Colombia Day 10 - Second Day Montezuma (15Aug2024)

On the last day at Montezuma, the plan was to focus on the second or lower half of the road we did the previous day and try to pick up some of the birds we missed.  To be honest, we could have spent another 3-4 days and not picked up all the possible birds.  The place is super deep in terms of diversity of species.

Beautiful Jay was our first bird of the day and was in horrible light.

Dusky Chlorospingus - apparently some of them have yellow eyes and some dark.

Some scenery and habitat shots.

It's easy to imagine how FARC was able to hide out in the jungle for so many years.

Flame-faced Tanager - our only chance at this bird and I missed the in focus shot.  

Yellow-collared Chlorophonia

Bronze-Olive Pygmy-tyrant

Same bird from below.

Ornate Flycatcher

Black-and-Gold Tanager - Another Colombian endemic!

Toucan Barbet!  These were extremely loud but were very difficult to see as they stayed way up in the canopy.  

Short-horned Grasshopper

Unidentified Beetle

Uniform Antshrike - we spent a ton of time trying to get good looks at a pair of these.  Photos were very difficult to obtain in the dark understory. This was the male.

And female.

I think this was called a Collared Trogon in the field, but now I see it is a Masked Trogon.  The bars on the tail are relatively thin and the bird has a nice mask.

Another sub-par shot of a Glistening-green Tanager.

Another Butterfly to ID later.

Masked Trogon male.

Scaly-throated Foliage-gleaner

Choco Vireo 

Moustached Puffbird

Lanceolated Monklet

White-capped Dipper

Russet Antshrike

Dinner was had back at the lodge and I picked up a couple good bird right outside the dining area just before and after.

Rufous-throated Tanager

Ashy-headed Tyrannulet

Rufous-gaped Hillstar - I had missed a photo of this bird when I saw it the previous day, so I was on a mission to get one.  This was taken almost at the very end of the day in horrible light.

The Blackish Rail came out again just before dark.

And was joined by a couple of cute chicks.

We had one more night at Montezuma before leaving early in the morning for another adventure which will be covered in another post.

Colombia Day 9 Part 2 - Montezuma Lodge (14Aug2024)

As we continued down the Montezuma Lodge road, the forest flocks slowed down but the feeders remained active and there were still plenty of things to look at including some beautiful butterflies and cool looking insects.

It is going to take some time to identify all the butterflies I saw.

Not to mention all the cool plants.

Beetles are among the most diverse orders of animals on the planet with over 400k species identified.

We also saw a couple Tarantulas.

The female Violet-tailed Sylphs are almost if not more beautiful than the males.

Masked Flowerpiercer with some bling.

Tawny-bellied Hermit

Dusky Chlorospingus

Cinnamon Flycatcher

So cute but so badass at the same time, look at that lightning bolt on his crown!

Collared Inca

Violet-tailed Sylph

Brown Inca

Velvet-purple Coronet

Empress Brilliant

A caterpillar that was at least 6 inches long and who's beauty rivals that of nudibranch species in the ocean.

Orange-breasted Fruiteater female.

And the male!

Beryl-spangled Tanager

Black Solitaire!  This one is near endemic with some crossing into Ecuador.

Tricolored Brushfinch

Brown Inca - The palm trees at one of the stops had some really photogenic perches.

Violet-tailed Sylph

Gold-ringed Tanager - this Colombian endemic is a speciality that people come to Montezuma for.

Chestnut-breasted Chlorophonia was an eye-popping addition to our list for the day.

Purplish-mantled Tanagers were fairly common.

Club-winged Manakin

Yellow-collared Chlorophonia

Three-striped Warbler - it was interesting to find so many banded birds in the middle of nowhere in Colombia.

Sharpe's Wren

Black-chinned Mountain-tanager - like many of these high elevation western cordillera birds, they are near endemic and only cross over into Ecuador.

Glistening-green Tanager - sadly we never got close looks at this stunning tanager as it stayed high in the canopy.

Handsome Flycatcher

Fulvous-dotted Treerunner

In the same flock we also had a Pacific Tuftedcheek but I will spare you the horrible photo.

We made it back down the road at about 5:20pm so we had been birding for almost 12 hours!  What do I do in this situation?  Bird some more of course.  I spent some time at my feeder and walking around the property.

Empress Brilliant

Black-throated Mango!

After dinner, a couple of us walked around in the dark looking for owls, but we found this guy instead.....

Common Potoo!  I was hoping someone would have a good flashlight so I could get some really good pics, but we all had poor ones.  Look at that big yellow eyeball!

We also heard Tropical Screech Owl but couldn't get our lights on it.  What an awesome day!