon today!

By Jeff Cremer

A juvenile makes 14 distinct sounds, each with a different meaning, just shy of the 22 noises used by gorillas.

Think of it like 14 different words used to communicate with a nearby adult. The adult males and females themselves live with the juveniles to feed them, protect them, and help them grow. They’re considered a semi-social organisms, living in small family groups. Sounds like a fairly advanced animal, right?

So what is it- A bird? A rodent? A dog? Here’s a hint- it lives in rotting wood and has six legs.

Yes, it is an insect. Odontotaenius disjunctus, commonly known as a bess beetle (or crying beetle), and has the most advanced sound-based communication system known in arthropods. You can find it under a moist rotting log anywhere from here in the Amazon up to New York. This beetle is large (~2 inches) and widespread and would be quite noticeable if it weren’t for its rather hidden natural history.

Flip enough rotting logs, dig through enough decaying leaves, and you’ll eventually find a group of bess beetles get a look inside their fascinating life.. You’ll see a few adults, many grub-like larvae, and some round clumps of dirt that contain developing pupae. Poke around a bit, and the sounds begin. The beetle is known locally as a ‘crying beetle’ due to its ability to make a high-pitched whiny alarm call if you disturb it (like by picking it up). But the alarm noise from the adults isn’t the interesting one; what’s fascinating are the fourteen almost inaudible squeaks that the larvae make below.

All insects have six legs, including their larvae. But take a close look at these beetle larvae, you’ll see only two pairs of legs, for a total of four- so what happened to the other two? Over the course of evolution and thousands and thousands of years, the back pair of legs got smaller. Much smaller. They’re no longer used for moving around in dirt; rather they’re used to meaningfully strum a structure called a plectrum.

Bess beetle larva. Note only 2 pairs of legs.

Photo by Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org.

Imagine a tiny stump of a leg strumming a comb in various directions- that’s what is happening between the hind leg and the plectrum. As the stump hits the teeth of the comb at different angles or different timespans, the frequency of the sound changes ever so slightly, resulting in overall different noise, or call.

Researchers listening in found that there were 14 distinct noises made in a variety of situations via this stump-and-plectrum combo.

What we don’t yet have is a translator. Does one larva squeak mean “feed me!” (which adults do by defecating mostly broken down wood)? Another angle strummed,  “Protect me! Someone lifted the log” or “Help me molt”?

Who knows. What we do know is this is a remarkably advanced sound-based communication system for an insect. Other insects stand out by their use of things like body movements or scented pheromones (ants and bees) to deliver complex bits of information, so it’s no surprise that an insect has evolved the ability to do that by making a noise, especially when living in a medium like soil in which movement is hardly visible and pheromones slow to disperse.

Some day, some scientists will figure out what these larvae are saying. And how fascinating that will be.

Until then, flip a log, take a peek at this miniature advanced world, appreciate the wonders of nature, and don’t forget to (gently) put the log back in place.

Book with us here! 

By Phil Torres

I Steve Gettle just returned from a great trip to Peru where I visited the Tambopata National Reserve, a reserve the size of Belgium with 600 species of birds, 1300 different butterflies, and 300 species of mammals. Not only was this trip productive photographically but it was also an epic adventure. After the flight to Lima, it was just a short flight to Puerto Maldonado where I boarded a bus for the ride to the Tambopata River, where the real journey begins.

Once on the river, I traveled by motorized canoe deep into the Amazon jungle. The destination is a series of three lodges which are located along the river, these lodges served as my base while I explored the area. TRC is the last lodge deep in the jungle is actually a research center and arguably the most remote lodge in all of South America!

The main attraction here is the macaws. The Tambopata contains 10% of the world’s macaw population. And the world’s largest clay lick. Macaws gather at clay licks to ingest the clay where they get minerals that are not available in their jungle diet. While I was there I was able to not only photograph them at the clay lick but also to photograph them as they flew back and forth. Since they usually fly together as mated pairs, this is exponentially harder than shooting a single bird in flight. Now not only do I have the shadows from the other bird to deal with, but I also have two sets of wing positions to worry about getting right.

