Blue-billed Curassow and Antioquia Bristle-Tyrant

 September 2021: A Continuation of a Target Birding Trip in Colombia

Phase 2 of the trip started out with a traffic jam.  Our route to Tolima was a bit of a slog and we ended up sitting in traffic for hours while landslides were cleared and roads were opened up again.  It's one of the inevitabilities of traveling in the Andes.  The roads snake through river valleys and regularly get blocked by falling trees or mud-slides or get washed out by floods.  Everyone here is patient, there really isn't much of a choice and certainly no sensible alternative routes, and so there really isn't much to do but look at the birds and relax.  Eventually we made it to where we needed to get to, a little later than planned, but both in one piece.

Thursday, September 2 - Cañon del Rio Combeima / Ukuku Rural Lodge.

If you want to see doves you need to drive the roads early in the morning or be prepared for a long hard slog later in the day.  This maxim has been a fixture on so many trips I've been on, that it hardly seems odd to get up early and fret about being the first car to dive up a road before others have flushed the doves back to the forest.  The doves for their part often seem to oblige, toddling along on the roadside in the early low light and allowing for unobstructed views before slinking off into the undergrowth to hide for the rest of the day.  So at dawn on Tuesday we were driving up the Combeima River Canyon, hoping to beat any other traffic, with doves on our mind.

In the end we saw quite a few Tolima Doves, or at least birds we assumed were Tolima Doves.  We needed to get a good look though, see eye color, for a confirm on what was a life bird for me.  So we pushed up the valley, stopped when we saw a dove ahead of us, and tried to get scope views.  In the end we were also able to play a little tape and had one come crashing in close to us, giving us the necessary reassurance views.  One endemic down, two to go ...

Yellow-headed Brushfinch

With doves in the bag, the focus turned to Yellow-headed Brushfinches, a little tape was played, and a pair came storming out of the forest to see what was going on.  Well that was easy.  Back to the lovely hotel for more coffee and breakfast.  Two lifers before breakfast, every day should start that way.

Payback came quickly though.  Daniel gently broke the news to me that the road to our next destination, the Ukuku Rural Lodge was not wide enough to allow us to drive up.  So we had a walk ahead of us and the lodge it seemed was always located just a few hundred yards ahead, around the next bend.  We made it eventually, but it did seem that the initial estimates of the distance and steepness of the path might just have seen a little optimistic to encourage me along.  Still we made it there safely and there were hummingbirds and coffee waiting for us when we did.

I'd seen Santa Marta Blossomcrown with Daniel a few years before so I was curious to complete the set as it were and see the Tolima Blossomcrown too.  Now all that we had to do was find one among the 15 species of hummingbird that buzzed around the lodge's feeders and ornamental plantings.  There really were a lot of birds, Sparkling and Lesser Violetears, Bronzy and Collared Incas, Buff-tailed Coronets, Booted Racket-tails, Fawn-breasted Brilliants and White-bellied Woodstars, the list went on and on.  The blossomcrown made it's appearance of course just after someone from the lodge had handed me a cup of coffee, making me spin around looking for a level place to put it down then rush over just in case this was it's only visit of the morning.  In the end we needn't have worried though as 2 or 3 birds snuck into the plantings fairly regularly (but never to the feeders) and fed low down in the flowering shrubs many times over the next few hours.  A truly lovely spot.

Red-billed Emerald and Tolima Blossomcrown

Friday, September 3 - Puerto Salgar

Today was a travel day as we came down from the mountains into the heat and humidity of the Magdalena Valley.  We didn't really have any birding planned but we did choose a random side road and spend an hour looking at the locals just to break the journey and start to get to grips with some more 'lowland' species.   The road we chose wasn't particularly special, just a farm track that ran along some flooded ditches and through some thorny hedges and field borders.  Nevertheless, an hour or so there gave us 45 species of bird and a family group of Night-Monkeys sp. (not sure which one).  I'm used to seeing night-monkeys peeping out of holes in tall trees in dense forests so this was a very different habitat but they seemed happy enough, just curious as to who was passing by.

Yellow-chinned Spinetail and Night-Money sp.

Saturday/Sunday, September 4/5 - RNA Paujil

The highlight of the whole Colombia trip for me was a chance to go to this reserve.  We started early and had to drive a long and winding road through farm fields in order to get there, but we made plenty of stops and got some good birds.  

First decent bird of the day was a lifer for me, a Large-billed Seed-Finch which we found just outside a small village in roadside grasses.  As we made our way towards the park, the birds kept coming and by the time we got to the forest proper we had seen 60 or so species before we'd even reached the reserve.

