Firstly sorry for the prolonged silence from me. The good news is I have been in Colombia for the past 3 weeks and have tons of material to share. I signed up for this trip with Otus Asio Tours about a year ago. Previously I visited the Santa Marta area in the far northeast of the country so this time I was interested in a tour that focused on the 3 Cordilleras in the central part of Colombia. These three mountain ranges within the Andes are the reason why Colombia has the greatest bird diversity of any country on earth. You have these mountains that separate populations of birds and allow them to evolve in relative isolation.
This map shows nicely the 3 Cordilleras with the Eastern Cordillera being separated from the other two by the Magdalena River valley. The Western and Central Cordilleras have a less pronounced valley (Cauca Valley) but enough to separate populations of birds. The highest peak in the Western Cordillera (Cordillera Occidental) is about 13,500 feet. The Central Cordillera is the highest with one of the peaks being 17,600 ft high. The Eastern Cordillera (Oriental) is the fattest and has a peak that clocks in at 17,500 ft. The focus of this bird tour was in these mountain ranges and the valleys separating them. We did not venture into the Llanos (tropical grasslands) in the east or the Pacific lowlands. The tour stared in Bogota and ended in Medellin. Fun fact, Colombians don't pronounce the double L with a Y sound like other Latin Americans, they pronounce it with a J sound. So Medellin is pronounced Medejeen. Bogota has an elevation of 8500 feet so it is higher up than Denver. Medellin is lower at about 5000 feet, but in general we were anywhere from 5000 to 13,000 feet of elevation for the whole trip. This means that although you are close to the equator, temperatures are generally mild.
Since my flight landed in Colombia earlier than some on the trip, the trip leader (Jan Hansen of Otus Asio) along with his local guide (Cristian Daza) arranged for a day trip east of Bogota to focus on a couple of endemics. Our first stop was the Observatorio de aves los Andes just outside of the northern limits of Chingaza National Park. Although the land was mainly local farmer owned, they had some kind of agreement with various organizations in Colombia to preserve essential habitat for certain species.
As with most of the trip, we woke very early and had to drive for a couple hours to get to our destination. Bogota itself is kind of a traffic nightmare so it was wise to get up early and try to get out of it before the traffic started up.
Upon unloading the van, our guide immediately recognized the boisterous calls of a gang of White-capped Tanagers. White-capped Tanagers are far ranging in the Andes in elevations of 1600 to 3200 meters, but they hang out in nomadic groups so it is hard to find them in one place. You just have to be lucky and run into them. This was the only time we saw them.
The female are a little more subdued in color but essentially look the same.
The males have bright red throats and the white cap offset by the black nape makes it a challenge to photograph. The camera doesn't know whether to under or overexpose the subject.
I am glad I took at least one picture of this Bluish Flowerpiercer because it is the only one I saw on the trip. The more prevalent Masked Flowerpiercer was seen many times after this and looks similar but has a larger mask.
We saw Whistling Herons on my previous Colombia and Brazil trips, but these were much more cooperative.
A huge flock of Speckle-faced Parrots flew into a tall tree nearby but they were super backlit so I only took 1-2 record shots thinking we would see more later. Of course we never saw them again.
Speckle-faced Parrots
But the main target was the endemic Brown-breasted Parakeet and our local guide spotted them way up in the canopy eating something among the epiphytes and bromeliads.
This heavily cropped image was my only passable shot but we got great scope views.
Our next stop was Reserva Bosque Gujira just a little further east. This ecostation had some hummingbird feeders which allowed for some good geri-birding.
Sword-billed Hummingbirds are huge! I was not prepared for how big the bird was not even considering the bill.
Some of the female birds were a little harder to ID but I think this was a Glowing Puffleg.
The purple throat on this shot was a little more evident as were the "puff legs".
This was the only place we saw Longuemare's Sunangels.
Likewise for Blue-throated Starfrontlet.
Usually profile pics are the best pics for birds, but for some hummers you only get the full effect when the bird is facing you.
I can't recall if we saw any male Mountain Velvetbreasts but we had plenty of females on this day and I think 1-2 two other occasions.
Tyrian Metaltail was a species that I was already familiar with from the Santa Marta trip.
Great Sapphirewings are also quite large and in charge.
Great Thrushes were the most common bird throughout the whole trip at a range of elevations.
A Smoky Bush-Tyrant was another nice find but we did end up seeing this species again later in the trip.
For those of you that have been to South and Central America, you will know that Tapaculos are frequently heard but rarely seen well. So I was really happy that we actually got some good looks at one of these enigmatic species and I managed one half decent shot.
Pale-bellied Tapaculo - Sometimes I wish I had burst enabled on my camera so I could get at least one good unobstructed frame from these hard to see birds, but I hate having to go through and delete all the bad shots, so I tend to only shoot one by one.
The Sprinter Van we were in got stuck in the mud so we ended up staying a little longer at this spot. The driver was a little proud and stubborn and wanted to get himself out so I just took the opportunity to bird a bit more.
I was very pleased to have found these Slaty Brushfinches but we ended up seeing more at different spots later in the trip.
Finally the driver accepted our help to push the van out of the morass it was in and we got it out pretty quick.
We had a couple more stops on Day 1 but I will cover them in the next post.
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