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Birding in Brazil (1 Viewer)

tomjenner

Well-known member
I will be visiting Brazil this summer for 6 weeks and I need some advice. Firstly, what is the best field guide to use? helmut Sick's book is very big and very expensive, so I would like to avoid that if possible. I have the guide by Deodato Souza, which shows all the birds and is a good start. However, they are a bit sketchily drawn and have little description. I am also a bit unsure about the names used, as they don't seem to match up at all well with the names used by Wheatley. I guess the Ecuador, Peru and Columbia guides are only really of use in the West of the country. I will only be in the east, mainly in Minas Gerais. I may have to take the handbooks with me if all else fails, but I wouldn't really want to use them in the field.
I also need some info on sites to visit. I have Nigel Wheatley's guide to South America which has a few sites in the area, but someone may know of something more specific or a website that has some good info and trip reports for this area.
Any help would be much appreciated, as the preparation for this is looking a bit daunting at the moment.
Tom
 
tomjenner said:
I will be visiting Brazil this summer for 6 weeks and I need some advice. Firstly, what is the best field guide to use? ... I will only be in the east, mainly in Minas Gerais. I may have to take the handbooks with me if all else fails, but I wouldn't really want to use them in the field. I also need some info on sites to visit.

There is a new guide (in Portuguese but with scientific names) that would be useful to you in eastern Brazil: the book by Edwin Willis and Yoshica Oniki "Aves do Estado de São Paulo" (Birds of São Paulo State), it is possible to buy, via mail from this site (in Portuguese and English):

http://www.ao.com.br/

The Collins Guide to the Birds of Southern South America is also moderately useful as well as Narosky and Itzurieta's Guide to the Birds of Argentina.

Regarding birding sites, check out Jeremy Minns notes in Grosset's site

http://www.arthurgrosset.com/

Those notes update the late Bruce Forrester's book "Birding in Brazil" and some are quite recent. You may want to contact Jeremy (in São Paulo, his e-mail can be found in Grosset's site). John Wall's site

http://worldtwitch.com/

also has good information and links to birding in Brazil and manmy trip reports. An excellent bird report of an independent birding trip to Brazil covering that area you intend to visit is the one by John van der Woude

http://home-1.worldonline.nl/~jvanderw/


Enjoy your trip planning,

Dalcio
 
My request obviously got to the right person. Thanks Dalcio, that's even better than I was hoping for. The book looks really great and there are some really good tips and websites for me to browse through. Now I feel a lot more confident that the trip will be a success.
Tom
 
Books to get:

Note that there is no really good birding guide for Brazil. Recently a Portuguese book got a thorough update and a translation into English. The result is “All the Birds of Brazil” by Deodato Souza. Yes, it may have been updated, but the drawings and much of the text is still useless, and I consider it more of an illustrated checklist with maps than a “real” guide. It is rather small, so it is still worth bringing it, if as nothing else, a checklist with maps. Using that one alone will leave many species unidentified – forget about flycatchers! I especially love one flycatcher, where it is states (and nothing else!) “No good fieldmarks” (!) – try identifying that one! Also, several species recently split are only mentioned very briefly under the superspecies. This means that Cryptic (Such’s) Antthrush is not illustrated but only mentioned under Short-tailed A. The same is the case with Bertoni’s Antbird mentioned under Ferruginous A. In the far south (i.e. Foz do Iguazu) guides for Argentina work just fine. However, the second you move north as far as Sao Paulo, many species are not found in Argentinean guides. Note, that recently the guide “Guia para la Identificación de las Aves de Iguazú” was published. In real, it is nothing but the relevant species taken from “Birds of Argentina & Ururguay” by T. Narosky and D. Yzurieta. So, waste of money in my opinion. Another option is “The Birds of Brazil” by Sick. It’s a good (MASSIVE) book, but not at all a field guide. In other words; rather useless when you are actually standing “out there”. Guess “natural history” is a better word for it. Other than that, the book “Birds of Southwestern Brazil” by Bathasar Dubs proved very useful for the Pantanal region. Recently, I discovered that another book has been published (in July this year [that was 2003]) called “Aves do Estado de São Paulo” by Edwin O. Willis & Yoshika Oniki, and it should prove very useful for areas like Itatiaia and Serra dos Orgaos. I still haven’t seen it, though. It is, as the title indicates, in Portuguese, but it is rather easy to read if you read Spanish (as mentioned in a previous email, speaking it, is a totally different matter!). For the far north the new edition of "Birds of Venezula" by Steve Hilty is very useful. Other than that, we are talking the usual “Birds of South America” by Ridgely, both volumes of which, depicts a very large number of “Atlantic-forest” species. Another “guide” is the multivolume “The Land Birds of Southeast Brazil” by Heinz Remold. So far only one volume has been published covering the sub-oscine passerines. It is a cd-rom for the computer with a fieldguide look-alike interface (i.e. a drawing and text) but it also include (and this is where I found it useful) quite a few recordings of birdvoices. The only other guide I know of covering the voices of birds from the Atlantic Forest-region, is the (also very useful) cd “Avers das Montanhas do Sudeste do Brasil” by Luiz P. Goonzaga and Gloria Castiglioni. On this cd 99 species (names in Portuguese, English and Latin) are covered, most being species restricted (endemic) to the Atlantic Forest-area. For the central regions of Brazil (i.e. the dry Cerrado and Caatinaga) I never found any recordings available publicly. A few has been published privately in recent years, but they are no longer available (as far as I know). For the lower Amazon & Pantanal the cd-rom “Birds of Bolivia 2.0” (by Sjoerd Mayer) is very useful. It also covers a few of the species from the dry interior of Brazil. For the north side of the Amazon the cd-rom “Birds of Venezuela / Aves de Venezuela” (by Peter Boesman) is very useful. Also, remember the following useful family cd’s/tapes: “Song of the Antbirds” by Phyllis Isler & Bret Whitney, “Voices of New World Parrots” by Bret Whitney et al. and “Voices of Woodcreepers” by T.A Parker et al.
Otherwise, when it comes to a “real” fieldguide, you will have to wait a few more years though I know at least one is being prepared.


** Not part of the original letter:
When I was there the last time it hadn't been published: "Handbook of the Birds of the World" vol. 8 covers several families that are found in Brazil; Furnariidae (Ovenbirds), Dendrocolaptidae (Woodcreepers), Thamnophilidae (Typical Antbirds), Formicaridae (Ground-Antbirds), Conopophagidae (Gnateaters) & Rhinocryptidae (Tapaculos). Vol. 9 will among others cover Tyrant-flycatchers. Until a "real" guide for Brazil is published it may be a good idee to bring copies of some of the plates. I say "copies" because I seriously doubt that anybody will cut the plates out...!
 
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Brazilian Ornitologists web site

Hi everyone,
I just wanted to mention a web site set up by Brazilian Ornitologists Committee, rewriting the list of the birds of Brazil. It seems to be quite comprehensive list and includes recent changes in species classifications. It doesn't have any drawing or photos, but it could be used as a reference.
This is the address.
http://luizfigueiredo.sites.uol.com.br/cbro/index.htm

Cheers,
Wes
 
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