Dear Alan,
The Cristalino Jungle Lodge is a treasure! The Lodge has the largest
bird list of any single location in Brazil, more than 520 species
seen near the lodge buildings. I'm not aware of any lodge in South
America that gives a real wilderness experience and is so close to a
city that includs regularly scheduled commercial airline service.=20
Civilization is starting to threaten this area, but for now it
remains wonderfully wild. All the species (including jaguar, tapir,
big parrots and macaws, guans and more) that are first to be removed
by human habitation are still present here in good numbers. Be sure
to tell us if that enormous 8 meter anaconda is still being seen in
the river! The lodge owners, Vitoria da Riva Carvalho and her son
Edson, are working hard to preserve this region as wilderness. For
information about Cristalino, see the website
http://www.cristalinolodge.com.br/english/cristalino.htm
The birding at Cristalino is well described in Ornithological
Monograph number 48 of the American Ornithologists Union: "Survey Of
a Southern Amazonian Avifauna: The Alta Floresta region, Mato Grosso,
Brazil." By: Kevin J. Zimmer, Theodore A . Parker, Parker III, Morton
L. Isler, Phyllis R. Isler
Samuel Hansson worked as a volunteer birding guide at Cristalino
Jungle Lodge in 2001. See his report about the area at
http://worldtwitch.virtualave.net/hansson_brazil_2001.htm
While the owners speak English, none of the camp staff do, so you
should learn as much Brazilian Portuguese as you can before you leave
for Cristalino. You can reach Samuel by email at
Now to the question of learning the bird songs:
The Birder's Notebook is a software package designed to create
customized bird lists linked to audio and video clips. It runs on
Windows PCs
http://home.att.net/~ggsoftware/BNotebook.html
"Land Birds of Southeast Brazil" is an application developed using
the Birder's Notebook.
http://www.birdsongs.com/Others/HeinzRemoldSEBrazil/main.htm
If you're intent on using a browser interface, I think it would not
be difficult to create a Flash application that randomly played an
audio clip, and then waited for your keyboard input before proceeding
to the next clip.
Assembling the audio clips to use in this project will be a
challenge. While recordings in the western Amazon (lowland Peru and
Ecuador) are available on CD, the southern Amazon avifauna is poorly
represented. (Cristalino is about 900 miles east of Manu, Peru, and
700 miles south of Manaus.) Most CDs of Brazil were recorded in the
Atlantic rainforest, near the population centers of southeast
Brazil.=20
When looking for recordings of a particular species, a CD that will
prove useful is "Catalog of Audio Guides to the Birds of South
America" by Lanus and Caro, published in 2001 by LOLA in Buenos
Aires. The CD contains a spreadsheet listing commercial sources of
recordings for virtually all birds in North, Central and South
America. Contact the publisher, Colin Sharp, at
Jeremy Minns is a recordist based in Sao Paulo. He may be able to
point you to sources not represented on commercial CDs. You can send
him email at
I envy you the chance to stay for an extended period at Cristalino
Jungle Lodge!
--oryoki
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