NORTHEAST BRAZIL
Long Live the Lear's!
Minas Gerais Extension

From beautiful beaches to barren badlands, we traverse Northeast Brazil in a quest for specialties of the endangered caatinga, chapada, and Atlantic Forest habitats, plus endemics of the middle Rio São Francisco

$7375; extension $1675 (2008 fees); 22 days
From Recife. Limit: 14
Good to fine accommodations, easy terrain, warm to hot, generally dry climate. Our staff travel agents can book your air travel for this tour. Contact us at (800) 728-4953 for more information.

See our triplist for 2008 or 2007 or 2006.

Araripe Manakin male by guide Bret Whitney

Much of the states of Ceara, Piaui, western Pernambuco, and the vast interior of Bahia is seasonally quite arid and covered with a low, thorny woodland and scrub characterized by abundant cacti and terrestrial bromeliads.  This strange habitat, stark and hauntingly beautiful, is the caatinga, limited to northeastern Brazil, and one of the most extensively altered habitats in South America.  The caatinga features an endemic avifauna, many of its birds among the most poorly known and rarest in the New World.  Foremost is the magnificent Lear’s Macaw.  While the endemic Spix’s is now extinct in the wild, the Lear’s is little better off.  Fewer than 500 of these incredible birds are known to exist in remote areas—and are insufficiently protected.  If the rain, tire, and radiator gods are with us (meaning we make it to the area), we will see Lear’s Macaws, not a moment too soon.  Other specialties of the caatinga include Caatinga Parakeet, Least Nighthawk, Pygmy Nightjar, Broad-tipped Hermit, Spotted Piculet, the strange Red-shouldered Spinetail, Silvery-cheeked Antshrike, Black-bellied Antwren, Ash-throated Casiornis, Gray-eyed Greenlet, Scarlet-throated Tanager, and Red-cowled Cardinal.

But not all of northeastern Brazil is covered with caatinga.  Semi-deciduous woodland and cerrado-like scrub in a magnificent setting of ancient buttes and mesas are also important habitats.  Specialties to be sought here include Golden-capped Parakeet, the spectacular Hooded Visorbearer, Stripe-breasted Starthroat, Ochraceous and Tawny piculets, Gray-headed Spinetail, the fabulous Great Xenops (there is only one Megaxenops!), Caatinga and Pectoral antwrens, White-browed Antpitta, Buff-breasted Tody-Tyrant—and the gorgeous Araripe Manakin.  In May 2007, the Sincora Antwren (Formicivora grantsaui), which lives alongside the Hooded Visorbearer, was formally described to science.  We’ve been showing this handsome little bird to groups since 1994, but now it will have its own line on the checklist page!

And then there are the isolated, remnant Atlantic Forests of eastern Pernambuco and Alagoas, the ornithological exploration of which began in earnest only relatively recently.  Brazilian ornithologists have described no fewer than five new species in the past twenty-five years!  These include the elusive Alagoas Foliage-gleaner and Orange-bellied Antwren.  The Atlantic Forests of northeastern Brazil are also the last stronghold for many other rare endemics (such as Long-tailed Woodnymph and the spectacular Seven-colored Tanager).  Farther south, humid forest in Bahia is the venue for yet another assemblage of rarities that includes the bizarre Pink-legged Graveteiro (described only in 1996; Bret was a co-author), the ultra-rare Fringe-backed Fire-eye and Slender Antbird, Narrow-billed and Bahia antwrens, Rio de Janeiro Antbird, Bahia Tyrannulet, Fork-tailed Tody-Tyrant, and the beautiful Bahia Spinetail.

As a grand finale, we’ll offer an exciting post-tour extension to far northern Minas Gerais in search of several rare endemics of the middle Rio Sao Francisco river valley:  the recently described Plain-tailed Nighthawk (Nyctiprogne vielliardi), the huge Moustached Woodcreeper, Caatinga Black-Tyrant, Minas Gerais Tyrannulet, and Sao Francisco Sparrow.

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