The reserve HQ entrance though presented another challenge.  Two rangers had ridden out on dirt bikes to meet us at the nearest village and escort us in.  The road was narrow but passable but as we peeled off the main road to get down to the lodge the track narrowed until we eventually reached a place where the track had recently washed out all together.  To patch it up the rangers had assembled a sort of dam of sandbags and filled in an improvised roadway behind them.  Between the somewhat soft and unstable wall of sandbags, and the sheer sand cliff on the other side of the new 'road', was a muddy runway perhaps 7 feet wide.  We were traveling in Daniel's brand new, very shiny, very expensive Toyota LandCruiser, which coincidentally was roughly 7 feet wide.  To drive across the 'road' Daniel had to put one wheel on the sandbags, which visibly sagged and separated under the weight of the car, and have one wheel pressed up against the cliff.  Six inches the wrong way and he'd be scratching up one side of the car or sending it tumbling into a morass of mud and jungle vegetation in the stream bed below.  I got out of the car and walked (!), Daniel, looking cool and calm but with decidedly white knuckles, edged the car delicately between destruction and disaster and somehow managed to bring it through.  Nerves of steel ... 

Blue-billed Curassow

When we arrived at the lodge, still a little shaken up, the rangers quickly and excitedly called out that there were Blue-billed Curassows visible.  The star bird and my main target!  The roadway was forgotten and I rushed over to see the birds and get a photo just in case it was my only chance to see them.  This is a rare bird, endemic to Colombia and severely endangered with a population of perhaps only 1,500 birds.  Surely it was a real treat to see them so easily and I was thinking how lucky we were as we checked in a the lodge and sat down in the dining area for lunch, where we were joined by ... the curassows.  Turns out they were quite habituated at the lodge, came readily for kitchen scraps, and were very tame here.  Still, for a bird this rare it wasn't at all a disappointment to be able to spend time up close and personal with them.  Truly spectacular creatures.

After lunch and a siesta we did some afternoon birding and chose a spot where we had a good view of the surrounding forest from a somewhat rickety canopy tower and some nearby benches on the safer and more stable adjacent ground.  It truly was a very birdy place, particularly one tree where a huge mixed flock seemed to be mobbing something.  Search as we might though, expecting and owl or a hawk or perhaps a mammalian predator, we couldn't see what was driving the birds insane.  Only after detailed searching, and following the chachalacas to try to see what they were looking, at did we find the culprit, or rather the victim, a small Boa Constrictor dangling from the very end of a thin branch trying to avoid the murderous pecks of dozens of angry birds.  The poor thing looked as terrified as a reptile can look and had clearly had a very rough day but it got no quarter from the birds who continued to shriek angrily at it and try to reach down it's branch to continue the attack. 

Somewhat traumatized Boa Constrictor and the
Colombian Chachalaca intent on murdering it

After dinner we decided to do a little owling and set out in search of Choco Screech-Owl.  We weren't technically in the Choco but on many range maps there's a little 'hook' where Choco specialists spread up into the Magdalena Valley.  The screech-owl was one of those and also, luckily for us, a curious creature who came in close to check us out in the darkness.

Choco Screech-Owl

Next day we had a few target birds I wanted to see so we focussed on them.  Black Antshrike was easy to hear but took us a very long time to see and we ended up devoting a fair amount of the morning to it.  Russet-winged Schiffornis was my other target and, after hiking up a trail to a known territory we were able to get one to call but again had to work hard to see it sitting still in the dark understory of the forest.  Through the morning though we kept adding species and in the evening went back to the tower, racking up a really nice list of birds for the day.

 

Bare-crowned Antbird and Purple-throated Fruitcrow

Black-chested Jay and Orange-winged Parrot

Monday/Tuesday, September 6/7 - RN Cañon del Río Claro

All too soon it was time to leave one wonderful place, only to swap it for another.  Maybe COVID ironically helped us here because at peak season, in normal times, I bet the Rio Claro Canyon is a zoo filled with crowds of tourists walking the trails, swimming and tubing on on the clear waters of the river.  As it was, the resort was reasonably quiet while we were there.  There were a few tourists but the trails weren't crowded and we were able to bird comfortably without dodging crowds of shrieking kids.

Out main activity for out first evening there was to look for the endemic Antioquia Bristle-Tyrant, a tiny yellow flycatcher that likes the canopy of tall trees and is generally rare and difficult to see even where it does occur.  Then, having failed in our first attempt there, we went to a cave a mile or so up river and waited for the Oilbird spectacular, eventually seeing hundreds of them emerge and whirl over the river as the light faded away (it sounds touristy but it was very cool).

Fasciated Tiger-Heron

Next day we tried again twice for the bistle-tyrant (nope) and birded some local trails, cobbling together a nice mix of locals and adding some things to the trip list.  Then, just as I'd given up on the little bugger, attempt number 4, just as we were leaving, and the bristle-tyrant surrendered.  Sweet victory!

Antioquia Bristle-Tyrant in all it's glory ...

