2012

Conturbado desde o seu início, 2011 acaba hoje sem deixar saudades a quase ninguém. Na Europa foi a crise, no Japão o terramoto e tsunami, seguidos daquela é não só uma das mais graves crises nucleares, mas também claramente uma das mais escamoteadas pelos respectivos governantes. Em África, entre secas brutais, fome e guerra encontramos o cintilar de esperança de uma Primavera Árabe que na maioria dos países não parece estar a sobreviver às agruras do Inverno seguinte.

Muita graças à governação dos lideres europeus e norte-americanos, o mundo deu em 2011 passos largos no sentido de se tornar mais desigual, mais injusto e menos democrático. Os governos de extrema-direita que controlam hoje a maioria dos países europeus conseguiram convencer os seus povos que é errado viver com dignidade, que isso está acima das nossas possibilidades, e que está certo tirar dinheiro aos pobres para o dar aos ultra-ricos.

A esperança, essa, foi-nos repetidamente roubada, ao ponto de hoje muitas pessoas se interrogarem porque motivo hão de celebrar esta passagem de ano quando já está anunciado de antemão que 2012 será pior...

Não podemos cair nesta conversa da treta. Não podemos acreditar que não existem alternativas e que o único caminho possível é o pior. Vejamos os exemplos de vários dos países emergentes, onde é o crescimento de uma nova classe média que estimula as economias, vejamos até o exemplo dos Estados Unidos, onde o consumo interno estimulou a economia para acabar o ano em terreno positivo. A única esperança é tomar medidas decisivas para transferir de forma massiva o dinheiro que está perdido nos cofres sem fundo dos grandes investidores e devolve-lo ao povo, a quem ele pertence. Cada euro oferecido aos bancos é um euro deitado fora. Cada vez que permitimos aos nossos (pseudo-)governantes assaltarem o povo para ajudarem os seus mandantes - os grandes empresários, os banqueiros e os investidores sem escrúpulos - estamos a cravar mais um prego no caixão da nossa sociedade, da nossa democracia, em ultima análise da nossa Liberdade.

Por isso eu acredito que 2012 vai ser melhor, porque acredito que vai ser o ano em que os povos deste mundo vão começar a dar a volta ao texto e a recuperar o controlo do mundo e das suas vidas. O exemplo foi-nos já dado por tunisinos, sírios e egípcios, mas ficaram também patentes as dificuldades imensas que a mudança implica. Mas não podemos esquecer que nós somos muitos e eles são poucos. Em 2012, o mundo começará a girar de novo na direcção certa. Isto é algo em que acredito! Bom 2012!

Birding Innuendo in Brazil - III

On the previous chapter we got a first glimpse at some of the common birds you can find in an urban area in SE Brazil and in the surrounding rural areas. Today I will continue to report on my trip, which will now take us from the inland city of Campinas to the beautiful island of Ilha Bela, on the coast of São Paulo state.

En route to the coast

Ilha Bela is roughly 250 km (and a short ferry ride) away from Campinas. On the road you cross a landscape where the few remaining small patches of Atlantic forest are interwoven with agricultural grasslands, pastures and plantations. Although a fast moving car is not an ideal setting for bird-watching, I kept my eyes open, and a couple of stops at roadside gas stations or restaurants offered some chances to see the local avifauna.

My first sighting of the day was the southern lapwing Vanellus chilensis, a very common wader on agricultural grasslands. Later, I found my first saffron finch Sicalis flaveola during a short rest-stop, an unmistakable bird with its bright yellow plumage and orangey face. The trip offered two other spectacular birds: the fork-tailed flycatcher Tyrannus savana, with its impossibly long tail streamers; and one of the very symbols of Brazil, the toco toucan Ramphastos toco. The toco toucan is the largest of all toucan species, at 55-65 cm long. They are relatively common in most of Brazil, but never really abundant, so you are likely to see these birds while travelling around the country, but you can never really predict where you will see one. The flight silhouette of these birds seems odd at best, the wings seem to be placed too far back in their body and the bill resembles a large banana stuck on their forehead!

