A century in the past, timber have been cleared atop Brazil’s Aratanha Mountains to make approach for plantations. When the farms closed down, forest reclaimed the mountains. And now, concerted efforts by biologists are bringing birds again to Aratanha as properly.
From the Winter 2026 situation of Dwelling Chicken journal. Subscribe now.
On an early crisp morning in northeastern Brazil, a white Toyota Hilux pickup truck barreled by way of a dense tropical forest like a robber’s getaway automotive. Sitting subsequent to the motive force, I clutched two treasured items of cargo in material luggage that swung with each twist and switch up the endless rocky street. Every bag held a tiny fowl, and I may solely hope they weren’t half as anxious as I used to be.
Two Cornell College undergraduates from the category of 2026, Lorena Patrício and Brian Hofstetter, gamely held on tight behind me, additionally gripping birds in luggage. I puzzled aloud how our expenses is likely to be stomaching the joyride.
“They most likely assume they obtained swallowed,” mentioned Hofstetter.
In any other case, we barely broke our silent focus through the 30-minute ascent, the final stretch of a two-hour journey. We had one job: to carry the baggage in entrance of us with out touching something.
The birds have been Ceara Gnateaters—small, chubby, orange-brown, insect-eating birds. Categorised as endangered by the Brazilian authorities, they’re prone to disappearing together with the northeastern Atlantic Forests, their solely residence.
The fowl’s identify comes from the Brazilian state of Ceará, the place it was described by naturalists within the early twentieth century. The 350-mile ocean coast of Ceará is a vacationer hotspot for solar lovers—about 140 miles south of the Equator with famed seashores, mangroves, and sand dunes. Its panorama of sunbathing and nightclubs blasting forró music was a world away from our truck’s vacation spot on the inland peak of the Aratanha Mountains.
The roller-coaster street finally gave method to a easy parkway and manicured garden. On our proper, a placid, artifical lake shimmered within the morning solar; on the left, a three-story picket mansion stood guard over the Fazenda Espírito Santo, or Holy Spirit Farm.
The farm’s identify is coincidentally apt, because it’s surrounded in ghostly silence by an “empty forest.” The time period was coined by Wildlife Conservation Society ecologist Kent H. Redford in 1992 to explain Neotropical forests that seem intact, however are devoid of huge mammals and birds on account of human impression.
The gnateaters in our luggage have been right here to assist fill the void in Aratanha, as a part of a significant rewilding challenge that started in 2022 with the reintroduction of a once-critically endangered parakeet. About 20 miles and a couple of,500 toes in elevation away from the state capital of Fortaleza and its 2.5 million sun-drenched residents, Aratanha immediately is a mountain forest refuge roughly the scale of Manhattan. Within the nineteenth century there was no forest right here, simply colonial espresso and sugarcane plantations. When these farms failed, the forest reclaimed the land. The forest wildlife, although, by no means returned in full drive—most likely as a result of Aratanha is basically tough to get to.
“The entry to Aratanha is horrible and doubtless on function,” says biologist Fábio Nunes, 47, of the native nonprofit conservation group Aquasis, which has been main the rewilding effort. “There are about solely six property house owners right here immediately, and so they don’t need individuals from the town to search out this place. So it has every part to be remoted. For us, it’s like a laboratory.”
After three years driving up and down Aratanha to start restocking this forest with birdlife, Nunes feels the work is paying off and the silence is lastly starting to be damaged on this tropical soundscape. And that is solely the start, Nunes says. Early successes have inspired Aquasis to make extra plans to carry again extra fowl species in Aratanha, and, finally, even different varieties of fauna.
“It’s a inexperienced paradise, albeit an empty one,” Nunes says. “Simply think about what number of animals may very well be right here.”
“Tooth-Suckers” and “dirty-Faces”
In a forest path away from the mansion, the gnateaters have been ready for launch at Aratanha. They’d been caught in mist nets three hours earlier than by the Aquasis crew in a a lot larger forest 40 miles away within the Baturité Mountains, a spot with an analogous previous and really totally different current.
The gnateaters appeared as discreet as some other plain brown fowl, till I seen the male’s placing white stripe of plumage operating alongside the aspect of its head. Nunes says these stripes get bristled, trying like exaggerated eyeliner, when the fowl is defending its territory.
