Chestnut-bellied Euphonia (??Nick Athanas)
Tropical Birding tour report - Brazil June 2006
We
finally left REGUA for Itatiaia, taking a detour to the coast to see Restinga
Antwren and various coastal birds first. We arrived at the famed Hotel do Yp??,
the highest and best hotel in the park, to find an absolute bonanza at the bird
feeders. Never have I seen such a brilliant group of birds concentrated in such
a small area. It was a swirl of colors with Blue-naped Chlorophonias (photo
left), Green-headed Tanagers, Yellow-fronted Woodpeckers, Chestnut-bellied
Euphonias all at the feeders. A short time later they were joined by a gang of
the outrageous Saffron Toucanet, and we even scoped a pair of Red-breasted
Toucans in a distant tree at the same time. The hummer feeders weren't bad
either with the typical highland species including our first Black Jacobin of
the trip. The show was so good we spent most of the afternoon there.
You
can't see everything at feeders, and early next morning we headed down the road
into the forest. We couldn't get very far before we were distracted by a big
mixed species flock in a bamboo patch highlighted by White-bearded Antshrike and
Black-billed Scythebill. Shortly thereafter a loud double-rap announced the
presence of a Robust Woodpecker, and we were able to track it down, eventually
seeing a pair perched nicely on the end of a dead snag. Farther down along a
trail we heard a Brazilian Antthrush, and were able to get off the trail into a
nice open "theater" where we called it in for an incredible show. In
the afternoon we birded lower down in the park and found a few new ones like a
Surucua Trogon that seemed to be glued to a wire and the unassuming Greenish
Schiffornis. The various other hummer feeders in the park that used to be good
now all seem to be gone or neglected, and we did not see much on them.
We
needed an early start to get up to the higher elevations of the park on the
Algulhas Negras road. Unfortunately, several of the party were struggling with
food poisoning - this was surprising and disappointing as the Yp?? has
reputation of having the best restaurant in the park - but these things can
happen anywhere. That wasn't a good start to the day, and the windy weather we
had up there did not improve the situation. This was the hardest day of birding
of the trip by an order of magnitude, with almost everything being a struggle
and even normally easy species not performing or else being a lot of hard work.
That's not to say there weren't any highlights - the mega-views of a male
Large-tailed Antshrike topped the list, but we also had good views of
Black-capped Piprites, Serra Tyrant-Manakin, Araucaria Tit-Spinetail, and
Rufous-tailed Antbird. Oddly, some birds were present in extraordinarily large
numbers. We some flocks of dozens of birds, all of which were Diademed Tanagers,
Bay-chested Warbling-Finch, and Red-rumped Warbling-Finch.
As
we left Itatiaia a cold front came in. Luckily all the heavy rain came down
while were driving between sites, and we were heading back to the lowland where
the cool weather would be welcome. We had a long stop in Perequ?? before
carrying on to Ubatuba; this is THE site for the beautiful and endangered
Black-hooded Antwren, which we did manage to see, as well as numerous lowland
forest specialties. We had our only good view of Buff-throated Purpletuft here
as well as our only sightings of Sao Paulo Tyrannulet and the smart Squamate
Antbird. Mixed flocks here were really good as we had better views of some of
the birds we had seen in REGUA and our best views of Fork-tailed Tody-Tyrant. |