Fork-tailed flycatcher Tyrannus savana (photo from wikipedia.org)

Ilha Bela

I spent three days in Ilha Bela. Although I did spend most of my time basking in the sun on one of its beautiful beaches, I did keep my eyes open for birds. The island is basically a mountain that emerges from the ocean, so that only a small strip along the coast in flat enough to be populated, while the rest of the island is only accessible by dirt tracks and mostly covered with tropical forests. From the beaches you can easily spot brown boobies Sula leucogaster, neotropical cormorants Phalacrocorax brasilianus and the ever-present magnificent frigatebird Fregata magnificens, and I have to say it was a big surprise to find that the frigatebirds often form mixed flocks with black vultures, using the same ascending air currents to hover effortlessly in search of food. The other surprise was to find that unlike on the shores of Europe or North America, gulls are not common on this part of South America. In fact, it took me two days until I found my first kelp gull Larus dominicanus. Along the shores of the island it is also easy to find snowy egrets Egretta thula and, with a bit more luck, spotted sandpipers Actitis macularius. I actually spotted my first and only spotted sandpiper while kayaking along a rocky inlet.

The local beaches are also an excellent spot to identify the various swifts and swallows that occur on the island, including the southern rough-winged swallow Stelgidopteryx ruficollis, the grey-breasted martin Progne chalybea, the brown-chested martin Progne tapera, the sooty swift Cypseloides fumigatus and also the rather cosmopolitan bank swallow Riparia riparia.

Magnificent frigatebird Fregata magnificens (photo from waatp.nl)

Walking along the forest edge, or even on the streets of the local villages, I managed to add several more species to my list. Open grassy areas will often have a few masked water-tyrants Fluvicola nengeta, desperately displaying to impress potential mates, and the luxuriant trees offer a perfect setting to find bananaquits Coereba flaveola, white-eyed parakeets Aratinga leucophtalmus and yellow-lored tody-flycatchers Todirostrum poliocephalum. Along the roads and dirt tracks, while walking from one village to the next I found rufous-bellied thrushes Turdus rufiventris, which I later found to be one of the most common species throughout the trip. This was also the case with the beautiful and vocal tropical kingbird Tyrannus melancholicus. It was also on the side of a road that I spotted my first double-collared seedeater Sporophila caerulescens, a tinny bird with a striking bi-coloured plumage. On the main square of the town of Ilha Bela I had my best sighting of the maroon-bellied parakeet Pyrrhura frontalis, with their yellow-scaled chest, brown belly and white eye-ring.

Finally, I have to talk about hummingbirds. These birds are absolutely extraordinary, both because of their amazing colours, there unique way of flying and their extreme adaptation to their nectar-feeding way of living. However, I found them a very hard challenge for someone while virtually no experience in identifying these tinny and super-fast birds. Despite these difficulties I eventually managed to identify two species, both while laying on a hammock in front of my hostel. First I spotted a black jacobin Florisuga fusca, which is easily identified by its dark colour and white flank... that is when you finally manage to find it with your binoculars! It took me much longer to identify my second hummer, the fork-tailed woodnymph Thalurania furcata. One of the reasons why it took me so long was because Ilha Bela is outside the "official" breeding range of this species, which according to the books is not supposed to occur along the eastern coast of Brazil. So I only settled on my final identification as a fork-tailed woodnymph when I was absolutely sure that it not only had a clearly fork-tailed and green upper body, but also that it had a blue chest and green back, and no hint of blue or violet on its cap, thus discriminating this bird from the two other woodnymphs that occur in Brazil.

Fork-tailed woodnymph Thalurania furcata (photo from oiseaux.net)

This was about it for my time in Ilha Bela. On the next chapter of my Birding Innuendo in Brazil we will travel inland to try and find some birds in and around the historic colonial towns of Minas Gerais and their natural surroundings.

Birding Innuendo in Brasil - II

In the first chapter I covered some of the basics of preparing your trip to Brazil, now I will start to go over my personal experience of birding in Brazil when not birding, during my recent visit to the country.

Campinas

The main goal of my trip to Brazil was to attend the wedding of two Brazilian friends who live in Campinas, about 100 km north-west of São Paulo, so this was the starting point to my trip. If, like me, you are unexperinced with South American birds, even a little walk inside a large urban area like Campinas may reward you with some novelties. Some of your first sightings will probably be the omnipresent black vulture Coragyps atratus and the very vocal great kiskadee Pitangus sulphuratus. Be on the lookout for the tinny Columbina doves, the most common is the ruddy ground-dove Columbina talpacotii, easily identified by its grey head contrasting with the brown back with black stripes, but an alert observer may spot a couple other species among the mixed flocks, as we will discuss in later chapters. Of course, much to my disappointment, the two most abundant species in Campinas were the house sparrow Passer domesticus and the rock pigeon Columba livia. I had a nice surprise when I found out that burrowing owls Athene cunicularia can be easily spotted during the day in open grassy areas inside the city.

