Field Guides Tour Report NORTHEAST BRAZIL: LONG LIVE THE LEAR'S! Jan 16, 2011 to Feb 5, 2011 Bret Whitney & Marcelo Padua The 2011 Northeast Brazil tour was Fields Guides' 18th run of this ambitious itinerary. Over the course of those years, we've lost Spix's Macaw in the wild and are on the verge of losing some narrow-range endemics in Pernambuco/Alagoas, but we've also gained several species new to science. We constantly tweak the route to maximize chances of finding the most difficult species, "new" or "old", and this year's tour was, by all counts, highly successful. Having a fine group of spotters certainly helped us pick up almost everything along the way. Weather was generally fine, with minimal time lost to rain and many afternoons were kept relatively cool by good cloud cover. (As the season has worn on, and the effect of La Niña has increased, landscapes have become much drier than normal through March). The one notable hiccup, or slide, or wreck, whatever you want to call it, happened at Murici after the first hard rain in more than a month, which lasted all night and into our first morning, left the miles of dirt roads through cane fields and over deforested hills in a muddy, slippery mess. Our 4-WD vehicles were no match for it (no matter who was behind the wheel!), and we had to turn back (no easy task in itself!). We soon squeezed lemons into lemonade, however, somehow positioning ourselves absolutely perfectly to enjoy a low, close view of the ultra-rare White-collared Kite in flight and perched, followed immediately by excellent views of Mantled Hawk. Described to science only in 2000, and named after a Sweet! Shortly thereafter a pair of Seven-colored Tanagers put on characteristic habitat of Brazil's northeast: Caatinga a stunning show as they fed on low melastome fruits in great Antwren, one of numerous endemics and specialties to be light. Things dried out sufficiently overnight to allow us to reach seen on this itinerary. (Photo by guide Bret Whitney) the reserve the next morning and we found some fine birds (especially a different pair of White-collared Kites and Scalloped Antbirds), but try as we might, none of the four main endemics showed at all. Fortunately, we had already found Orange-bellied Antwren and Alagoas Tyrannulet in Pernambuco! I think Alagoas Foliage-gleaner and Alagoas Antwren will continue to be the hardest of the four to pick up in the forseeable future. Among other birding highlights of the first week of the tour were Spot-winged Wood-Quail seen well and singing loudly followed minutes later by a great view of Rufous-breasted Leaftosser and, for most, Short-tailed Antthrush with Spectacled Owl performing pre-dawn in the spotlight; excellent views of Long-tailed Woodnymph, Gray-breasted Parakeet, Gould's Toucanet, Ochraceous Piculet, and Buff-breasted Tody-Tyrant; truly thrilling encounters with Great Xenops, Tawny Piculet and, especially, that White-browed Antpitta rocking out in its living room; and exciting hunts for Least Nighthawk and Pygmy Nightjar after days filled with close views of so many caatinga specialties (like Red-shouldered Spinetail, Stripe-backed Antbird, back-to-back wagtail-tyrants, White-naped Xenopsaris, and Yellow-faced Siskin). Araripe Manakin, certainly among the most striking of all the members of the family, showed off admirably, especially the first time it appeared, close and right at eye-level. In a category all by itself was Lear's Macaw. Wow, we had a fabulous experience with several pairs of these rare macaws, most memorably that group of four feeding on licuri palm fruits only about 50 yards from our partly shaded scoping spot. We were then treated to a great, close Red-legged Seriema a few minutes after our rest stop to visit Dona Damiana, now getting around well on her prosthetic leg which was paid for largely Field Guides Birding Tours • www.fieldguides.com • 800-728-4953 1 by a past Field Guides tour group. Southern Bahia was super-productive for us, starting with a memorable morning in humid coastal forest where we needed to find Sooretama Slaty-Antshrike, Bahia (Pileated) Antwren, Band-tailed Antwren, and Eastern Striped Manakin in short order, which we did, and we also had a brief but good look at Great-billed Hermit (subspecies margarettae), a rarely seen bird, for sure. Next day, our first at Boa Nova, we tallied something like 140 species with great looks at everything from Ruby Topaz, Silvery-cheeked Antshrike, Slender Antbird, Narrow-billed Antwren, Spotted Piculet, and Hangnest Tody- Tyrant (almost all in one spot in the mata-de-cipo!) to Crescent-chested Puffbird, Striated Softtail, White-collared Foliage- gleaner, and Fork-tailed Tody-Tyrant just a few kilometers away in humid Atlantic Forest and, yes, a fine pair of Southern Pochards that morning. The Sharpbill spotted by Bart, at one point foraging just a few feet overhead, was breathtaking. The following day in humid forest was also fantastic, highlighted by a very cooperative Sharp-tailed