Tropical Birding - Trip Report NE Brazil Custom Tour: Araripe Manakin and more – March 2018 A Tropical Birding custom BIRDING tour NE Brazil: the land of awesome rarities - Araripe Manakin, Lear’s Macaw, and more… 7-16 March, 2018 TOUR LEADER: ANDRES VASQUEZ Photos by Andres Vasquez One of the 2 male individuals we saw during our visit to Chapada do Araripe. Point blank one of the best birds of South America and for sure the main target on this trip, happily seen well but photographed in challenging light. www.tropicalbirding.com +1-409-515-9110 [email protected] p.1 Tropical Birding - Trip Report NE Brazil Custom Tour: Araripe Manakin and more – March 2018 Northeast Brazil is a land of rarities, sought-after specialties, and amazing South American birds. It is a destination that is not visited by too many birders yet, but I hope that in the near future more will want to visit these areas. At the moment TB runs only custom tours there, but we may start running set-departure tours too, and I hope that with this trip report I can encourage that. This was another superb custom tour that we put together for (and I happily guided) our friend Rick Goldfarb who has been in with us in several other custom tours like this in the past; this was already our 9th tour together, and his 3rd in Brazil after visiting the Southeast Atlantic Forest and the Pantanal and Amazon regions. Getting a digiscoped picture of Lear’s Macaws in the impressive Canudos Reserve just minutes after sunrise This time we were looking for some of South America’s rarities and simply for specific lifers located in isolated spots of NE Brazil. The prevailing ecosystem of the region is the dry caatinga (scrub) which holds lots of taxa restricted to this biome. Scattered along the flat plains there are some serras and chapadas (upland ecosystems) that retain the humidity and are covered in lush green forests that hold a different variety of bird life. This combination results in several great birding spots that are quite isolated from each other, and in order to access them all, we had to cover many miles, fortunately the vast majority on fast roads. www.tropicalbirding.com +1-409-515-9110 [email protected] p.2 Tropical Birding - Trip Report NE Brazil Custom Tour: Araripe Manakin and more – March 2018 Sites that we birded included: 1.Serra de Baturité where we got Gray-breasted Parakeet, Buff-breasted Tody-Tyrant, Gray-headed Spinetail, Ceara Gnateater, Ceara Leaftosser, Lesser (Northern) Woodcreeper among others; 2.Quixadá where the Pygmy Nightjar, White-bellied Nothura, and the White-browed Guan were highlights; 3.Chapada do Araripe, where the astonishing Araripe Manakin could not get all of the attention due to other “stunners” like Ruby- topaz Hummingbird, Great Xenops, Silvery-cheeked Antshrike, Red-shouldered Spinetail, and Scarlet-throated Tanager; 4. Canudos, where the new research station allow us to sleep facing the cliffs where Lear’s Macaws roost and Least Nighthawks fly at dusk; 5.Murici and Frei Caneca, a couple of reserves that hold some of the most restricted range birds in Brazil like Alagoas Tyrannulet, Orange-bellied Antwren, Scalloped Antbird, and White-collared Kite. Other highlights found in a few different spots along the route included the cute Racket-tailed Coquette of which we saw an immature male well, Southern Pochard and Masked Ducks, Cactus Parakeet, Broad-tipped Hermit, Frilled Coquette, Long-tailed Woodnymph, Tawny and Ochraceous Piculets, the very local Forbes’s Blackbird, Caatinga Cachalote, and a total of 36 Brazilian Endemics marked with an (E) in the following paragraphs. A lone Lear’s Macaw perched on the rusty-pink cliffs used as roosting site in Canudos Biological Reserve March 7th, Arrival and drive to Serra de Baturité: I arrived earlier in Fortaleza (state of Ceará) to make sure all the logistics were ok; I picked the car up and waited for Rick to arrive that afternoon. Immediately after his plane landed we started the drive southwards, for about 2 hours, to the isolated mountain range of Baturité so we did not have much chance to bird that day, though we heard upon arrival to our hotel a Spectacled Owl that never came in. www.tropicalbirding.com +1-409-515-9110 [email protected] p.3 Tropical Birding - Trip Report NE Brazil Custom Tour: Araripe Manakin and more – March 2018 March 8th, Serra de Baturité: We had an early breakfast pre-dawn so that we could get as early as possible to the well-known birding spot around the Remanso Hotel. We started by trying for an unresponsive owl and when light was good enough we started walking the long loop around the hotel. Almost