The Cornell undergrads arrange a desk and gently pulled the birds out of their fabric luggage to weigh them, connect ID bands to their skinny legs, and extract DNA by plucking a small feather with a blood-rich base.
Then the birds have been launched, and so they wasted no time disappearing into the foliage. Their squeaky calls—the gnateaters make a sound like somebody sucking enamel, therefore their Brazilian identify chupa-dente do nordeste, or “tooth-sucker of the northeast”—quickly died away, and the forest went quiet once more.
For a second, we have been quiet, too. I’m certain all of us shared the identical thought, hoping the critters would survive to construct a brand new residence in Aratanha. However the silence was short-lived. A flock of 20 just lately launched Grey-breasted Parakeets confirmed up within the cover to take a look at the scientists. Their refrain of raspy calls crammed the air with some very welcome noise.
The Grey-breasted Parakeet additionally has a humorous Brazilian identify, often called cara-suja, or “dirty-face,” due to the darkish brownish pink feathers that give its face a smudged look, as if it had indulged in a bucket of wine. The parakeets have been the primary species reintroduced right here by Aquasis in 2022, and it’s been an amazing success, with the native inhabitants of reintroduced birds doubling in underneath 5 years from pure replica.
With the dirty-faces and tooth-suckers now inhabiting Aratanha’s empty forest, one may say the place has formally earned its haunted status. Nonetheless, as I noticed the parakeets’ distinctive beaks resembling cheeky smiles, I felt a distinct vibe. Aratanha and its new creatures are literally an indication of hope.
Aquasis plans to reintroduce six extra fowl species thought-about endangered by the state authorities, together with the Gould’s Toucanet and Band-tailed Manakin—each of which, together with Grey-breasted Parakeets, play essential roles in forest regeneration as seed dispersers.
“They’re gonna eat all of the fruits that are actually rotting on the bottom,” says Nunes, including that the fruits’ seeds will come out the opposite ends of the birds. “It is going to be an infinite profit to the forest.”
Within the huge Aratanha laboratory, Nunes says there’s nonetheless room for bringing again many different wildlife species sooner or later. Finally Aquasis plans to reintroduce mammals such because the agouti, a medium-sized rodent, which can additional assist the Aratanha forest turn out to be more healthy.
“In contrast to many frugivores, the agouti buries seeds for later consumption,” says Nunes, “and plenty of of those forgotten seeds finally germinate.”
Nunes additionally desires of bringing again the puma, which has no current data within the space, in addition to the critically endangered frog Adelophryne maranguapensis, which can have already got vanished from the realm.
“Aquasis’ work is so inspiring and distinctive,” says David Bonter, codirector of the Middle for Engagement in Science and Nature on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which supported Patrício and Hofstetter’s fieldwork with Aquasis by way of the Experiential Studying Award program. “It’s a giant experiment going into Aratanha, constructing on the success of the parakeets. I used to be impressed by how a lot good work they have been doing with on-the-ground conservation.”
A Story of Two Mountains
The Aratanha and Baturité Mountains share a singular habitat—inexperienced islands of high-elevation rainforests that float above the encircling lower-elevation brown shrublands. It’s a panorama tens of hundreds of years within the making. In prehistoric instances when the Amazon and the Atlantic forests have been increasing, they met one another in Ceará. When the local weather turned drier and the forests retracted, the highlands retained sufficient humidity to stay as forest fragments. In the meantime, the encircling lowlands turned caatinga, a semiarid biome that covers virtually 90% of Ceará state.
“The forests met up there and, so to talk, they kissed,” says Weber de Girão Silva, an Aquasis biologist and famous professional on Ceará’s biodiversity. “And the results of that love, it’s a really particular refuge.”
“It’s the one place on Earth the place sure species of the Atlantic Forest and the Amazon meet,” he continues, citing examples such because the Purple-necked Tanager of the Atlantic and the Gould’s Toucanet of the Amazon.
The Aratanha and Baturité mountain ranges have been each closely impacted by previous agricultural exercise. However Aratanha, being 5 instances smaller than Baturité, suffered far more. In the midst of the nineteenth century, farmers harvested native timber for shipbuilding and coated the slopes with espresso, sugarcane, cotton, banana, and maniçoba, a latex-producing tree. By the early years of the twentieth century, the soil was depleted and the farms have been gone, pushed off by a collection of plagues and droughts, lack of presidency assist, and a labor exodus.
