My, what long legs you've got!

Just got back from Brazil. Rachel and I spent the last week with our friends Andy and Cristina Foster (of Serra dos Tucanos) and took a six day trip north into the county of Minas Gerais, where we spent three nights at the Santuário do Caraça monastery (photo above), about 10 hours drive north of REGUA. Our main aim was to see the Maned Wolves Chrysocyon brachyurus that visit most nights to feed on kitchen scraps.

Maned Wolf is the largest canid in South America and is a strange looking animal to say the least, rather like a huge Red Fox on stilts! They are mainly nocturnal and solitary animals, found in open and semi-open habitats such as Cerrado where they feed mainly on mice and fruit. Since 1982 the monks at the monastery have been putting out kitchen scraps for them, and on two nights one or two animals came in to feast on meat scraps in front of a circle of onlookers - a rather bizzare scene, but blimey what great views (first and second photos and video)! How much of a negative effect this nightly ritual has on the wolves is open to debate, but from what we could see the animals appeared to spend most of the night away hunting natural food. On our first night a Striped Hog-nosed Skunk also made an appearance.

The video above was taken with a Canon 7D and Sigma 17-50mm f2.8-4.5 DC lens. For some excellent BBC footage of Maned Wolf in a more natural setting click here.

The monastery is located at the boundary of the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado (third photo) - a savanna biome with patches of woodland and scrub, covering a large area of the Brazilian plateau (about 21% of the country), which lies between the Atlantic Forest and the Amazon. We saw few birds not found in the REGUA area and only a few lifers, but had great looks at Dusky-legged Guan (forth photo), King Vulture, Black-and-white Hawk-Eagle, Red-legged Seriema, Planalto Hermit, Scale-throated Hermit, White-throated Hummingbird, Sapphire-spangled Emerald, Amethyst Woodstar, Toco Toucan, Green-barred Woodpecker, Large-tailed Antshrike, Variable Antshrike, Dusky-tailed Antbird, Rufous Gnateater, Crested Black-Tyrant, Velvety Black-Tyrant (fifth photo), Long-tailed Tyrant (sixth photo), Rusty-margined Flycatcher, Sirystes, Grey-eyed Greenlet, Magpie Tanager, Gilt-edged Tanager and White-browed Warbler.

Once again a very successful trip to Brazil. REGUA is developing fast and I feel priviledged to be a part of this pioneering and important project. Althought some birds are much harder to see in the austral winter compared to the spring, the winter mixed species flocks make birding at this time of year very exciting.