Avifauna Brasileira: Guia De Campo Avis Brasilis: The Avis Brasilis Field Guide to the Birds of Brazil by Tomas Sigrist is arguably the definitive guide to the birds of Brazil.   I probably never would have heard of this book if my guide, Gilberto didn’t have a copy.  It’s what he would use to communicate to me which species we had seen during the day as he doesn’t speak English.  It’s an excellent field guide and has the names of the birds in Portuguese, English and the scientific names.  After I left Urua, I checked a bookstore in Belem with no luck.  Surely I would find it in Sao Paulo where we had a day layover?  Nope, nada!  One bookstore checked all their branches by computer and no one had it.  Either it’s VERY popular or out of print.

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I struck out with my usual port of call for books – Amazon.com.  It’s not that they don’t have the book but I think $375 for a used copy is a bit too much! Just for fun, I Googled it again last week and found a copy at a more reasonably price through a British company which specializes in books on science and nature:  NHBS.  It’s still not cheap and I paid for express shopping to make sure it didn’t get lost but it’s an investment that a keen birder will use over and over again so I felt it was worth it.  The service was excellent and the book showed up in Australia in about 5 days including a weekend so I can recommend this company.  The listing is here and they also have some sample pages.  It comes in 2 volumes, one has the pictures of the birds and the maps where they are found; the other book contains a short paragraph about each bird in both English and Portuguese.

Sample page showing ranges of birds

Sample page of bird pictures

Sample page of text (Portuguese). The book also has English text>