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Man, was it dry out there. TV reports we saw during the tour were saying that interior NE Brazil, particularly in southern Ceara and Pernambuco (where we spend about one third of the tour), was experiencing the worst drought in over a hundred years! Interior Bahia was supposedly seeing the worst dry spell in 70+ years. This was simply amazing to me, because we’d had a deluge of rain on last year’s NE Brazil tour, exactly one year earlier. At a lunch stop in the little town of Uaua, in the badlands of northern Bahia near the Raso da Catarina where Lear’s Macaw breeds, I asked the proprietor when it had last rained. He thought for a moment, then said it had been more than a year. Laughing, I reminded him that, exactly 365 days ago, it had rained cats and dogs all over the place (check out the video clips from the 2016 tour on the FG website). He said, “Pois e, aquela chuva foi a ultima.” (Yup, that was the last rain.) So, I guess the “70-year record” equated to “a full year without rain, at least locally”. Regardless, this 2017 tour was certainly the driest I have done since we started offering NE Brazil in 1993. Still, we managed to get caught under a cloudburst at the Chapada do Araripe during one of the few half-hour periods we were far from our vehicle. It did feel like the dry was on the verge of breaking as we got into the final days of the tour, so perhaps relief for the vegetation, wildlife, and people of the caatinga region is finally on the way.

Literally in spite of the severe drought, this 2017 tour turned out to be among the very best ever (and that’s saying a lot!). Mornings were darned quiet and most species in the interior were in low numbers and not yet breeding (awaiting the first good rains), but, similar to the tagline from “The X Files” – “The truth is, they’re out there.” The dry conditions surely helped us in some ways, such as simplifying the drives into the Murici and Frei Caneca reserves at the beginning of the trip (muddy roads had shut us out of Murici last year), and the generally leafless caatinga made for easy viewing of every bird out there. Thus, we ran the route with a positive attitude, employed a variety of alternative ways to get birds into view (as opposed to straightforward playback of territorial songs), and, at the end of the run, we had seen virtually everything we usually expect to get (only Pinnated Bittern, Masked Duck, Stripe-breasted Starthroat, and White-naped Xenopsaris were completely lacking) and even picked up a couple of rarities that we have seldom had on the tour. Top votegetters for “bird of the trip” were Buff-fronted Owl (beautiful views of this mysterious little owl), Lear’s Macaw, Araripe Manakin, Hooded Visorbearer, Great Xenops, Fringe-backed Fire-eye, and Short-tailed Antthrush (each of which got multiple votes, no surprise!), followed by a list of a dozen others that garnered a single vote each (like White-collared Kite!).

Following a city tour and festive evening in the old part of Salvador, the Southern Bahia Extension got underway. This productive week of birding will henceforth be called “Bahia Birding Getaway”, a stand-alone tour that will still be backed up to the “Nowhere but Northeast Brazil” tour. We had a great time around Boa Nova, which has recently become much more effectively protected within new Boa Nova National Park. Highlights were many, with Giant Snipe again topping the list, followed by Pink-legged Gravateiro, Silvery-cheeked Antshrike, Narrow-billed Antwren, Bahia Tyrannulet, Rio de Janeiro Antbird, and Bahia Spinetail. We finished up with a couple of mornings near Porto Seguro, near the southern Bahian coast, where we had superb views of a singing White-winged Potoo (a pair of birds), and scope studies of Hook-billed Hermit, Ringed Woodpecker (Atlantic Black-breasted), and White-winged Cotinga (no Banded, as usual, darn it).

Marcelo Barreiros did a great job co-leading with me in his apprenticing slot on the main tour, as he did on the 2016 tour. We both tremendously enjoyed birding with all of you, and we thank you so much for choosing to bird NE Brazil with Field Guides. We certainly look forward to seeing you for more exciting Brazil birding when the next chance comes around!

Thanks so much to Robin, Larry, and The Walrus for sharing your great photos. I have included some of them in the list, below.

-- Grandes abracos, Bret & Marcelo

KEYS FOR THIS LIST
One of the following keys may be shown in brackets for individual species as appropriate: * = heard only, I = introduced, E = endemic, N = nesting, a = austral migrant, b = boreal migrant

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

Certainly foremost among other critters we saw was the baby Three-striped short-tailed Opossum (Monodelphis americana) at Frei Caneca -- a rarely seen animal nearly endemic to the Atlantic Forest, with a slight westward extension toward the mouth of the Amazon. Also seen, near Tamandare, was an agouti with a red rump, the ID of which is uncertain. I believe Dick is putting together a list of significant other (non-avian) sightings, which will be welcome!

Totals for the tour: 453 bird taxa and 10 mammal taxa