Ruddy ground-dove Columbina talpacotii (photo from ttnaturelink.com)

While spending a day at my friends country house I had the chance to look at birds in a rural area, where I quickly spotted grey-rumped swifts Chaetura cinereiventris, rufous horneros Furnarius rufus and rufous-collared sparrows Zonotrichia capensis with their typical striped head pattern. Even easier to spot than the rufous hornero is its nest, a large hoven-like structure made of mud and clay, often placed on top of telephone or electrial posts. The area was also full of raptors and, although the most abundant was still the black vulture, it was relatively easy to find the exuberant southern caracara Caracara plancus and the beautifull yellow-headed caracara Milvago chimachima with its unmistakable creamy body and black eye-stripe. I was lucky to have three aplomado falcons Falco femuralis land on a tree right next to me, giving me a great chance to see them at close range. Ground doves were also common here, but I was better impressed with the picazuro pigeon Patagioenas picazuro with its typicall wing pattern. The parrots are also common, both in the city and in the rural areas around it, but I found they are very hard to identify because of their very fast flight and tendency to land in the tree-tops where they are hidden by the rich tropical foliage. Eventually I managed to spot one that was landed in an open area and could identify it as a peach-fronted parakeet Aratinga aurea due to its orange forehead and lime-green belly.

Yellow-headed caracara Milvago chimachima (photo from avesderapinabrasil.com) 

Here ends chapter two of this Birding Innuendo in Brazil. On the next chapter we will continue our visit to Brazil with the trip to Ilha Bela, in the coast of São Paulo state. Both the trip and the time spent in Ilha Bela were an excellent opportunity to get to know a few more Brazilian birds.

Piscares de Olho - LXIX

Para o piscar de olho de hoje, não vou cair na tentação de procurar um tema natalício e vou antes voltar a um tema já repetido antes, Alhambra, o fabuloso monumento mourisco de Granada. Um dos ex libris daquele espaço, e uma das formas favoritas de tornar um espaço mais aprazível por parte da nobreza árabe, são os lagos e as águas correntes. Num dia bonito, os reflexos das águas frescas e aprazíveis dão facilmente origem a bonitos temas para fotografar, como a destes arcos, num dos lagos no interiores de Alhambra, com algumas carpas em primeiro plano para recordar que estamos a apenas a fotografar água, nada mais!

Birding Innuendo in Brasil - I

I recently had the opportunity to visit south-eastern Brazil. Although the main goal of my trip was not birding, even during the normal activities of visiting friends and family and touring the normal tourist attractions, there were plenty of chances to get in touch with the unbelievably rich Brazilian avifauna. 

I decided to make a small innuendo to the usual topics of my blog, and write up what you could call a small guide, or report, on birding in Brazil when you are not birding. These posts will be in English, in order to reach a wider audience.

So, to start. Things to do before you travel to Brazil. 

1) I have found that Brazil is not really as dangerous and full of crime as the media sometimes makes it sound. Yes they do have a high crime rate, and violent crime is a serious social issue, but crime is mostly limited to the larger cities, and even there it is mostly circumspect to the "problematic" neighbourhoods. Having said this, it might be a good idea to leave your best binoculars at home and bring along a cheaper pair. Of course you loose optical quality and this will limit your ability to identify birds but, as I said in the beginning, I am not writing about a birding trip to Brazil, but of how you can turn a regular trip into a satisfying birding opportunity. The same logic applies to cameras and/or camcorders.

2) Of course you will need a bird guide to help you sieve through the over 1.800 bird specie that have  beenreported in Brazil. I searched the web for good guides and most people seem to agree that the best are:

"Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica" by Martin de la Peña and co-authors
"Birds of South America" (2 volumes) by Robert S. Ridgely
"A Field Guide to the Birds of Brazil" by Ber van Perlo.

I decided to buy the third one, and found it quite satisfactory. The books is surprisingly compact, considering the number of species it covers, and has very good illustrations and species accounts. Of course, when covering such a wide range of species, the information has to be limited, and it would sometimes be nice to have more information. Also, although generally good, some illustrations were not absolutely accurate and these cause me some difficulties on identifying a couple of species. Still, overall I can recommend A Field guide to the Birds of Brazil as an excellent companion for you trip.

