February 3, 2014, Belem, Brazil — This morning, Giuliano, Bianca and I joined another local birder, Fabiano Oliveira. Oliveira had access to a gated part of Chapada dos Guimaraes National Park, so at dawn, four of us were out there ready to go. Giuliano managed to heat up a thermos of coffee on the back bumper before sunrise. A Burrowing Owl watched us in silhouette. 2956 We spent the first couple hours of the day on a dirt road in a good patch of Cerrado habitat, looking for a few specialties on my last morning in central Brazil. I added just five new birds, but they were good ones: Blue-winged Macaw, White-vented Violetear, Collared Crescentchest, Rufous-sided Pygmy-Tyrant, and a pair of perky Chapada Flycatchers—a species that wasn’t described until 2001, with a specimen collected on this very road. The track ended at a massive, vertiginous overlook of sandstone cliffs, formed when the Andes uplifted, in an area known as the “stone city.” We enjoyed the view there...