It’s the dry season in the Pantanal, and fish are trapped in shrinking pools, attracting great flocks of wading birds – herons, egrets and behemoths like the Jabiru storks with their pointy beaks and wingspans of more than two and a half metres. Kingfishers, brightly adorned in colourful feathers, drop like missiles from overhead branches. Gull-like skimmers glide gracefully across the water’s surface. Plovers and other long-legged birds work the margins of these pools with the hunting prowess of Amazonian Indians. It’s a joy to watch – but those fish might very well beg to differ.
The Pantanal straddles the border between three South American countries – the north-east of Paraguay, the