3) As I mention before, we are talking about a country that holds one of the most diverse avifaunas in the world. There have been reported over 1.800 species, belonging to 95 families. These represent nearly 20% of all bird species and 50% of all avian families. This means that, unless you are already very familiar with the birds of South America, when you start trying to identify birds in Brazil you wont even know on each part of the guide to look. The book I recommend as a very useful feature, in the beginning of the book the author summarises the main families and groups, with an illustration of a representative member of each group. This may help guide you to the section of the book where you might find the bird you found in the field. Even so, I recommend that you take the time to study your field guide and try to get a notion of the main families and groups, as well as checking in advance which species are more likely to be found in the part of the country you will visit. During my trip I only visited 3 states in south-eastern Brazil: São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, but even so, just during the austral summer there were nearly 700 potential species.

4) Beside studying your birds, you should also study the places you will visit. Any travel guide can give a wealth of information on many different places in Brazil, and may give some pointers on places where you may go for a quick bird-watching break, without changing your initial travel plans. For instance, and if you are in Rio de Janeiro it may be a good idea to visit the magnificent local Botanical Garden. There are many such guides, I used the DK guide to Brazil, but am sure that many others will serve the same purpose.

On the next chapter, I will start to describe my experience of birding in Brazil when not birding. In two weeks I identified 90 species, of which 80 where new to my life list!

Piscares de Olho - LXVIII

Talvez por terem sangue-frio, os répteis são muitas vezes alvo da repulsa e do nojo das pessoas. Na verdade, têm muito mais em comum connosco do que imaginaríamos. Tal como nós, gostam de se deitar ao sol e de aproveitar o astro-rei para aquecer os seus corpos. Esta simpática lagartixa apanhava sol numa das paredes de Alhambra, o grandioso monumento mourisco localizado em Granada. Achei piada à diferença de texturas no fundo, quebradas pela silhueta escura do réptil. Espero que tenham gostado também!

Piscares de Olho - LXVII

O piscar de olho de hoje leva-nos até à capital da Catalunha, Barcelona. Não confundir com uma qualquer cidade espanhola! Barcelona é muito popular entre os turistas, seja pela sua arquitectura, pelas suas praias, pelo permanente ambiente de festa ou pela cultura única. Quem desce a Rambla, avenida quintessencial da cidade, encontra certo ponto, do seu lado direito, o Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria, habitualmente conhecido simplesmente como La Boqueria. Quem entra fica geralmente impressionado com o colorido das frutas e vegetais, com a diversidade de peixe e marisco ou com os deliciosos sumos feitos na altura. Vale a pena uma visita pelo colorido, mas convém ir lá ao final da tarde, altura em que os vendedores baixam os preços na ânsia de vender os seus produtos!

Piscares de Olho - LXVI

Os holandeses são um povo frio e amorfo. Diria até inerte. Contudo, tudo isso muda no Koninginnedag, o "dia da rainha". Nesse dia os holandeses deixam tudo o que é sisudo e cinzento em casa e vêm para as ruas, pintados de cor-de-laranja, celebrar o aniversário da rainha. Curiosamente, esse dia, 30 de Abril, não é o dia de aniversário da rainha Beatrix, actual monarca da Holanda. Esta rainha faz anos a 31 de Janeiro, uma época do ano demasiado fria para celebrar o que quer que seja nas ruas. Felizmente, os holandeses além de frios e cinzentos são também pragmáticos. A anterior rainha, Juliana, fazia anos a 30 de Abril e quando a velha monarca faleceu e a sua filha subiu ao trono, em vez de mudarem o dia da rainha para o frio e húmido Janeiro, os holandeses decidiram que o aniversário da rainha é quando o homem quer e não quando a rainha nasce. Decidiram continuar a aproveitar a rainha como desculpa para encherem as ruas de festa, música, álcool e cor-de-laranja, e por uma vez no ano esquecerem que são o povo mais trombudo da Europa!

Bye bye Tugolândia, Brasil aqui vamos nós!

Este ano a minha prenda de anos não podia ser melhor, chegou o dia e cá vou eu a caminho de duas semanas e meia no país irmão, que é no fundo um irmão maior e mais feliz de Portugal! O que Portugal merecia é que eu não voltasse, mas infelizmente a viagem de regresso está marcada para dia 19...

Assim sendo, este blog fica por umas semanas em águas de bacalhau... ou talvez desse dizer em águas mornas e leite de coco!