From the field

Donna Summer and the Anaconda Aug 7 2007

Photo: Dawson/Wikipedia

The search was on. We were scouting for an anaconda to film and the light – and our hopes – were fading fast. The day had been spent tracking and filming birds in the Pantanal in Brazil and we were now racing to reach an area in which anacondas had recently been seen. We were hurtling along a tooth-shattering and butt-bruising dirt road in a pickup. I was clutching the camera in the cab but my laptop was doing double half twist somersaults on the back

Our driver was an elderly Japanese gentleman who had spent many years in Ecuador. He insisted on blasting our ears with a distorted compilation CD of Donna Summers’ 70s disco hits on this leg of the journey.

My guide was puce faced and seemed ready to projectile vomit at any stage. Perhaps it had something to do with the music, or perhaps something to do with the bottle of 39% by volume rum he had apparently consumed the night before.

The Pantanal is the largest wetland in the world. We spent the day walking and driving through large tracts of land. Our route alternated between dry land and marshy muddy bits. I put my initiation into the ‘ways with water’ in Botswana to good use and waded knee deep into the water and mud ahead of my guide.

I wish he had told me about the leeches before I did that.

Typically, birds have a wicked sense of humour. They will often sit in full view and go about their business for a period of time. What actually is happening is that they’’re watching and waiting for the moment that humanoids will appear and take out those funny articles they call ‘tripods’. This is then their cue to immediately duck and hide behind a branch where they can’t be seen, or to take off and disappear over the horizon.

Generally speaking, it had still been a reasonably satisfying day.

We filmed many birds but this was only a fraction of the over 600 bird species to be found in the region. It was satisfying enough for me to just see and film a variety of birds that I had never seen in the wild before.

But we never found the anaconda!