Wednesday, September 8 - Vivero Cantos de Agua

After two plus weeks you really get into the routine of a birding trip but all good things come to an end even if it felt like a surprise to realize that the last day had arrived and I was less than 24 hours from my return flight from Medellin to New York.  With few targets left, Daniel suggested we try maybe for the Red-bellied Grackles that seemed regular at a relatives garden/nursery.  So we went along and spent a morning in a beautiful garden seeing lots of birds but no grackles.  As so often is the case though, the change of scenery made the difference and we went off, up the road to some higher elevations, before returning to the garden.  Just before we got there, two things happened quickly ... two Tyras, oversized weasel relatives, crossed the road in front of us and then ... we found the grackles and got to spend some quality time with them.

Red-bellied Grackle

And so the trip ended.  Roughly 400 species, roughly 40 of them lifers for me.  Wonderful country, wonderful company and zero COVID-related hassles.  Pretty much the perfect trip.  Can't wait to get back to Colombia one day.

Andean Motmot

Back to the Colombian Andes

 August 2021: A return to birding as COVID seemed to be ebbing

After nearly 18 months with no real travel, the Summer of 2021 seemed at the time to be something of a return to normal  The first waves of COVID appeared to be subsiding, most people I knew had been vaccinated, and it felt like perhaps the worst was over.  In the birding world there were signs of life; people we starting to travel again and certain birding destinations were 'opening up' for business and restrictions of travel were generally easing.  In that context I decided to take a trip to Colombia, a country that some of my friends had successfully visited earlier in the Summer and so planned a two week private trip with the great Daniel Uribe focussed mainly on some target birds I needed in the Northern Andes and the Magdalena Valley.

Tuesday, August 24 - Arrival in Bogota

Traffic in Bogota is legendarily bad.  Tonight it was worse.  I'd arrived at the airport after a hassle-free flight from New York, met up with Daniel and we'd hopped in a cab for what should have been a relatively quick ride to our hotel.  The traffic just wasn't cooperating though, and so when we came to a complete stop a quarter of a mile from our destination, we decided that we'd get out and walk to the hotel.  A few minutes later we arrived but had to detour around police tape and parked police cars that were blocking our way.  On the street in front of the hotel entrance was a dead body lying sprawled in a large pool of blood.  It seems that there had been a traffic accident and a motorcyclist had been hit and killed right there in front of the hotel.  No-one seemed in any rush to move the body, no ambulance was on the scene, and no-one had covered the body in any way, so to access the hotel we had to step gingerly around the blood and scuttle up the steps.  Welcome to Bogota.

Wednesday, August 25 - Laguna de Pedro Palo / Parque Natural Chicaque

Putting thoughts of last night aside, we got up early to avoid traffic and headed out to chase some specific targets close to Bogota.  First stop was Laguna de Pedro Palo where we birded along a dirt track through a mix of fields and woodland edges up to the lake and surrounding forest.  After 18 months with no Neotropical birding, this was my gentle re-entry to unfamiliar birds, so we took it slow and build up a nice list of mixed field and forest edge birds, making the time to see the Spinetails (Slaty, Striped-breasted and Ash-browed) and get back in the swing of the Neotropical birds.  

The target here was a low probability but Daniel had previously had Turquoise Dacnis in the canopy of some trees near the lake.  We thought it unlikely that the bird would be there again but found a nice vantage point where we could look down on the trees from the road, set up the scope, and started to scan.  A half hour later, Daniel did come up with the dacnis, almost exactly where he'd seen it the prior year.  A neat, colorful little bird, a Colombian endemic, and a good one to get on the list.  Not a bad start to the trip.

Contrasts ... Plain Antvireo and Golden-bellied Starfrontlet

Despite our fear of traffic, after lunch we plunged in again and skirted around Bogota to get to PN Chicaque, a small park with a hummingbird feeder and hopefully a life hummingbird for me.  The weather wasn't great when we arrived, the feeders looked somewhat neglected, and so we decided to go into the restaurant for the first of what would become innumerable cups of strong black Colombian coffee consumed on this trip.  Thus fortified we came back out into the cold and resumed our hummingbird vigil, enjoying Tourmaline Sunangels, Sparkling and Lesser Violetears, and Collared Incas before the star bird, the Golden-bellied Starfrontlet swept in to make an appearance.  Found only in Colombia and Venezuela, this bird really does have a golden belly, it looks like it has gilded chain-mail on it's bottom half.  This bird was coming infrequently to the feeders though so after a couple of visits and some decent views we decided that it we'd call it a day and head back to the hotel for a hot meal and some sleep.  No point rushing things, there were plenty of birds ahead of us.