In addition to the macaws, there were tons of other birds as well as lots of amazing insects and amphibians that I shot on our nightly jungle walks. You can see a gallery showcasing some more of my favorite images from the trip here.

I will be leading a photo tour to the Peruvian Amazon in the fall of 2013. In addition to duplicating this amazing adventure, there will be an optional 4-day extension to Machu Picchu as well.

More information will be coming in an upcoming newsletter.

A special note of thanks to Jeff Cremer of Rainforest Expeditions who served as my host and guide on this trip. We had a great time and an epic adventure.

So, now you want to join a Photo Tour of the Amazon Rainforest with Us? Photo tour of the Amazon Rainforest

The Roadside Hawk in the river side of Tambopata. Image by Liz Paipay.

Walk or drive along virtually any road in the Amazon and you’ll hear that unique screech of a roadside hawk and look up to see one perched in a tree as if you were birding in Peru. On a particular two-mile road I used to walk daily I would typically see three to four of these birds of prey acting true to their name- along the side of the road.

But wait- there haven’t always been roads in the Amazon, they were created by humans! I wondered where they are found naturally, in regions without large clearings like roads as the forest used to be. The answer? Typically either along a river, or in the forest, but in fewer numbers.

Being a visual predator, there is a definite advantage to being in an area like a road- prey is probably easier to see than in the dense rainforest. For some reason, roadside hawks in particular have adapted to this roadside lifestyle more so than other birds of prey, and it seems to have made them more prevalent than ever.

One study compared the roadside hawk nesting activity in an area of untouched rainforest with an area with a slash-and-burn farming landscape. The slash-and-burn area likely had roads in it, and at the very least represents a more open landscape for the purposes of our comparison.

What did they find? In the open farming landscape, there were more nests, more young raised per pair and a higher portion of breeding vs non-breeding pairs. They’re bringing home the same amount of food for their young, but the open area appears to allow more nesting and predation opportunities in general and is thus able to support a larger population.

This is an example of when human interference and habitat disturbance can appear to ‘help’ a population. But more numbers don’t necessarily mean we are helping these birds. Many animals end up falling ill to disease when they are in an unnatural higher density due to human activity (like high-density coyotes in neighborhoods suffering from mange in the United States), and the prey that the birds are feeding on may suffer from an unnaturally high mortality rate.

While it doesn’t appear to be affecting the birds negatively at this point, it is a strong lesson that as we modify the rainforest, we modify the amazon wildlife in within, as well.

By Phil Torres

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This odd-looking creature is commonly known as the ‘crown wasp’ due to a ring of tubercles on its head but is known by scientists as a stephanid. 

Stephanus is greek for a crown, thus, Stephanidae.

Its strange body structure can be hard to make sense of, so let me try and explain: The orange/brown part to the left is the head, to the right of that the thorax with the wings attached, and the part sticking up into the air is the abdomen, making up the three major segments of an insect.

But what is that long needle-like structure on the right?

That is the ovipositor, the technical term for an insect’s egg-laying device.

The wasp uses this ovipositor to stab beetle larvae and lay eggs in them, which it does by using its legs to sense vibrations from beetle larvae living inside the rotten wood it has landed upon. After a few days, the deposited egg hatches, and a wasp larva develops inside the beetle larva, eventually killing it and emerging as an adult, which then flies off to stab a beetle larva elsewhere in the rainforest and start the process all over again…

Some parasitoid wasps actually use a form of echolocation (just like a bat would) to locate their prey. They have modified antennae that tap the rotten wood and specialized ears on their legs that can hear the tap’s echo off of a larva and locate it that way.

This particular rotting tree had several of these wasps on it, so clearly there were some stab-worthy beetle larvae within.

Note: this wasp is a parasitoid because it kills the beetle larva host, opposed to a parasite that just feeds on it but lets it live.

Read more about these wasps here.

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By Phil Torres

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