The Mantiqueira Mountains in south-eastern Brazil are one of the highest points within Brazil. I am writing from our home in Monte Verde which is situated at an elevation of about 1750 meters - about 5700 feet! While we are located within the tropics, and are in the Atlantic rain forest, the climate here is much cooler than most would realize. Right now the outside temperature is hovering around 55°F and is headed into the high 40's tonight.
I plan to write periodically about our experiences here in Monte Verde, deep in the Mantiqueiras, and I will probably mix in other topics that concern us and the environment. Right now the hot subject is the bio-fuel revolution which is sweeping the world, and some would say provoking a wave of food price inflation. It's a topic that we talk about a lot here at the Neotropical Eco Foundation.
But for tonight I'll keep it light. One of the reasons that we ended up here was our interest in ecology and the environment and BIRDS. This portion of Brazil has a very high concentration of bird species and we are lucky to be in the middle of them. Forest birds are very hard to spot - they tend to stay up in the canopy. You can see them in silhouette against the bright blue sky, but try and identify them by their colors. Lot's of luck!
In our little patch of the forest, with a small clearing, we can observe them much better. We get almost daily visits from toucans (they sit and admire themselves in the windows) and guans, which are of the Cracidae family, Galliforme order. These birds are related to the Alagoas Curassow which has been in the news lately, since it has been driven to near extinction, at least partly by the sugarcane based ethanol industry in northeastern Brazil.
And then there are the humming birds. Many types, and they all come to feed together! I'll talk more about them in another installment.
