Paraguay Day 17; Estancia Arrecife & Rancho Blanca

   Today was the day we left Estancia Arrecife and headed eastwards. We started at 05:30 and slowly birded our way back to the highway, stopping at various wetland sites along the way in the hopes of picking up some new species. We did, but they were all common birds such as Yellow-rumped Marshbird, Yellow-bellied Elaenia and Olivaceous Woodcreeper. The highlights were a nice pair of Streamer-tailed Tyrants displaying, two Black-throated Saltators and a Rufescent Tiger Heron stood in the road.

  Once we had rejoined the main road, the day was almost entirely consumed by the driving, with very little seen on the way. Our first destination was the Laguna Blanca, a site which we had tried to arrange without success, but Carolina had managed. Unfortunately this turned out to be too good to be true, and the Laguna Blanca Ecolodge did not have permission to allow us on to the Rancho Blanca property.

  This was a disappointing setback, and I was ready to once again give up on accessing the site, but fortunately Max was a man possessed, so we drove up to the gate of the farm and found someone to talk to who eventually passed us on to someone else, and they gave us the go ahead on a strictly unofficial basis to spend the afternoon in the site.

  The afternoon did not start well, with the sandy soils causing chaos with the car, and not being 100% sure where best to bird, but we eventually cracked it and spent a good three hours of daylight in excellent Cerrado habitat. It was fairly quiet for the most part but we still saw goodies like White-rumped Tanager, Shrike-like Tanager and a brief Plumbeous Seedeater.

  But the real star of Rancho Blanca is the White-winged Nightjar, and so we had to stay after dark to hopefully find one. Fortunately, no sooner had darkness fallen than we picked up an individual. We followed it to its perch and found a smart female sitting there. As we photographed here the stunning white wings of a male flew past us but we never found him sitting. We were only able to find one more bird during the evening, a young male also perched atop of a termite mound, showing very well. We could have continued longer, but the circumstances of our entry, the fact we had nowhere to stay yet and the rarity of the bird led to us deciding to withdraw after this second encounter. We were truly extactic that this bird we seemed destined to miss out on had been seen, and seen well!