Fourteen days across the far south of Brazil in the season most birders skip, and that is exactly the point. The South Brazil Winter Tour runs from the Espinilho savanna of Barra do Quaraí, on the triple border with Argentina and Uruguay, through the Pampa grasslands of Bagé and the dunes and marshes of Lagoa do Peixe, where Patagonian migrants such as Austral Negrito and Rufous-chested Dotterel arrive to escape the southern cold. Then we climb into the Araucaria highlands of São Francisco de Paula and Urupema, the coldest town in Brazil, for Long-tailed Cinclodes, Striolated Tit-Spinetail and the afternoon flights of thousands of Red-spectacled Parrots gathering on the pine nuts. We finish on the Santa Catarina coast with a morning at sea off Florianópolis for albatrosses, and at the tinamou hide of Joinville, where Yellow-legged Tinamou walks in at arm’s length. Winter here means crisp light, quiet roads and birds that are simply not around the rest of the year.