Thursday/Friday, August 26/27 - PNN Chingaza

I'd birded Chingaza before, in fact I'd birded the entrance road, but a quick look at my needs lists showed that there were still a handful of species that justified a repeat visit.  So we spent another day in the first few miles of the park road and enjoyed a huge variety of species.  The vegetation is low here so birds are relatively visible and by slowly working up and down the road all day we got to grips with the various tanagers, conebills, flowerpiercers, hummingbirds, and brushfinches that dominate the habitat.  

Golden-crowned Tanager and Black-headed Hemispingus

Three of the 'tanagers' were life birds ... Golden-crowned Tanager, Black-chested Mountain-Tanager, and Black-headed Hemispingus and, after a fair amount of searching, we managed to get all three.  That left us free to focus on my other target, Bronze-tailed Thornbill, which eventually surrendered on day 2, and to focus on some specific locations for Ochre-breasted Brushfinch and the rare Brown-breasted Parakeet.  Basically, everything fell into place over the course of the two days; a tribute to Daniel's knowledge and persistence, and we were able to move on, on schedule, for the next target birds.

Habitat shot ... lots of Thornbills here ... probably

Saturday, August 28 - Laguna de Fuquene / Reserva Rogitama

The next day's target was one I was really looking forward to.  Apolinar's Wren is another localized Colombian endemic that lives in reed beds surrounding Andean lakes and while it looks a bit like a sedge wren it has all the cachet if a localized endemic and so was high on the list of birds I wanted to see.  We had a date with them at Laguna de Fuquene and the plan was to scan the reeds from a convenient hotel parking lot, grabbing the bird then moving on quickly.  The problem of course was that the birds had other plans, and so it seems did the local residents ... there simply were no accessible reed beds that we could view from the shore of the lake as they'd all been cut down.  Never daunted though, Daniel negotiated with some local boatmen and in no time at all we were off across the lake in a small fishing boat, heading for intact reed beds and wrens.

Apolinar's Wren (autofocus hates reed beds)

With the wrens seen well and photographed poorly it was back on the road for an early arrival at the charming private Reserva Rogitama where the owner and his family welcomed us, fed us, and got me three life birds in the garden of the house.  Black Inca came to the feeders on the terrace, Short-tailed Emerald came to the flower gardens but we had to walk literally yards down the driveway for Moustached Brushfinch.  In addition we got some good local intel for the next day, so a quick change of plans, and drifted off the sleep with dreams of grackles.

Black Inca and Moustached Brushfinch

Sunday, August 29 - Paramo la Rusia 

While we were at Rogitama we got some really useful information that prompted a bit of a change of plan.  Mountain Grackle is a difficult bird, a nomad that wanders through the high altitude oak forests looking for seasonally available food.  Every now and then though they stop to breed and the locals had a lead on a group that was breeding and thus potentially a lot easier for us to see.  So next morning we climbed up to the oak forests and made our way to an area of mixed woodland and farms where we connected with researchers who confirmed that the birds were still in the area.

Now all we had to do was find the birds and it took an hour or so of patient wandering through the oaks before we started to hear them and were able to work down the valley to get a look at the group.   Grackles in the US are not exactly star birds (I have a hate-hate relationship with the hordes of Common Grackles that pillage my feeders) and these, apart from a small chestnut patch on the wings, were pretty much generic grackles.  Their rarity made them special though, and their unusual habitat.  So definitely a bird we were happy to see.

With the grackles in the bag and no other plans for the day we decided to keep climbing higher and look for Green-bearded Helmetcrest, a high altitude hummingbird I still needed for my list.  Here too the habitat was the star, with weird and very alien looking vegetation dominating the high altitude paramo it really did feel like another world.  Eventually, after a lot of scanning, we found a helmetcrest and got some decent scope views.  Then time to work our way back and retreat to more civilized altitudes.  Certainly a memorable day in the Andes though.

Monday, August 30 - Soata

We'd arrived in Soata the night before, climbed the steep narrow stairs to the hotel (hotels are often above store fronts in small towns, visible only as a sign and a gate at street level) and had a decent meal at a local pizza restaurant.  Soata is not exactly a garden spot but being here gave us the whole day to track down three local specialty birds, Nicifero's Wren, Apical Flycatcher and Chestnut-bellied Hummingbird.  

As it turned out though, we really didn't need a whole day and managed all three within an hour or so along a road through local farm country.  The wren was easily called to tape from a scrubby ravine full of thorn bushes while the flycatcher and the hummingbird were both readily found in roadside trees.

Nicifero's Wren

Suddenly we found ourselves basically a day ahead of schedule and, rather than flog some low probability options nearby, decided to adjust the schedule to squeeze in a side-trip to Tolima and made calls to shuffle our hotels for the next few nights.  We ended the day in San Francisco de Sales and, after stopping by the Jardin Encantado to pick up Indigo-capped Hummingbird for the list, took a quiet night to take stock of the new plan.

