Red-tailed Boa, Terra Firma Forest along the Amazon, Peru

On our final hike in the Terra Firma forest along the Amazon, in Pacaya Samiria National Reserve, we had the services of three local guides from the community that maintains the trail. They spend every day there, and, by ranging out ahead on either side of the trail, found us all kinds of interesting stuff that we would never have found on our own. And they were clearly delighted to do so. They displayed a quiet satisfaction in every find…happy to show their visitors the wonders of their Amazon forest. 

When they came back and said they had found a Red-tailed Boa, I marched confidently off the trail after them to see. The Rosy Boas I have seen in Honduras and the Emerald Tree-boa I had seen earlier in the week did nothing to prepare me for the Red-tailed Boa they had found. My other boas were maybe 4 feet long, and slender…normal snake proportions. This Red-tailed Boa was a monster of a snake…it must have been 12 feet long and 10 inches in diameter at its thickest…its head was a big as my hand and considerably more impressive! It was coiled at the base of a tree in the underbrush…in deep shadow and bright dappled sunlight, and the simple size of it as it coiled and moved made it very difficult to photograph, and next to impossible to effectively  capture even in a series of photos. The panel above shows various views…including a close up of the body and the tail. This was one big snake…certainly the biggest I have seen in the wild, and one of the biggest I have ever seen. 

One of our guides saw a Poison Dart Frog in their among the coils and climbed in after it, hoping to be able to show us another wonder…and that certainly caused some excitement as the snake roiled to get out of the way. It was not aggressive at all, and we certainly were not its prey, so there was no danger…but still! Best not to tempt fate.

Sony Rx10iii at various focal lengths. Program Mode with exposure compensation to deal with the highlights. Processed in Polarr on my iPad Pro. Assembled in Framemagic.