Whereas immediately Aratanha is quiet, Baturité is buzzing with exercise. For the reason that Nineteen Nineties espresso farming has made a comeback right here, however in a way more sustainable approach, with espresso crops grown underneath the shade of the unique Atlantic Forest. Farmers now produce small batches of high-quality beans, an effort that has additionally fueled ecotourism by way of the area’s Inexperienced Espresso Path.
Baturité’s paved roads get congested on the weekends with visitors to quite a few charming lodges and eating places that cater to the Fortaleza elite escaping the warmth of the capital 60 miles away. Though the Baturité mountains nonetheless assist a wealth of fauna and flora, with native surveys documenting 259 species of birds, biologists worry for the way forward for this forest that’s underneath intense stress from growth. The indicators are in all places.
Driving round Baturité, Nunes identified patches of land illegally burned to develop corn for cattle. Down the mountains, we may see the thorny shrubs of the caatinga threatening to return up. For Nunes, the growing variety of rattlesnakes discovered within the forest proves the land is drying out. Some communities already rely upon water truck deliveries.
“We haven’t given up on Baturité, however we’d like methods,” mentioned Nunes. “It nonetheless has birds, and Aratanha doesn’t.”
Nunes mentioned that the now pristine Aratanha may function a backup refuge for a lot of wildlife species that might turn out to be threatened in Baturité: “Aratanha is the one humid highland forest within the area that’s not being degraded.”
Chupa-Dente Meets a Frog
Baturité boasts about 3,000 Ceara Gnateaters, in response to a 2024 survey by Aquasis. This previous June, 28 of these chupa-dentes have been translocated to Aratanha. And for 40 days, the Cornell undergrads monitored the brand new arrivals in Aratanha.
Earlier than the gnateaters have been launched into their new residence, Patrício and Hofstetter mounted mini VHF radio transmitters on the backs of 5 of the birds, due to funding from the Affiliation of Discipline Ornithologists and the American Ornithological Society. In addition they put in eight autonomous audio recording models in Baturité and 6 in Aratanha, so as to acoustically survey the forest soundscapes. The units have been donated by the Cornell Lab’s Yang Middle for Conservation Bioacoustics.
“The recorders in Baturité function a management,” says Patrício. The recorders in Aratanha will present audio information on the soundscape earlier than and after the gnateater reintroductions. The hope, she says, is that they are going to hear chupa-dente songs through the breeding season from November to February in Aratanha which might be just like the degrees of gnateater singing in Baturité.
Patrício, 23, a Brazilian from São Paulo state, and Hofstetter, 22, an Arizona native who speaks flawless Portuguese, blended in working side-by-side with the devoted Aquasis subject crew, which included a gaggle of six Cearenses, or Brazilians born and raised in Ceará. Jonas Cruz, a 29-year-old subject technician, used his experience in chupa-dente habits to catch the birds in mist nets, whereas environmental educator Érica Demondes—who has a grasp’s diploma in bioacoustics—helped with organising and working the audio recorders.
In January, Patrício plans to return to Brazil over her winter break at Cornell to assist Aquasis with hopefully discovering gnateater nests through the breeding season.
“There’s not a lot on the market about translocations of insectivores, so we’re studying,” says Patrício.
Extra Science in South America
Certainly, the primary chupa-dente liberated in Aratanha suffered a grisly destiny. On the third day in its new residence, the fowl’s VHF transmitter sign gave the impression to be fully nonetheless. Patrício and Hofstetter tracked its sign to the underground shelter of a giant northeastern pepper frog, which emerged briefly from its burrow within the forest ground to indicate off a skinny metallic wire protruding from its mouth.
“I actually wished my radio tag again,” Hofstetter says.
After a painstaking hunt and loads of digging, the machine was retrieved (together with the deceased fowl) from the frog’s abdomen.
“The issues that I’ve achieved earlier than have been extra pure science-based, and right here it is extremely utilized, which I very a lot take pleasure in,” says Hofstetter. “It’s been so significant to be right here.”