Indigo-capped Hummingbird

Tuesday, August 31 - Laguna El Tabacal

We spent the morning in the forests around Laguna El Tabacal and, while we racked up a nice selection of species, bombed on our target birds.  After everything thus far performing so well, it was actually a bit of a let down to not get targets where and when we expected them to be, a indication perhaps of how spoiled we'd been so far.  The afternoon was quiet also, adding a few more species, but nothing too memorable, and making our way onwards to fresh forests for the next day.


Wednesday, September 1 - RN Bellavista

After the slow day on Tuesday, Wednesday looked very promising.   We had a list of target birds possible at the park and came in with a very optimistic sense that we were going to see good things.  The day stated well with several singing Magdalena Antbirds and then we got really lucky with the Colombia endemic White-mantled Barbet, all from the entrance road to the park.  The forest trails themselves yielded White-bibbed Manakin and Sooty Ant-Tanager along with a family group of White-footed Tamarins, one of the very few mammals we saw on the trip.  Then we spent some time at the edge of the park and added Beautiful Woodpecker for a fifth life bird.  Not a bad day at all.

Sooty Ant-Tanager

So, really at this point the Andes part of the trip was officially over and from here were were originally planning to drop into the Magdalena Valley to look for some very special birds I had long wanted to see.  With spare time in the schedule though we had the opportunity to make a side-trip and so from here planned to jig over into Tolima Province to look for three special endemics before heading down to the valley.  The trip thus far had been very much a run of specific, often endemic, target birds and we'd seen almost all of them fairly easily, a real tribute to Daniel and his local knowledge.  We still had a lot of energy for a few more though so we excited for what was ahead.

Hummingbirds and the Bogota Rail

September 2019: A Spontaneous Trip to Bogota

At the end of my Santa Marta trip I was a little unsettled.  A hurricane that was threatening Miami had pushed me, at the airline's suggestion, into delaying my trip home and extending my stay an extra day in Barranquilla.  With no plans there though, I was at a loss as to what exactly I was going to do.  I pondered this dilemma over dinner with Daniel Uribe-Restrepo one night, and in the end decided that I was being way too literal and changed my plans completely.  I cancelled my flight to the US and booked a one way ticket to Bogota, asking Daniel if he knew guides there who might potentially be able to take me out for a day of birding.  He said he did and made some calls, and I jumped on the Marriott BONVoY app and booked a room at the W Hotel.  That was pretty much the extent of my planning for this trip ... sometimes it's good to be spontaneous.

Monday, September 2 - Bogota

Absolutely no plans today other than to relax and spoil myself.  I flew to Bogota and checked into the W Hotel, which was very trendy and quite fancy truth be told.  I had three main goals for the day ... pampering (gym and hot shower), good food/wine, and good sleep.  All three, I'm happy to report, were easily met either at the hotel or through the good offices of their concierge.

I literally laughed out loud when I saw this in my hotel room ...

Tuesday, September 3 - The Andes around Bogota

So after my mini vacation, it was time to get back to work.  Daniel had made good on his promise and introduced me to a local guide named Diana Alcázar-Niño who had arranged for a driver and a day of birding in the mountains surrounding the city.  I set the alarm for some ungodly hour and met Diana, who turned out to be perhaps the warmest and most charming bird guide I think I've ever birded with, and the driver at the hotel lobby.  Then off, weaving through the dark pre-dawn streets of Bogota and out through the suburbs and up into the hills.

First stop was a site for a bird that I'd long been curious to see, the BOGOTA RAIL.   Not long after dawn we stopped in an area of dairy farms with lush green pastures full of friesian cows that would have been totally reminiscent of my home in Wales but for the colonial architecture of the farm buildings.  We had coffee and bread rolls, then hopped a gate and went through a farm field (Diana had permission) to a small pond and marshy area near a farm yard.  The grass was wet and as we got closer we flushed Grassland and Stripe-tailed Yellow-Finches and Eastern Meadowlarks from underfoot.  Then, as the ground got wetter still, we flushed a couple of Noble Snipe, signaling time to stop and scan for the rails in the marsh.  In the end, it didn't turn out to be a tough bird to see, and what we first picked up as a shadow creeping through the marsh vegetation eventually crossed an open space and revealed itself to be an over-sized Virginia-type Rail with a bright red bill and legs.  Scope views, and I was a very happy Welshman.

Bogota Rail habitat, and Bogota Rail. 

Well that was easy.  So back in the car and a fairly long drive through a confusing maze of farm roads brought us to site number two, the entrance road to PNN Chingaza.  We weren't going to have time to go into the park proper, and certainly not to really bird it, but looking at my target list it seemed that there were five (maybe 6) potential life birds that could be found along the entrance road.  So for the rest of the morning we worked our way up and down the first mile or two of road, birding pretty hard in search of our targets.