Streamcreeper and Rio de Janeiro Antbird, scope views of a Spot-backed Antshrike, a dynamite Black-billed Scythebill, almost too many Pin-tailed Manakins (bumper crop this year), and the heralded appearance of a rare little bird called Bahia Tyrannulet, which performed with multiple encores (ahem, after we finally found it). We had one last order of business to attend to before heading north and west: find and observe at length the strange Pink-legged Graveteiro. It played out perfectly on a beautiful, sunny morning in an old cacau plantation, and I'm sure all of us can close our eyes and call up the image of a little graveteiro flying to its nest with a huge stick in its bill. A surprise bonus that morning was seeing a pair of Collared Forest-Falcons remarkably well (ain't it all FUN!). Our final birding venue was the inspiring landscapes of Chapada Diamantina National Park, home to the Hooded Visorbearer and Sincora Antwren among many other birds here at the transition of humid forest, caatinga, and cerrado. Rains had essentially missed this part of the northeast, and the preferred flowers of the visorbearer were in short supply. We did manage to find one male, thank goodness, and also a couple of brief sightings of females or immature males -- but it was spooky, looking like it might be only the second year we'd miss it outright. On the other hand, we walked right up to the Sincora Antwren and enjoyed a really great half-hour seeing a pair and learning about its discovery and very recent (2007) description as a new species named for German ornithologist, artist, and naturalist Rolf Grantsau, who has lived outside Sao Paulo for some 50 years. Broad-tipped Hermit and Sao Francisco Sparrow were additional local endemics we picked up in that area, and cerrado specialties that drew rounds of applause included White-eared Puffbird, Collared Crescentchest, and Rufous-winged Antshrike. The very rare Fringe-backed Fire-eye looked iffy for a bit, but we pulled that one out at the buzzer, too. As has become the tradition, we wrapped up our travels through northeast Brazil in the colonial section of Salvador, one of the oldest cities in the Americas and capital of Brazil for more than 200 years. It was a properly festive evening as we feasted on delicious shrimp moqueca washed down with caipirinhas, beers, and fruit juices as Carnaval was beginning to gear-up with small bands practicing in the streets. Special thanks to Conor for providing us such an interesting and informative twilight tour through old Pelourinho. All told, we had a fantastic experience getting to see a large part of Brazil in good company and surrounded by not only lots of rare and beautiful birds, but also many friendly and helpful Brazilian people, from our several drivers to the big-smiled Bahiana who made Dom Ricardo his first acaraje. The following list conforms to the latest (Dec 2010) version of Clements's world checklist being maintained by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; you will notice a number of differences from the checklist we used on the tour, but not many taxonomic shifts that we didn't cover at our evening checklist sessions. I look forward to birding much more with all of you, preferably back in Brazil! Ah, as a special advance notice, we are going to offer two complementary, back-to-back tours through Northeast Brazil from 2012 forward. The first, "Beaches to Badlands," will cover most of the route we have traditionally done. The second part, "West to the Araguaia," will include southern Bahia from the coast to the interior (the three days around Boa Nova is the only section taken from the traditional route) followed by several days each to find the endemics of the Rio Sao Francisco valley of northern Minas Gerais and the specialties of the Rio Araguaia region of Tocantins state. Each tour will be about 17 days in length. Watch for the itinerary on our website, probably sometime in May. Abraços para todos, happy birding, --Bretche We have more information about this itinerary and future departures on our web page for Northeast Brazil: Long Live the Lear's!. Field Guides Birding Tours • www.fieldguides.com • 800-728-4953 2 KEYS FOR THIS LIST One of the following keys may be shown in brackets for individual species as appropriate: * = heard only, I = introduced, E = endemic, N = nesting, a = austral migrant, b = boreal migrant BIRDS Tinamidae (Tinamous) BROWN TINAMOU (Crypturellus obsoletus) [*] SMALL-BILLED TINAMOU (Crypturellus parvirostris) RED-WINGED TINAMOU (Rhynchotus rufescens) [*] SPOTTED NOTHURA (Nothura maculosa) Anatidae (Ducks, Geese, and Waterfowl) WHITE-FACED WHISTLING-DUCK (Dendrocygna viduata) BLACK-BELLIED WHISTLING-DUCK (Dendrocygna autumnalis) Classic northeastern Brazil: massive rock outcrops amidst low thorny woodland and scrub (Photo by guide Bret Whitney) BRAZILIAN TEAL (Amazonetta brasiliensis) WHITE-CHEEKED PINTAIL (Anas bahamensis) – More than than usual this year, and seen in three different locales.