December 20: Rich Hoyer on his recently concluded tour, Brazil: Minas Gerais
It’s hard to imagine a long week of birding with such a variety of habitats. Going from a shrubby cerrado and seasonally dry woodland at Cipó, to wet Atlantic Rainforest at Caraça, then to a curious mix of woodland, gallery forest, and savannah-like grassland at Canastra, we tallied 263 species of birds, only seven of which were heard. This was all in just eight days plus a couple hours, and even in those last couple hours we kept seeing new species. The grand hallelujah of the tour were the Brazilian Mergansers which at first were inexplicably elusive during a long day of searching, during which we still happened to see over 100 other species. But we eventually caught up with them, and we had excellent views of this super rare duck.
Burrowing Owls, close to the road and very common at Canastra, made it close to the top of the favorites...
...as did a male Horned Sungem that perched at close range, showing some incredible colors in those horns.
Other species mentioned as particularly memorable included a female Frilled Coquette building a nest right over the road at Caraça...
...an unbelievably cooperative Collared Crescentchest (after I had warned everyone to be ready for an impossible-to-see skulker)...
...two King Vultures sitting in a tree...
...and a pair of Black-capped Donacobius duetting and doing their moves, proving what a taxonomic oddity they really are. And of course mammals featured prominently.
Maned Wolf appeared early and at great length on our first evening at Cipó...
...and Crab-eating Fox came the second evening. Giant Anteater was something everyone really wanted to see, and finally in the late afternoon a very distant animal was spotted by our driver Marcelo. We spent a long time on the roadside watching it through the spotting scope as it thoroughly searched the distant slopes, wandering back and forth. We were perfectly happy though, so it was quite a surprise on our last full day to be walking a woodland trail and have one nearly at arm’s length right next to the trail.
We had a fun group that worked well together so everyone got on every bird as best as possible, and our always friendly driver Paulo contributed with his own spotting skills and interest and knowledge of local birding spots.
Posted: December 20, 2019