I spent entire last week guiding a photographer to my favorite place in the Atlantic Rainforest, the private reserve Parque do Zizo, located in southern São Paulo State, about 3 hours from my home. The region is where the largest piece of Atlantic Rainforest remains. This is many thousands os square miles of intact, primary rainforest habitat. The private reserve borders a state reserve, which in turn borders another state reserve and so forth, so the whole area is well protected. It’s not unusual at all to see many tracks of large mammals on the trails, like tapirs and even jaguars or pumas, a sure sign that the place is helthy.
On previous visits I have seen and photographed some extremelly rare birds here, just behind the lodge, like the Buff-fronted Owl. This time we didn’t see any real rarity (although we did hear a Pavonine Cuckoo, a new bird to the reserve), but we more than compensated it with some great photos. We did see a huge Black Hawk-Eagle attacking something just behind the lodge, a great scene, but just to fast to be photographed.
One of the waterfalls of the reserve, surrounded by lush vegetation.
This pano was made with 4 images taken with my D700 and Nikkor 24mm f/2.8. It was stitched together by Photoshop CS5, which did and amazing job considering I wasn’t using a pano head (a regular ball head instead).
Olive-green Tanagers
The Olive-green Tanager is a bird always seen high up in the trees, in big monospecific groups. This time however they were coming to the feeder and I was able to set up different perches for them.
Yellow-fronted Woodpecker
Not your usual woodpecker! Besides being amazingly colorful, these guys eat mainly fruits instead of the usual insect larvae and such.
White-necked Thrush
These attractive thrushes are forest inhabitants, never venturing far from it. They are also quite wary, more wary and elusive than the common Rufous-bellied Thrush.
I will post more photos during the week.
Octavio Salles Photography 