The smell of smoke stronger this morning. In front of the dock an Anhinga had caught a fish, and was trying to maneuver it into it’s mouth to swallow it. They are called “Snake Birds” because they can look like snakes in the river when the submerge their body.
We had a jaguar sighting first things – mother and two (large) cubs. We got brief glimpses, but then they disappeared.
Went up the river, then another sighting – jaguar in and out of sight. We watched her freeze and start to stalk something, but then she relaxed and moved on. We moved the boat around and saw a sleeping capybara.
For five minutes or more, everyone watched – with our cameras ready. But when she jumped, it was too fast to catch. (Although someone in the crowd must have caught it – there were at least fifty people in all the boats.) But the capybara escaped into the water.
The jaguar swam across the river and swam/walked along the bank, continued hunting unsuccessfully, and then we lost her.
The rest of the morning went like that – we’d find a jaguar, follow it for a ways down the river, then it would be gone.
