Tuesday, Sept 28 - Birding the Portão Azul and Macae de Cima Trails

(Pics:  the Brazilian Tanager, "my" Highlands Coral Snake,
Birding in the rain, and beautiful pink lichen)








W got up at a leisurely 5:30, but to rain, and went down to breakfast of coffee, fruit and HB eggs. The tiny bit of laundry that I did yesterday morning is still wet!! This place has incredible humidity! I’ll have to take the hotel advice book more seriously when told not to do laundry in one’s room!!

We set off at seven and climbed up the hill in our van to the crest and down into the valley containing the lingerie-manufacturing town of Nova Friburgo. It stretched along the valley floor for many miles with fancy hotels, factories, government housing, parks and a row of snazzy and sleazy lingerie shops that I was dying to visit, but this is, after all, a birding trip!

There is a lot of road construction going on trying to repair all the damage done by the 20” rain the state of Rio received last April so it took us an hour and a half to reach our destination on the far side of the city. We arrived at a dirt road outside the town and set off in light to moderate rain for an hour, getting quite wet and not seeing many birds. It was surprisingly cold and we finally piled into the van and drove further up the road. By eleven the rain had tapered off and it became much more pleasant and the birds began to emerge. We hiked up the dirt road for several hours. One of the most memorable birds was the Gilt-edged Tanager, a bird with turquoise breast, yellow-olive head and black and gold streaked wings - we saw a flock of these exquisite birds feeding on a fruit tree.

But the morning was long and it was after two PM before we stopped for a snack. The Lodge had packed sandwiches for us, to order, but no drinks….next excursion out: remember to bring water, napkins!

We drove back through town and pulled off onto another dirt road that climbed up and overlooked a valley of second growth forest. John amazingly immediately spotted another Bare-throated Bellbird on the far wall and we got better views of this very white bird and heard its amazing call! It was still cool and getting dark at 4:30, so we headed back to the Lodge and quickly took hot showers before the water became tepid!

I dashed out to the dark pool area and sent off yesterday’s blog and set the computer to download photos for tomorrow’s before heading in for today’s bird list and dinner.

I also checked my photo of the coral snake in the guide book and it turns out that “my” snake is actually a Highlands Coral Snake and quite rare!! Cool!