Wildlife in the Caatinga

Here a few more impressions of the natural and "man-made" wildlife you can meet in the Caatinga.

Goats and sheep are pretty much roaming around freely although there are a few fences especially close to roads.  People outside of the town live on mostly isolated farms where they keep their animals and grow a few vegetables. The roads are not paved and the further you get away from town, the worse the condition with really deep pot-holes. Many people cannot even afford a car and they go by moped on these roads. They also have the tendency to honk their horn every time they meet somebody. The past decade or so, the government has set up power supply lines so even the remotest place has electricity now. In addition, they all get treated water delivered to their homes which is stored in tanks. 

As geologists, we have to make sure they understand what we're doing so that we can look for rocks on their land without them getting annoyed at us. Most people were quite  friendly and interested in what we're doing but the most frequent question was if we found any gold (although most of them were joking of course). It's a bit difficult to explain that they are actually living on some of the oldest parts of the South American continent, something which is far more valuable in geology than gold ;)

Not really wildlife but I love cacti! 

Black vultures (called urubu here), the garbage men of the Caatinga feasting on a dead goat in this case. Unfortunately many people are not that considerate where they throw their waste so sometimes you have trash heaps where you can find venues (new word I learned today!) of black vultures as well. 

This beauty just needed to be photographed too. 

Super-cute almost new-born goatlings, the black one I almost took with me:

 

And last but not least a view into the distance ...