Having seen all the birds that we wanted in Enciso National Park, we decided to leave a day earlier than anticipated and head north to the Defensores del Chaco National Park deep in rural Paraguay, where there are greater chances for mammals and a few more birds to target. The prospect of poor dirt roads combined with forecasted rain made us nervous about taking on this endevour, but we knew that we would be fools to miss out on this park.
We spent the first hour of the day in the
Enciso park, trying without success to see a heard only Giant Antshrike from
the previous day. We got no response! And so, at 08:30 we headed off beginning
our trip north. First we stopped off at the town of La Patria to pick up fuel,
as well as some additional canisters to reduce fuel pressure when we were
remote. The journey was long on dirt roads of varying quality although in
general not too bad. We saw a few Chaco Mara, a Grey Brocket, a Crane Hawk and
a Brushland Tinamou on the way.
When we finally arrived at Cerro Leon, and
the small room we had reserved, we found that some of the diesel had spilled
out over the back of the truck. After a short cleanup operation, and a wash and
rest, we headed out for the first time to explore the new location.
The road was quite mixed quality heading
towards the main Cerro Leon campsite, but once there we had an enjoyable 90
minutes of birding before dark. I managed to find my only lifer in the area;
White-lored Spinetail, but it did not show well and did not respond to
playback. What did show well was a pair of very attractive Black-bellied
Antwren, which we got nice views of. Amazonian Motmot and Purplish Jay were
other new birds that we recorded here first.
We had snacks for dinner and then drove back
to our lodging in the dark to search for mammals. It started well with dozens
of Little Nightjars on the road, as well as a metre long snake, but once we
turned on to the main road the quantity of sightings dropped off. It started
with a Crab-eating Fox, which did not show well, and the only other mammal we
encountered was a Pampas Fox which equally did not show well. A Chaco Owl made
an obligatory appearance as well. Once back at camp we did a little more exploring
and in a much shorted time frame had almost exactly the same result, but these
foxes showed much better, and we also had a couple of Tapeite. Not a bad night
in the end but certainly not to the standard of recent nights.
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