Trogons and termites

Great excitement this morning. The elusive Surucura Trogon (how such a beautiful bird acquired such an ugly name beats me) - anyway, the Surucuras are back. I've heard them most weekends, but been unable to spot them for ages. However, as I lazed in bed this morning, I spotted movement in what I had thought to be a partly-built and abandoned Rufus Hornero's nest. I leapt out of bed and into the garden and found that it was a Surucura, which kept circling the spot. I thought it must be a newly fledged young one, as it didn't fly away when I climbed up the bank, and allowed me to get quite close.

Cue for a morning of twitching. After a while, I realized there was a female there too, brilliantly camouflaged. Even though she had a yellow chest, like the male, she was invisible until she moved. At first I thought she was the mother bird, watching over her young, but it was soon clear that the male was preparing a nest - she was just watching, to see if it came up to scratch. The 'hornero's nest' was in fact a termite mound, which he was digging out - and providing it with front and a side entrances.

Meanwhile, a wee tragedy was being enacted out front. On our arrival last night, the first thing the caretaker's wife said was that the babies had been born. We looked at her blankly until she explained that the chicks of the Chopi Blackbirds, nesting in a little azalea bush, had hatched. This morning, she called me to see the nest and one dead fledgling on the ground, and the other two gone. She suspects a hawk, but it could have been a snake, a cat, a skunk, or....

Brazil seems to exercise a magnetic effect on people who left here around 30 years ago. Today we met up for lunch with yet another, and one of his ex-schoolmates (she still lives here, after periods abroad, but the magnetic effect worked sooner with her). Cue for the rest of the day talking about old times (not that we had shared many of them, as he left Brazil not long after I arrived - HH knew him for longer and always remembers some massively long golf shots that went down in club history).

A good day - and about the fourth running that I've done everything except work. I'll NEVER get through it all before we travel.