immediately after starting on the trail we found one of the main targets of the area, the soon to be split subspecies of Rufous-breasted Leaftosser that is often called “Ceara” Leaftosser (E), which was singing away from a narrow stream gorge. We also got right there the likely split Lesser (“Northern”) Woodcreeper and just a few steps higher we found a pair of Black-capped Antwrens. The striking Brazilian endemic Red-cowled Cardinals love the open country in NE Brazil Afterwards, for about 3 hours lifers and local taxa did not stop coming to us. We were ticking new birds like nuts plus getting good views of all of those. Birds like the cearensis subspecies of Red-necked Tanager and Blond-crested Woodpecker (already split in some taxonomies as Ochre-backed Woodpecker (E)) were among the most colorful birds seen. Other more subtle lifers included Ochre-cheeked and Gray-headed Spinetails (E), Ceara Gnateater (E), Buff- breasted Tody-Tyrant (E), and a couple more. Worth mentioning also are species like the beautiful Gould’s Toucanet, Swallow-tailed Hummingbird, and Moustached Wren. We had a little rest in the middle of the day back at the hotel and right on the grounds surrounding the restaurant we saw the extremely localized Gray-breasted Parakeet (E) plus the more widely distributed Yellow-chevroned Parakeet; we got great scope views of both. In the afternoon we birded the road to Pico Alto which is a mix of forested road with some more open areas. It was very entertaining birding and we added quite a lot to the list but out of the main targets www.tropicalbirding.com +1-409-515-9110 [email protected] p.4 Tropical Birding - Trip Report NE Brazil Custom Tour: Araripe Manakin and more – March 2018 we only got a few. The most wanted was the minuscule but gorgeous Ochraceous Piculet (E). We also saw the first of many Red-cowled Cardinals (E) plus some other interesting birds like Large Elaenia, Southern Scrub Flycatcher, Pectoral Sparrow, Burnished-buff Tanager, and Creamy-bellied, Rufous-bellied and Pale-breasted Thrushes, among others. March 9th, Serra de Baturité to Quixadá: Since we had done very well in Baturité and had no major targets to get there, we decided to depart early and start 2.5 hours’ drive south to Quixadá which with birding on the go stretched out to about 5 hours. We were hoping to find a nothura by driving some side dirt roads early in the morning. Well, mission accomplished as we found 2 different pairs of White-bellied Nothuras close to Ibaretama. Two out of the four individuals White-bellied Nothuras we saw well on the way to Quixadá We also saw the first of many Cactus Parakeets (E) and Spot-backed Puffbird started to be very common along the fences of these dirt roads. One of the big targets for Rick was a bit difficult at the beginning but with patience we found a pair of Dark-billed Cuckoos that despite being widespread, had eluded Rick in many previous trips. Other spots along the route were quite productive. We found White, Golden-green and Green-barred Woodpeckers, a very responsive pair of the Brazilian endemic Caatinga Cacholote (E), White-winged and Crested Becards, plus a flock of many females and two males of White-throated Seedeater (E). Right after lunch in the town of Quixadá, we arrived at our hotel for the night, the famed Pedra dos Ventos. This nicely located lodge is placed on top of a large monolith from where we have an outstanding view of the surrounding plains. www.tropicalbirding.com +1-409-515-9110 [email protected] p.5 Tropical Birding - Trip Report NE Brazil Custom Tour: Araripe Manakin and more – March 2018 Landscapes are impressive at Quixadá thanks to the monoliths characteristic of the area www.tropicalbirding.com +1-409-515-9110 [email protected] p.6 Tropical Birding - Trip Report NE Brazil Custom Tour: Araripe Manakin and more – March 2018 More importantly for us though is the fact that the exposed rock with ground bromeliads and cacti is the roosting area of a tiny (yet “huge”) target, the Pygmy Nightjar (E). This minuscule species spends the day in the shade that these rocks and short vegetation provide. These birds do not flush very easily, and they rather walk fast. Running they looked a like mice at first glance given their size, no bigger than a towhee. Pygmy Nightjar reaches 6 to 8 inches long only thanks to its relatively long tail. We waited around the hotel until it cooled down a bit and then we drove down towards Fazenda Logradouro where the open plains mix with some patches of forest and we could find some other targets. The main one was the attractive White-naped Jay (E) that came past in a small flock.