We started out really well with Purple-backed Thornbill and Glowing Puffleg feeding roadside at the second stop and a group of Silvery-Throated Spinetails working through the hedges just a little further on.  After that, it took only a couple more stops to hit target number four when we caught a glimpse of a small rufous bird flying across the road and were able to relocate it and identify a Rufous-browed Conebill.  At this rate I though we could maybe squeeze in a couple of extra sites but then, as so often happens, it took us a good two hours of patient searching to get a decent view of the fifth target the Pale-bellied Tapaculo.  It was worth it though, I love tapaculos.

Black-tailed Trainbearer and Glowing Puffleg
(Puffleg photo was later at a feeder, we saw 'wild ones' in the park)

So, after lunch, time for one final stop and we headed over to the famous Observatory de Colibries.  I have to say, I was a bit suspicious that this sounded a bit like a tourist trap, and it did indeed have a gift shop and a place to get coffee and take a break from watching the 50+ hummingbird feeders spread through the beautiful gardens of a large house.  Ten minutes later however, I was hooked.  The place positively swarmed with hundred of hummingbirds of 13 species.  Finding them all, getting good looks and getting some photos was totally absorbing and quite enthralling.  Much more fun that I thought it would be.

Blue-throated Starfrontlet, yes it's real ...

Coppery-bellied Puffleg, subtle only by comparison to the Starfrontlet ...

Among the throng of Sparkling and Lesser Violetears, Tyrain Metaltails, Black-tailed and Green-tailed Trainbearers were smaller numbers of rarer species, two of which were life birds for me.  The Blue-throated Starfrontlet, a confection of irridescent pinks, greens, purples, blues, and golds, was just so colorful as to seem almost unreal.  In the end I think the subtlety of the copper/green/blue Coppery-bellied Emerald became my favorite but perhaps it was because it was shyer and harder to track down.

Sword-billed Hummingbird, yes, that's real too ...

Great Sapphirewing, the second largest of all the world's hummingbirds.

Among the other treats were more personal favorites.  I absolutely never tire of watching Sword-billed Hummingbirds, they simply leave me standing in awe, no matter how many times I get to see them.  The Great Sapphirewing has also become a personal favorite; a giant among hummingbirds, an spectacular in it's own right.

After finding the single Mountain Velvetbreast, we ended up turning our attention to the tiny bee-like woodstars.  Most seemed to be White-bellied Woodstars and it took us a good hour of careful searching to find the one Gorgeted Woodstar that had been reported there.

White-bellied and Gorgeted Woodstars

And so the day came to an end, and we needed to fight our way back through traffic to get me back to my hotel.  A wonderful day of birding, and an all too short visit to the Central Andes.  I will be back ...

A Town Called Los Flamencos

September 2019: Birding along the Caribbean Coast of Colombia

I knew that Colombia has a Caribbean Coast, but if I was honest my knowledge of it probably began and ended with Cartagena, the colonial era trading town turned tourist mecca where so many of my friends had vacationed.  So I really wasn't sure what to expect when I signed up for a couple of birding spots along the coast as bookends to a trip to the Santa Marta highlands.  Flying into Barranquilla certainly didn't feel like arriving at a resort area; the town was clearly hopping with lots of signs of recent development and booming economic activity, but charming it wasn't.  Nevertheless it was a good place to start, with direct flights from Miami and, after a quick visit to the university grounds to tick the local Chestnut-winged Chachalacas and get acclimatized to the local birdlife, decent food and a comfortable place to stay.  I had connected with my regular Colombia birding guide and friend, the legendary Daniel Uribe-Restrepo, the godfather of Colombian birding, who had everything planned out for me.  He'd also hired several drivers, and an assortment of local guides along the way ... all I was going to have to do was look at birds.

Brown-throated Parakeet and Pale-eyed Pygmy-Tyrant

Monday, August 26 - Driving East from Barranquilla to Santa Marta

Today was going to be a long day and a long drive connecting a number of birding spots while covering the coast road to Santa Marta and then Minca before nightfall.  The habitats started as farmland and freshwater marshes then transitioned to mangroves (a good percentage destroyed by recent development) and saltwater lagoons by the afternoon.   I had a number of target species which we planned to look for but we were also just planning to enjoy the birds and break up a long drive.

Limpkin

First stop was the famous "Palermo-Camino Km4" road, which started as a dirt road through fields and pasture then connected to a series of tracks and pathways through some very extensive freshwater marshes.  It was clearly a very birdy place, it was also hot and humid, so much so in fact that my bins and camera fogged up the moment we got out of the air conditioned car and it took both them and I quite a while to adapt to the humidity.  We'd stopped and picked up a local guide on the way (definitely advisable in these communities where a known face can greatly improve your experience with the locals ... birders have been robbed here so the friendly greetings of a local guide were a big help ensuring a warm welcome from the farm workers we encountered) and set off in search of the special birds along this famous road.