After the gnateater reintroductions, Hofstetter and Patrício monitored the brand new arrivals through telemetry with a radio antenna borrowed from the Federal College of Pará, and so they spent their nights in Aratanha on the Holy Spirit Farm owned by Fernando Cirino Gurgel, an area businessman who has been a key supporter of the challenge. The scholars stayed in a easy cabin at the back of the property with minimal furnishings and walkout entry to the Aratanha forest inside. Regardless of residing in the course of a jungle, the Cornell undergrads say they have been unsettled by unseemly quiet.
“In two weeks, we noticed just one combined flock [of birds]. It’s disturbing,” says Hofstetter. The loudest sound the scholars heard in 4 weeks on the cabana was when the property proprietor Gurgel came around, by helicopter.
An Epic Parakeet Rebound
In some villages in Baturité, residents cherish the raucous sounds of Grey-breasted Parakeets that echo all through the treetops. Simply 15 years in the past, many villagers didn’t even know that these birds existed. As just lately as 2007, the Grey-breasted Parakeet was thought-about probably the most threatened parakeet species within the Americas, with a world inhabitants beneath 250 birds. At that low level, Aquasis biologists stepped in and pulled the species again from the very fringe of extinction.
Based by a gaggle of state school college students in 1994, Aquasis has established a powerful observe document of conservation successes. The nonprofit group started as a analysis and preservation group centered on marine species, particularly the West Indian manatee, after which expanded to conservation tasks for endangered birds, together with migratory shorebirds such because the Purple Knot and the endemic Araripe Manakin (from Dwelling Chicken Spring 2018).
The Grey-breasted Parakeet Venture, or Projeto Cara-suja, began in 2005 and gained power within the following years with monetary assist from Grupo Boticário, a significant Brazilian cosmetics firm. Nunes joined the crew in 2010, coming from one other environmental nonprofit group in Ceará that established protected areas within the caatinga.
At Aquasis, Nunes grew Projeto Cara-suja from a two-man operation to a seven-employee crew. The crew discovered rapidly that the unlawful pet commerce was one of many most important threats to Grey-breasted Parakeets, in addition to a scarcity of pure nesting cavities.
To fight the poachers for the pet commerce, Aquasis lobbied the state authorities to create the Cara-suja Wildlife Refuge in Baturité in 2018, which additionally turned the native headquarters for an environmental police put up. A years-long policing marketing campaign apprehending poachers and seizing unlawful birds helped shift the native mentality. Some days, 2,000 birds of various species have been seized.
As for the dearth of pure nest cavities, Aquasis launched an effort to put in synthetic nests in Baturité. The challenge turned a legendary success, because the Grey-breasted Parakeet inhabitants in Ceará quadrupled to greater than 1,200 parakeets in 15 years—“probably probably the most profitable parrot nest-box scheme so far,” in response to a 2021 ebook by British ornithologist and parrot professional Rosemary Low. Cara-suja turned Baturité’s poster baby, inspiring keychains, T-shirts, and even billboard ads for an area denims retailer. Birdwatchers from everywhere in the world, particularly from Europe and america, now come to Ceará to see Grey-breasted Parakeets.
Nunes, a father of two and a former highschool biology instructor, says the journey has really been a labor of affection. Within the first years, he enlisted household and buddies to assist grasp the nest bins. He as soon as held a lonely vigil monitoring the nests in Baturité on New 12 months’s Eve, afraid that fireworks would scare away the brand new tenants.
In these early days, his longest-serving subject assistant, Bruno Lindsey, monitored the parakeets utilizing the one technique of transport accessible to the fledgling challenge: public buses.
“Ten years in the past, the cara-sujas have been uncommon. I’d go two months with out seeing them,” says Lindsey, 32. “Taking buses actually didn’t assist.”
Issues improved when Projeto Cara-suja secured funding by way of the U.S. authorities’s Tropical Forest Conservation Act, a regulation that diverted Brazil’s debt repayments to america into conservation efforts for the nation’s forests. With funding assist, the challenge purchased a automotive, then a motorbike, and employed two extra staffers.
Monitoring the nest bins has been important so as to guarantee the protection of parakeet nestlings. The primary nest bins obtained infested with bees and meat-eating wasps. When the challenge crew was capable of ramp up their monitoring efforts, their most important job was to evict bees and wasps.
“We obtained a lot honey we joked we’d open a beekeeping enterprise,” says Nunes.
