Brazil–The Atlantic Forest

I have had a very nice comment posted to my blog today from a gentleman in Brazil  - nelsonsouzza@blogspot.com which got me thinking of a trip we made in 2005.  We wanted to visit the Atlantic Forest before it disappeared and to try to see some of the ‘specials’ of the birding world however I can’t post many photos as we for some inexplicable reason took tons of video and hardly any stills.  So an usual post for me – more letters than pixels!
We flew as usual Humberside to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Sao Paulo picked up a car and finally after driving around for nearly two hours found the way out of the city and headed for the most stunning coast line around Ubatuba and eventually found accommodation  overlooking the Atlantic (courtesy of the Lonely Planet guide – where would we be without them!).  We quickly picked up Frigate Bird, Black Vulture, Swallow Tailed Kite, Crested Caracaras and Tropical Kingbird from the hotel car park and thus the list had begun.
The next two days we birded Corcovado, Falha Seca and Fazenda Angelim where we had fabulous birds with equally fabulous names including Scaly Headed Parrot, Saw Billed Planato, Black Jacobin, Festive Coquet, Scaled Antbird, Buff-Throated Purpletuft etc… then on up the coast to Paraty for Black Headed Antwren.


Onwards again for a 5 night stay at one of the best birding hotels in the world Do Ype Hotel  in the National Park of Itatiaia – it was fantastic and has some of the best humming-bird feeders anywhere which also plays hosts to the best Woodpecker of all (to me) Yellow Fronted(if only I had a photo) plus Violaceous Euphonias, Blue Naped Chlorophonia, Magpie Tanager etc..Whilst there we also had a trip out to Agulhas Negras for two of our target birds – Plovercrest and Black and Gold Cotinga, both of which we saw.


Each night we were treated to an array of moths – some bigger than my hand – here is a selection, no idea what any of them are!




The view from our room..
We then headed for what turned out to be the highlight of the trip 3 nights at Regua at Guapiacu (pic below)http://www.regua.co.uk/index.html .  I would advise anyone with the slightest interest in conservation to go here and see what an amazing place one Englishman has managed to create – it is a magical place – visit the website.

As is usual on our holidays we are constantly on the move and it was very hard to leave Regua but our next target was in sight the Maned Wolves at Caracas National Park – to see the wolves you have to stay at a Monastery where one of the Jesuit Priests feeds the wolves each night – it is a once in a lifetime experience – words can’t describe it, you just have to go!


On the road again to Canastra for the endangered Brazilian Merganser which we saw very easily but with white water rafting companies setting up there can’t be too much hope for this species – we also spent two days at this site looking for Giant Anteaters which we didn’t see – the only dip of the holiday.
Last stop Intervales National Park where we finished our trip with again some excellent birds and headed off back to Sao Paulo for the airport only to be wiped off the 6 lane motorway by the most massive lorry imaginable – to cut a long story short we just caught the flight home after spending two hours with Portugese only speaking police talking to english only speaking tourists(us).  As we never heard another thing from the car rental co.(their car was wrecked) we  can only assume that the totally portugese statement we signed was an account from the lorry driver accepting full responsibility.  It didn’t ruin the holiday – Brazil is a fabulous country and I would go back like a shot but would never drive on Sao Paulo’s roads again!
Trip total 330 (all unguided)