As we warmed up and started to get used to the birds, the number of species started to add up and we ended up listing 69 species just along this stretch of road and tracks.  The star bird here was the Northern Screamer, a lifer for me, and although we only got distant scope views after a long search, one I was very happy to get (completes the set of 3 screamers).   Less expected, and quite a thrill was a Dwarf Cuckoo, another lifer that briefly sat up on the roadside wires along with Russet-throated Puffbirds and various kingbirds.  There were also lots of marsh birds of various sorts; Limpkins, Ibises, Whistling Ducks, and terns, including a scarce Gull-billed Tern (a lifer for the local guide) among the more common Large-billed Terns.  A really neat spot, although by the time we left mid-morning, it was quiet seriously hot out there in the marshes and early starts are definitely advised.

Dwarf Cuckoo and Russet-throated Puffbird

 Next up were a series of stops along Ruta-Nacional 90 where we looked for and found Sapphire-bellied and Sapphire-throated Hummingbirds.  We spent a lot of time on these two very similar species and our local guide had been surveying them for years and was expert at the ID.  Are they good species (that's the current official status)?  Or just color morphs of the same species (as some suspect)? ... To be honest I'm not sure, but we saw them and I'll let finer minds that I sort of the bigger questions, besides I was much too preoccupied with safely navigating the very home-made 'pull yourself' ferries we had to use to cross the canals between the farm fields.  A little bit of an unexpected adventure but we all survived to bird another day.

Daniel Uribe and local guide cross a canal (I hadn't anticipated this little adventure).

Then onward to the colorful mangroves of Parc Isla de Salamanca where we added Panama Flycatcher and spent some pleasant time wandering the trails through the mangrove lagoons with their vividly colored water (the product of acidity, algae and peculiar local alchemy apparently).

Wouldn't advise drinking the water here ....

After lunch at a local restaurant we had to cover some distance in the afternoon but made a few stops for shorebirds (at least a dozen species), loafing terns and various wading birds in the coastal lagoons.    Then we passed Santa Marta and headed up into the foot hills of the highlands to stay overnight at the town of Minca (the type of backpacker tourist, yoga, tofu, bead store kind of place you can find in mountains all over the world).  The town may be been hipster central but at least the hotel was fine and there was good food to be had, so a welcome rest after a long day.

This thread continues with a visit to the Santa Marta highlands and resumes when we came back to the coastal lowlands.

Friday, August 30 - Drive to Los Flamencos

I still wasn't feeling well and the long drive down from the mountains and out onto the dry Guajira Peninsular hadn't really helped much.  The good news was that, once out of the highlands, the road was straight, and flat.  In fact the country here was dry, flat and arid with dusty farm fields, scattered thorn scrub and eventually a series of coastal lagoons that formed the core of a protected area.  "Protected" is a relative term though, the lagoons may have been designated a preserve but the country around was quite heavily farmed and had been absolutely stripped clean by the abundant goats that we encountered everywhere.  Goats can eat anything, and in numbers they'll eat everything.  What was left was a world of dusty ground with scattered thorn trees (stripped bare up to maximum goat height) and no understory or regeneration whatsoever.  It was also very, very hot and quite humid.  "I hope the birds are good" I told Daniel "because I don't like this place".  "Don't worry" he replied "they are".

Double-striped Thick-knee, perhaps the bird I was most excited to see here.

As it turns out, I got a lifer before we got to the hotel.  I'd seen Double-striped Thick-knee, one of a global family of weird, mostly nocturnal, dry country shorebirds, on the bird list and Daniel had told me to watch the farm fields as we drove in.   So I watched the farm fields, and after about an hour of watching them, a Thick-knee flashed through my field of vision as we zoomed by.  I yelled, the car turned and, after an awkward couple of minutes when we couldn't find the Thick-knee again, but did see several Southern Lapwings (I knew I hadn't made a mistake that awful ... I was sick, not dead!) we found it again, right where I said it would be.   I've always found these birds fascinating (and weird) and remember cycling from Cambridge up to Norfolk to see (what we then called) Stone-Curlews in my college days.  Now I've seen 6 of the 10 species that occur globally,  but I would like to see all 10, they are strange looking creatures and quite charismatic in their own way.

Eventually we made it to the hotel where I really just wanted to sleep but was actually feeling well enough to consider eating for the first time in 24 hours.  The hotel was basic, and the temperature in my room (hut) was 100-degrees (F) or more until they managed to fix the A/C.  But with that fixed, a cold shower (appropriate and welcome for once) and some local sea-food to pick at I re-grouped and got ready to start birding seriously again the next morning.

Not what I'd have chosen for my return to solid food, but the seafood was
hyper local and very fresh ... the deep-fried plantains though, they ended up with the goats.

