Custom guided birding / birdwatching tours for world birders of South eastern Brazil, based out of Rio de Janeiro led by Richard Raby, Expat bi-lingual bird guide of over 20 yrs South American experience

About Richard

Richard arrived in Brazil in the late 1980s. Prior to his arrival he had travelled extensively through his professional life in the drilling industries where he visited the middle east, and north and west Africa. He fell in love with South America and its wildlife during subsequent working visits to Venezuela and Trinidad & Tobago in the late 1970s.

After many years spent in preparation, Richard led his first birding group in 2003, searching for rare Cotingas in the forests around Rio de Janeiro. The tour was a great success and culminated with exceptional views, had by all, of one of the region’s most elusive species: The Grey-winged Cotinga.

      

Since those successful beginnings, Richard started to lead birding trips further afield. He Continued to offer visits to the nearby classic locations of Itatiaia, Teresopolis, Ubatuba, Nova Friburgo, Serra da Bocaina and Pereque, but now also added trips to the more distant points of the surrounding states of Minas Gerais, Espirito Santo, Eastern Sao Paolo, and also Southern Bahia.

Now at 69 years of age, Richard continues to be fit and active, but those days of travelling many miles into the dusty Brazilian interior in search of individual rarities are over. Today Richard is offering a more generalized program and a more sedate pace in his tours. The emphasis will continue to concentrate on the regions endemics but now we will be sticking to the formula of 2-3 hours maximum travel between localities and the area covered will be confined to Rio de Janeiro state and the immediately boardering regions of Sao Paolo and Minas Gerais.

Richard is now a bona-fide Brazilian resident, fluent with the local way of life and now with a better knowledge of this region's wildlife and wild places than many locals. He has devoted much of his spare time to exploring South-east Brazil's preserved (and many still unprotected) areas, in pursuit of his hobbies.

His long-term plans are to retire in Brazil full-time, leading his custom-made birding & butterfly tours. Between trips, Richard pursues his own research, expanding his growing knowledge of the regions butterflies whilst continuing to add destinations to his birding and wildlife tours. Richard continues to increasing local awareness of still unrecognised hotspots, ones that are often privately owned and often worthy of better recognition & protection.

Richard endeavours, wherever possible, to open the eyes of local Brazilians to the tremendous richness of their natural heritage.