Monday-Tuesday, Oct 4-5 – Home from Brazil

(Pics:  suspension bridge at the reserve, White-bearded Manakin lek, reserve headquarters, farm, White-faced Whistling-ducks)

Overcast once again Monday morning.  We had our usual breakfast of delicious Brazilian cheese balls, Pão de queijo, fruit, HB eggs and toast at 5:45.  Most of us set off in the van south to the Reserva Ecologica do Guapiaçu to see some water birds and lowland forest species.  We were planning to pack and leave for the airport by 2:30 so we didn’t have time to leisurely explore this wonderful area and had to make fast hikes down various trails.  We saw several new ant birds and came across a lek (a territorial display performed by males to attract females) of White-bearded Manakins who clear a small space in the forest of leaves and twigs and then make a clicking noise somehow with their wings. They sound like an old-fashioned typewriter.  We drove to a large marshy pond and saw beautiful herons, gallinules, ducks and a group of five capybaras (world’s largest rodent) lounging in the shallow water.

We returned to the Lodge and had our final lunch, packed up, said our farewells to our hosts, Andy and Christina Foster, Cirilo, our guide, and Aldo, our driver.  Serra Dos Tucanos Lodge is a lovely place to stay for a few days or a week with a great staff, simple, but delicious food, and a wonderful opportunity to easily see flamboyantly colored birds right from the verandah.  We were all sorry to leave.

We arrived at the airport in two hours and set off for our various airlines.  Five of us were taking American to Miami and had about three hours to wait.  Bill was flying business class, as were we, and he had been advised to visit the Admiral’s Club when he checked in and mentioned it to us.  We looked around the gate area and didn’t see much in the way of a restaurant or even good souvenir shops but saw at the end of a walkway a big wooden door discretely labeled as the Club, thus we entered the serene and opulent world of luxury travel!  We found comfortable chairs and tables, sandwiches, soup, cheese balls and an open bar!  We knew we were going to be well fed in business class, but couldn’t resist this great spread and spent the next hour or so snacking and relaxing while below the rabble sat in their uncomfortable chairs at the bleak gate.  At eight we entered the gate and were approached by a polite security guard who took Bob aside and proceeded to disassemble and examine every item in Bob’s entire pack, removed every item from his pockets, required him to take off his shoes for inspection, then did a thorough pat-down  while others boarded…so much for priority boarding!  (These random inspections are required by the US government for flights to the US, take about 15 minutes, and are an outrage!  Why don’t we ever hear any protests from our famous right-wing civil libertarians about this?  RRZ)  He finally got on board and joined me in our very plush seats.   We had a set of buttons that would gradually raise and flatten the chair to make a very comfortable bed, a comforter and pillow, and best of all, Bose sound-canceling head phones which made the cabin lovely and quiet!

We were served a four-course meal, lots of wine and then settled down to sleep.  Didn’t try any movies as the jet lands at 4:10 AM and breakfast is at 3!  We were pretty groggy at three but were served a light breakfast and staggered off to Immigration and Customs which whisked us through.  We had to go through Security again but got into a Priority line and for once RRZ wasn’t hauled off to be examined.  We had several hours until our next flight and thought we’d try the Club again, and they let us in!!   This Club is very large, with shower rooms, bars, music rooms and the fastest internet I’ve ever seen which allowed me to send off six bird photos that would have taken a couple of hours at the Lodge but here took a less than a minute!

We boarded the flight to LAX and settled into our cocoons and had a really delicious panini filled with mushrooms and grilled onions, fruit and hot croissants! 

We landed at LAX, took the bus over to the Sheraton, picked up our car and took off for Santa Barbara in cool rainy weather…which seems to follow us across the globe!   Picked up Miss Maddie from the Cat House Hotel who seems overjoyed to be home and unpacked until the next trip!