Saturday, August 31 - Los Flamencos

"I'm back baby!".  I woke up feeling just fine, and well slept, and ready to bird.  The land we were going to bird was part of a Native American reservation and so we had hired a local guide who was a member of the community and, as it turns out, quite an excellent birder.  He arrived right at dawn, and off we went into the thorn scrub where I had 8 life birds before breakfast!

Orinocan Saltator and White-whiskered Spinetail

5 inches long and colorful.  Not your grandmother's
grasshopper

There's nothing like diving into an unfamiliar bird community and while, many of the species here were familiar, the mix and composition was different and there were a bunch of new species to be seen.  Crested Bobwhite scurried underfoot while Vermillion Cardinals ornamented the trees.  We had some Orinocan Saltators, another milestone for me, my 10th (of 10) species of Saltator, and spent time tracking down diminutive Pale-tipped and Slender-billed Tyrannulets.  Of all the birds here though, perhaps the most fascinating was the White-whiskered Spinetail ... not your typical spinetail, more like an antbird of some sort in terms of looks and habits.  It was a very birdy morning in a way that only mornings in desert-like habitats can be, reminding me of early trips to Arizona where the birds just kept coming and by the time breakfast was ready I felt like I'd had a really good day of birding.

With the rest of the day ahead and temperatures rising, I expected the birding to die off fairly quickly but we had time for another couple of stops after breakfast before the sun made it impossible to bird at around 11am.  We visited a small fazenda where the owner kept an array of hummingbird feeders and watch the local Buffy Hummingbirds jockey for space at the, mostly home-made, feeders.  This is a really good bird for Colombia and occurs only in this area, when I said I'd seen it before in Venezuela the guides looked visible deflated having expected me to be more excited to see them, so I felt guilty for hours afterwards and tried to make up for it by taking lots of photos.

Buffy Hummingbird

There was also a fruit feeder at the fazenda and the owner graciously re-filled it when we arrived starting a stampede, not of birds, but of iguanas that dropped from the trees onto the feeder to chow down on fresh papaya.

Iguana feeder?  Do you think it'll catch on?

I have cardinals on my feeders at home, but not this species.

With the heat rising we tried one more area of thorn scrub and when Daniel heard a Black-backed Antshrike we spent some time tracking them down.  This splendid looking antshrike with striking pied plumage was our last bird of the morning before retreating out of the withering sun.  Time to chill by the beach, have lunch, take a siesta, then start again .... not a bad life.

Black-backed Antshrike

Mid afternoon, trying to convince ourselves that it had cooled down a little (it hadn't), we headed out again with a specific list of targets in mind.  Rufous-vented Chachalaca called loudly as soon as we got out of the car (thank you!) but it took us a fair bit of time to lure a Tocuyo Sparrow out into the open (where I still failed to get an in-focus photo).  On the way back to the car, Orange-crowned Oriole became the last lifer of the day for me.  What a day of birding.  Yes, Daniel was right, the birds were worth it ....

Saturday, September 1 - Los Flamencos back to Barranquilla 

We had another morning to bird the same areas but with most of the target birds already in the bag we could relax and just see what we saw.  We did manage to add a Trinidad Euphonia and set out on a 'snipe hunt' playing tape for the (hard to find and low density) Gray-capped Cuckoo.  No-one really expected the cuckoo to show up, but after and hour of wandering trails and playing tape ... one responded!  The bird then came and sat up next to us, even staying long enough for us to flag down other passing birders and have them see it too.

Gray-capped Cuckoo, a very good bird anywhere in it's range.

Soon enough though it was time to leave and we headed back to the hotel for lunch near the beach.  I'd been wondering if we would indeed see the flamingos that gave Los Flamencos it's name (and were the reason for the protected status) and Daniel had said we could check some of the lagoons on the way out.  Not 20 minutes later, someone shouted "Flamencos!" and we all leapt up to look out to sea and at a flock of passing American Flamingos.  There was a problem though, Daniel, the driver, and the local guide were clearly seeing flamingos and estimating their numbers to be 400-500 birds flying right.  I couldn't see any flamingos .... I was standing next to three people who were watching 500 large pink birds fly by .... and I couldn't see them (!).  I was to say the least, confused and I even began to wonder if they were pranking me.  It was only when I took my bins down that I got the joke.  I am a good foot taller than the average Colombia and from my height the huge flock of flamingos passing by out to sea were totally obscured by a thatched roof covering the dining area that the others were short enough to be looking under.  I dropped to my knees and there they were!  I guess I don't have to give up birding and retire quite yet ...

After lunch it was time to go, and we headed out to make the long drive back to Barranquilla and flights home.  There was a hurricane supposed to be clipping Miami though and I'd been worried about my flights so had delayed them a day to miss it.  I wondered what I was going to do in Barranquilla for a day an then just decided to throw plans to the wind, cancelled my flight and booked  a ticket to Bogota.  I wasn't done birding yet, I wanted more birds ....