For me the best bird photography at Itororó was at the feeders right outside the lodge. The birds were close and, for the most part, out in the open, and you could photograph them fairly easily as they sat on nearby perches waiting their turn at the feeder.

The “field photography” was another story. The first morning, Andy Foster took those of us who were interested on a walk on one Itororó’s trails, and while we heard a lot of birds and got fleeting looks at a few, I have zero images to show for it—unless you count a very distant photo of a saffron toucanet. (That bird was the one I most wanted to see on the trip, and I struck out.) We also took two day trips to different elevations—if you go up or down, say, a thousand feet, you see entirely different species—and that, too, made for some challenging photography.

One such trip was to Pico de Caledonia, where we took the van as far as it could go then piled into a Land Rover for the rest of the climb. When we got as far as the Land Rover could go, we got out and walked up the road a few hundred yards more, until we were at about 6,300 feet—at least according to the altimeter app on my iPhone. The photo at the top of this page is from the highest point of our walk, looking across the mountains; you can see part of the city of Nova Friburgo in the valley below.

Glenn and Andy knew this to be a good spot for Read more