The Ginger Naturalist : Southern Pantanal Fazenda San Fransico

Before leaving Brazil, I visited the lodge Fazenda San Fransico near Miranda, in Mato Grosso du Sul state.

The climate in this region is very different to the humid forests of Rio state and the temperature reached 38 degrees most days and was much drier. The state is famous for its cattle ranching which has sadly destroyed a lot of the natural habitats, but the Pantanal has most of its extent in this state and the abundance of wildlife is very high still.

I spent 3 nights at the family run working farm and lodge of Fazenda San Fransico. The land here has been used for rearing cattle breeds for meat for generations but more recently rice production has also been a key part of their income because of the suitable soils. Most recently the owners decided to open the farm to tourism as they have still preserved half of their land as the natural landscape of the pantanal.

The landscape of the southern pantanal is very similar to that of the north, and the Fazenda has a good percentage of gallery forest, wet and dry savannah, scrub, rivers, seasonal pools and agricultural land.

They run a popular lodge and offer their land for both tourism activities and scientific research. Most visitors to the lodge are coming as part of a package and the activities on offer include boat rides, piranha fishing, horse rides, jeep safaris, walking trails and night drives. The lodge is a popular destination for big groups of day trip visitors arriving from Bonito and this could be a problem as it did hold up the daily activities and restricted the amount of wildlife viewing opportunities.

However the lodge was very pleasant with a friendly atmosphere and the wildlife watching potential was superb.

The birdlife was typical of the pantanal and many of the "classic" species were abundant but still in lower numbers than in the some areas of the north that I had visited.

Rufous-backed antwren

Some of the highlights included blue and yellow macaw, yellow-collared macaw, blue-fronted parrot, scaly-headed parrot, nanday parakeet, monk parakeet, yellow-cheveroned parakeet, toco toucans, greater rheas, blue-fronted piping guan, bare-faced currasow, green-barred, white and little woodpeckers, narrow-billed woodpecker, buff-fronted, bare faced and plumbeous ibises, black-necked stilt, lesser yellowlegs, solitary sandpipers, maguari, wood and jabiru storks, osprey, bat and aplomado falcons, striped owls, sungrebe, white monjita, striped cuckoo, great antshrike, orange-backed troupial, epaulet oriole, rufous cacholote, rusty-collarded seedeater, rufous-backed antwren and nacunda nighthawk.