XXX, Katy

Sunday, Oct 3 - Election Day in Brazil

(Pics:  Violaceous Euphonia feeding on bananas,  The Lodge in pouring rain from the bird hide, John Rowlett in the Lodge's computer room!, and three Black Jacobins dancing around a feeder)

We woke to pouring rain and had breakfast at 6:15. We were going to return to the Cedae Trail that we birded our first day here, come back for lunch and then walk the Lodge trails in the afternoon, but are going to try and reverse that plan. It’s 9:15 AM and we’ve ended up sitting on the verandah and watching the feeding trays. I slogged out to the pool and actually managed to catch up on the blog for the last few days. Cirilo is going to take the Lodge workers into town to vote. The rain is letting up a bit so we may go out on the trails and get thoroughly soaked which makes packing for our flights tomorrow rather messy!


We ended up hanging around the lodge, using the bird blind near the feeding trays for some pretty nifty photos. Bob spotted a large rufous-colored frog near the pond and got back just in time to see the Saffron Toucanet make its third appearance - a yellow-breasted 14” toucan with an elaborate red and grey bill. The rain continued to tease us by letting up and then when we were hopeful of getting out, started to pour once again.

 (Pics:  Blue-naped Chlorophonia, Green-headed Tanager [I know, it has a blue head], and a moth on the Lodge door)

We had a delicious lunch of meatballs in tomato sauce over mashed potatoes and then most of us took off, rain or no rain, to the Cedae Trail. We hiked down hill on an old overgrown road and spotted a few birds, but it was very wet and the birds were hiding and trying to stay dry, as maybe we should have been! We returned home at 4:30. I managed to grab a hot shower and wash my hair without the hot water running out, thankfully! We met at 6:30 for the List, drinks and then, dinner of tasty chicken cooked with roasted potatoes and fruit salad with condensed milk for sobremesas. And, the Browns won a game, finally!!!
Forecast for tomorrow: more rain…

Saturday, Oct 2 - In Search of the Three-Toed Jacamar

We all piled into the van at 6:30 this morning. The sky looked hazy but clear. We drove through Nova Friburgo once again, but heading off in a northwesterly direction into farmland at about 3000’ elevation. We were standing on the roadside watching a pair of lovely Streamer-tailed Tyrants flying acrobatically, landing on wires when I discovered that I was standing on an ant hill and little stinging ants were flowing into my shoe and through my socks. I tore off my shoe and socks and tried beating them on the pavement to no avail…each little ant had to be picked out of my shoes and disentangled from my thick socks…meanwhile I’m missing great birds!
We found a tiny Yellow-lored Tody Tyrant building a nest and I got a photo. We also discovered a small dead porcupine on the highway which we think might be a Orange-spined Hairy Dwarf Porcupine with a prehensile tail!


We stopped several more times before ending up at a roadside café overlooking a vast rolling pastureland where John found a nesting pair of Red-legged Seriemas which stand about 35” high and rather resemble the Secretary Bird of Africa. We bought Guarama Antarctica (guava flavored) sodas as the day was getting warm. The plan had been to make a large loop trip today, ending with a search for the rare Three-toed Jacamar. But Cirilo had found out that the connecting road had been damaged from the rain in the past two days and so we had to detour for an hour and half which in the cramped van and warming weather was pretty uncomfortable. We finally stopped on a little country road with bare mud cliffs along side with small holes bored into them which turned out to be the jacamar nesting holes and there they were, a pair of 7” hummingbird-like birds with grey heads, black backs and white fronts…not too spectacular, but very rare and hard to see unless you know what mud wall to look for! The elevation was only about 900’ and the temperature was 94 and sticky. We ate our sandwiches and headed back to the Lodge.


More birding along the way so we didn’t arrive until 6:10 after seeing a total of 119 species for the day! Bob dashed into the shower and finally succeeded in getting a warm one. I grabbed a beer and raced out to the pool to try and download photos for Thursday and Friday’s blogs, dashed back in to have a cool shower and meet the others for dinner at seven: fired chicken, veggie and mayo salad with flan for dessert. It’s is difficult to use the computer in the dark with frogs and who knows what about and I managed to lose the photos and will try again tomorrow$@#@.

(pics:  Yellow-lored Tody Tyrant, Dusky-legged Guan, Streamer-tailed Tyrants)

Sunday is a big election day for Brazil and everyone has to vote by law so we’re just going to birds nearby and say out of the towns since the traffic might be fierce.

