The Birds of Brazil

Few nations can match the biodiversity of Brazil, with its vast size and wealth of geographical regions, from the Amazon rainforest to the wetlands of the Pantanal. And nowhere is that biodiversity more strikingly on display than in Brazil’s birdlife, which features thousands of species, many of them endemic. In an effort to catalog and illustrate that birdlife, the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society is publishing a five-volume series, Birds of Brazil. The first volume, published recently, features 743 species found in two unique ecoregions of central Brazil. One is the sprawling Pantanal plain, a seasonally flooded wetland — and famed birding site — that features such species as the Toco Toucan and golden-collared Macaw. The other is the Cerrado, the world’s most biodiverse savanna ecosystem. The book was written by an international team of four ornithologists and bird artists.