In 2017, Nunes wrote his grasp’s thesis at Federal College of Ceará in regards to the success of picket nest bins for fostering Grey-breasted Parakeet breeding. He discovered that the unreal bins provided wonderful safety for parakeet nests and resulted in excessive reproductive success, averaging greater than seven eggs per clutch.
As we speak 250 bins are unfold round Baturité properties, the place landowners have agreed to safeguard the parakeets from poachers and nest invaders. The touristy village of Guaramiranga is a hotspot for Grey-breasted Parakeet nest bins, and in addition stylish eating places. In June, the start of the Brazilian winter, cheese fondue and scorching chocolate have been being served within the quaint colonial most important sq. of this village nicknamed the “Switzerland of Ceará.”
However I used to be out at Sítio Sucupira, a lavish property in town’s outskirts, at sundown—the proper time to see parakeets returning to their nighttime roosts. Greater than 20 cara-sujas perched round a tree the place a man-made nest field was put in. Usually, seven sleep within the field, however the crew has seen as much as 30 parakeets cozying up inside. As we took photographs, some parakeets poked their heads by way of the 2 holes of the field, as if to verify us out.
“Cara-suja is a part of my life. I’ve the best honor to have helped the challenge,” mentioned the property proprietor, Pio Rodrigues Neto, 72, a development mogul with a penchant for poetry. He donated 75 nest bins, doubling the capability of the challenge on the time. His property has the world’s largest focus of cara-sujas in a single spot, due to the ten nest bins he had put in. In 2025, 59 parakeet chicks have been hatched right here.
Because the cara-suja inhabitants boomed, the species achieved the uncommon feat of being downlisted from critically endangered to endangered on the IUCN Purple Checklist in 2017. Quickly, it was time for Projeto Cara-suja to assist the parakeets reconquer different territories, beginning with a reintroduction into the empty Aratanha mountain vary.
Birds Fly Once more in Aratanha
Aratanha is the Indigenous identify for “parrot’s beak,” though some say it refers as an alternative to an area species of small freshwater shrimp. Both approach, each had gone extinct within the space, till Nunes led the hassle to carry Grey-breasted Parakeets again to Aratanha, with assist from funding by Spain’s Loro Parque Fundación and Germany’s Zoological Society for the Conservation of Species and Populations.
An on-site acclimatization aviary was inbuilt 2021 on the mountaintop Holy Spirit Farm. Then in 2022 the cara-suja reintroductions started. Over the following two years, 44 parakeets have been reintroduced, each let out after spending a couple of months within the aviary. The crew’s greatest worry was that, as soon as they opened the doorways, the birds would fly away from Aratanha and by no means come again.
“It was very dangerous, an actual pressure,” says Nunes. “When the primary cara-sujas left, they went to this tree, then to a different one, after which they flew away and vanished fully. I assumed it was over. I used to be speechless.”
An hour later, although, the parakeets got here again to eat the supplemental meals left by Aquasis biologists exterior the aviary.
“It was pure happiness,” says Nunes.
Inside a yr, the reintroduced parakeets have been already breeding, utilizing the 15 nest bins put in at Aratanha and discovering their very own meals, while not having supplementation. As we speak, there are round 90 Grey-breasted Parakeets on this forest, serving to regenerate the forest by dispersing the seeds of native timber just like the embaúba and gameleira, in addition to a local species of cactus.
“Embaúba is a pioneer tree very important for forest regeneration,” says Nunes. “And the fruit from the cactus feeds the chicks. You’ll be able to see their crops stuffed with its tiny seeds. We anticipate a giant enhance on this cactus now that it has discovered its pure disperser once more.”
Once I visited Aratanha in June, the aviary was empty, however the parakeets have been nonetheless residing close by.
As for the chupa-dentes, Nunes discovered 4 gnateaters (two pairs) in November when he was at Aratanha doing different fieldwork. Aquasis is sending in a crew of biologists in December 2025 for a proper resurvey to evaluate the standing of the translocated birds.
In the meantime, the forest in Aratanha awaits its subsequent new residents, hopefully the Gould’s Toucanet after which the Band-tailed Manakin.
“Ultimately, it was by no means simply in regards to the cara-sujas,” says Nunes. “However they opened the best way for a lot of good issues.”
