The last two blog posts featured images and stories from the south of the Pantanal in Brazil. In this blog post, we transition from the south to the north, to focus on the jaguars which are abundant in the area.
We took an afternoon charter flight to our next lodge, in the north of the Pantanal, and arrived with a couple hours of light remaining in the day. The landing strip was connected to the lodge, so we landed and went straight to our rooms. After getting settled in, we had time to walk around the lodge to see the wildlife on the property,
There were numerous Blue and yellow macaw in the low branches around us which gave us another great opportunity to photograph them up close.
There were four of these beautiful birds feasting on this palm fruit, right at eye level.
We also saw hundreds of Capybaras walking around the open areas. As it turns out, we were having to walk through lots of these animals every morning on our way to breakfast.
That same afternoon, we found a large pack of Tufted capuchin monkeys in the trees surrounding our rooms.
Just like the birds in the area, these animals were not frightened by us and allowed us to photograph them up close.
Since it was late in the day, the light was perfect for photos.
The next morning we woke up early and took our first boat ride up the river to try and find some jaguars. I decided to use my
Canon R5 MKII with the
RF 100-300mm lens and
RF 1.4x extender. This combination allowed me to shoot all the way to 420mm at f/4, which worked out really nicely.
Like many people who are on the river looking for jaguars, our first stop was to see if Madrosa was out and about. Madrosa is a female jaguar who hangs out in the same area frequently, and therefore is most easily found. We, and many other boats, were there to capture her beauty.
I reminded my guests to shoot tight...
...and also shoot wide to show the surroundings.
She is a beautiful cat, and we spent numerous hours with her!
We thought we might see her jump into the water to capture a cayman, but unfortunately, that did not happen.
She definitely watched the waters intently, hoping for a cayman to swim by.
There were cayman in the water, but not near enough to Madrosa to be easy prey.
An hour later, we watched as two of Madrosa's cubs made an appearance.
We were all excited to get such nice photos of both cubs, and the light was perfect too. Nice overcast skies for even light on the cats.
After spending time with Madrosa and the cubs, we went out looking for more wildlife along the rivers edge. This time, we found some Giant river otters that were out fishing. It was really fun capturing images of them as they feasted on the plentiful fish.
Lots of different action shots of these otters enjoying their lunch.
Before heading back to our lodge for the evening, we also found some birds to photograph. This Tree swallow was perched on a nearby branch. I put my
Canon R5 MKII into pre-continuous shooting mode hoping it would take off, and got this shot as it spread it's wings and flew away.
It was getting dark, but I really liked the dark background with this Great egret and it's reflection. We all got ready for it to take off, and got some really nice photos of this bird in flight.
To say that it was a great first day on the river is an understatement. We were all thrilled with what we saw and could not wait to get back to our rooms to download and see the photos we had captured.
And this was just day one on the river. So much more to come!
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