Our last full day in Colombia started about an hour north of Medellin in a town called Vareda Cerezales. It's worth reading the brief history from Wikipedia on the target bird for this morning.
"The Antioquia brushfinch (Atlapetes blancae) is a poorly known species of bird from the family Passerellidae. It was scientifically described in 2007 on basis of three museum specimens from Antioquia, Colombia, which were previously labelled as slaty brushfinches (Atlapetus schistaceus). All three museum skins were collected in the 20th century, but only one label has a date, which is given as 1971. Subsequent fieldwork in Antioquia had failed to find this species again. That is until in January 2018, a Colombian resident of San Pedro de los Milagros noticed this bird on his way to Sunday mass. Since then, 4 subpopulations have been rediscovered, with at least 20 individuals between them. The bird had been previously overlooked despite living relatively close to the city of Medellín, which is home to 3.7 million people."
And who were we meeting that day to guide us to the bird? The very same person that rediscovered it, Rodolfo Correa Pena. Rodolfo met us at the gate to his family farm and led us down slope through very wet cow pastures with knee high grass.
Black-throated Flowerpiercer - its amazing that you can go to a random location in Colombia expecting one species you don't have only to find other species you don't have even after spending a total of 4-5 weeks in the country. The species list in Colombia is so deep that I can expect new species daily in many trips to come.
It didn't take long to find the bird we came to see.
Antioquia Brushfinch - it looks similar to the Slaty Brushfinch but has no dark mustache or white spot in the wing and is overall paler underneath. The interesting thing is that it is more closely related to the Yellow-breasted Brushfinch which lives in the same area but looks nothing like the Slaty.
Yellow-breasted Brushfinch - we had both species hanging out in the same bush.
They particularly liked this Viburnum bush.
Great Thrush
White-naped Brushfinch - A brushfinch Hat Trick!
Azara's Spinetail - I finally got this one sub-standard shot of this species which we had seen and heard several times before.
Fawn-breasted Tanager
We ended up pulling the plug on birding a little early in my opinion and headed to the hotel near the airport where we basically all day to sit and wait for the next morning flights. That was a little frustrating for me as we still had a whole day in front of us, so I made lemonade with my lemons and just birded around the hotel grounds.
Colombian Chachalaca - I was really pleased that the grounds to the hotel had a massive flock of these beautiful birds. Most Chachalacas are pretty dull looking in my opinion, but these have really cool scaly patterns all over their breasts and necks.
Eared Dove
Southern Lapwing
Yellow-headed Caracara!
This Black-capped Tanager was the last bird of the trip.
I ended up with more than 250 lifers on this trip and I am up to 606 species in Colombia alone. That is just from two trips taken. I have 650 in the USA in more than 10 years of birding. This just goes to show that Colombia has amazing bird diversity for a relatively small area and is worth more exploring. Next time I go, I will probably try and do some exploring on my own. I never felt unsafe there and the only thing that would stress me out is driving in the cities.
Dominican Republic in December is my next big trip, this time with family. However, I am sure I can post some local stuff before then.
