Pinima Birding-Nature Tours was created few years after Pablo Cerqueira comes to Belém city during his Master’s Degree. Realizing a gap of birding tours in the eastern of Pará state, Pablo and a colleague started offering tours in surroundings of Belém. The first tours was focused in the Belem Area of Endemism (BAE), a biogeographic region comprised between the east bank of Tocantins and west of Pindaré River (Maranhão state), the most deforested in Amazon forest.
The word “Pinima” is an indigenous name of a sub-family Tupi-guarani language and its means “pied” or “spotted”. The choice by this name is due a critically endangered bird Crax pinima (Belem Curassow) sometimes treated as subspecies of Crax fasciolata (Bare-faced Currasow). Females of Belem Curassow have narrower white barring in the back and tail and less white in the crest than Bare-faced Curassow looking like little spots. During almost 40 years this species was not confirmed records in the wild but recently some researchers guided by local indigenous found few individuals at Gurupi Biological Reverse.
So, Belem Curassow stay alive in Belem Area of Endemism!!!!
Currently we offer tours throughout Amazon Forest and Northeast Brazil. In the Amazon forest we cover five interfluves or areas of endemism: Belém, Xingú, Tapajós, Rondônia and Guyana; we also cover transitional forests between Amazon and Cerrado; and Caatinga an exclusive Brazilian ecoregion.
Source: Oliveira et al. 2017
Tour Leader/Guide
Pablo Cerqueira
Pablo Cerqueira was born in Teresina, capital of Piauí state in 1989, and grew up traveling from a big town to a little city in the south of the Piauí in middle to the Caatinga and Cerrado environments during his school holidays. Since childhood was very curious to know about animals who observed in the nature, in the undergraduate naturally chose study Biology to specialize in birds.
At the end of undergraduate course, Pablo moved to Belém city in 2012, to study Zoology focusing in evolution and biogeography of Neotropical birds, during his Master’s degree has worked with Phylogeography and interspecific limits of the polytypic Black-billed Thrush (Turdus ignobilis). During its PhD thesis worked in evolution patterns of endemic birds from Caatinga region also in Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Pará.
Pablo has ten years of field experience participating and organizing expeditions to many places in the Amazon, Caatinga dry forests and Cerrado with special interest in explore remote regions. During Master’s degree Pablo observed that east of Pará state was virtually unexplored for birding in Belém Area of Endemism and decide organize tours focusing in rare and endemic birds of Pará state and many friends encouraged the initiative. Currently, Pablo offers birding tours through many areas of endemism in Amazon forest and northeastern Brazil, accounting for over 1,000 species.
He is an enthusiastic wildlife photographer and sound recordist contributor on Macaulay Library Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Check out to know more about our tours under our client views…