Thursday, Sept 30 - Pico do Caledonia & Friday, Oct 1 - Serra dos Orgaos National Park

(pic:  leaf-cutter ants)

Thursday, Sept 30 - Pico do Caledonia



We had breakfast at 5:45 in order to leave at 6:30. The sky was partly cloudy and the day looked good. We drove through the lingerie capital once again and entered the trim and prosperous community of Caledonia. We started climbing on a one-lane cobbled-stone road leading up to a radio tower-covered mountain top. The road was incredibly steep and our van labored up around hairpin turns until it petered out at 5400’. We set off with our lunches and worked our way up to 6400’. We climbed for five hours and only went 1.1 miles, partly due to the inherent slowness of birding and partly to the ~20% slope. Several of us quit early and returned to the van as backs and knees were hurting, but Bob and I managed to stay with the leaders. Our goal was to hike up to the tree line at approximately 7000’ and see bird specialties that live only up there, but that was based on the van’s being able to deliver us to a higher elevation. Nevertheless we saw quite a few new species and some lovely wild hydrangea and fuchsia.

Our driver took us to a lovely small ranch called Sao Bernardo where we saw the beautiful Campo Flicker sitting on a fence lined with blooming Crown of Thorn euphorbias and a host of other birds. We got back to the Lodge at 5:15, cleaned up, did the List, and had a good dinner of chicken stroganoff, cheese potatoes and Brazilian biscuit & condensed milk pudding which was our favorite.


Friday, Oct 1 - Serra dos Orgaos National Park

We left the Lodge in heavy mist at 6:30 and headed south and west through small towns and past several horse-drawn carts being ridden in the break-down lane. We turned onto a freeway of sorts and then exited towards Serra dos Orgaos National Park (Mountains of the Organ Pipes - tall thin geological structures, that we never saw due to fog!!).

The entrance to the Park was impressive as were the park buildings, information signs and trails. (Brazil seems to be able to put quite a lot of money and expertise into their parks unlike our under-funded dilapidated ones!) We walked around a picnic area seeing lots of good birds in pleasant 70 degree weather before driving to the upper section of the park at 3800’. We set off walking on a fabulous boardwalk, the Trilha Suspensa, built on the path of a former aqueduct.

The boardwalk extends for almost a mile through bamboo and palm forest and varies from ground level to 18’ in height. After slipping, sliding and tripping on the Bamboo trail a few days ago, this was very luxurious. We saw wonderful birds like the Dusky-legged Guan, a brown and black stripped hen-sized bird with a brilliant red wattle under its beak, that runs along the ground. The fog cleared and then flowed over us again, but the temperature remained very pleasant. We walked back to the van and got our ham/cheese/lettuce/butter sandwiches. We had asked Andy, the Brit Lodge owner, for some cucumber slices which added crunch and moisture to the sandwich and improved them a lot.

After lunch we walked the boardwalk again and this time got wonderful displays from a Giant Antshrike, a great bird over one foot long, grey breast, black and white stripped wings and tail and a big black topknot. He flew around us three times, landing on the boardwalk railing each time, and each time I didn’t have my camera ready! Actually with ten people either struggling to see a bird or trying to explain where the bird is, it isn’t always easy to get in position, although we are always very polite to rotate places. Our group gets along with each other very well ,fortunately, as we are with each other almost every waking moment!

We finally started back home at four and hit three highway construction projects which required closing one side of the highway each time. Since this is Friday night, everyone is leaving Rio for country homes and the traffic backups were awful! We finally got home at six and John said we could compile our bird list after dinner. I dashed in, showered and dashed out to the pool, in the rain, and tried to get the computer to work, but then it started thundering and lightening and I though the better of it and quit for dinner, which was smoked sausage stew, rice and their famous lemon meringue pie.

(pic:  bromiliads)

Tomorrow is another full day in the field apparently, so who know when I’ll get yesterday’s and today’s blog out?? Bob got ten new life birds today for a trip total of 89 so far!

Note:  either the computer, under difficult conditions, or the blog, is refusing to properly down load the pics I select..others show up...very frustrating!