Colombia - Day 8 - Camino Montezuma (lower)

We took the jeeps again direct from the lodge. In the dark? In truth I cannot remember, but probably, as we went about half way up and my first eBird list starts before 7am. It wouldn't be a proper holiday unless I came back exhausted though would it? We stopped about half way up, at around 6.30am, for a Moustached Puffbird, Sooty-headed Wren and a Tricoloured Brushfinch - heard by Gleison's keen ears as we drove along (he tended to always have his head stuck out of the window - this is how I like my guides!). 

Moustached Puffbird

The main birding started a short while later after breakfast on the fly. Same tactic as the previous day, birding whilst descending with the cars following us in short hops. This allowed us to escape the worst of any rain, and also meant we didn't have to carry water or food, or in my case my camera - by this stage I was getting rather fed up with it, a heavy lump that didn't seem to be doing me much good. 

The magnificent Cecropia tree. There are c40 species in the Andes, so I don't know which one this is!

Alejandro (L) and Gleison (R) discussing tactics

The birds were amazing once again, the best of the morning being amazing views of a Blue-fronted Parrotlet. When quizzed later that evening on what the best birds had been, both Gleison and Alejandro picked this bird without hesitation, I think they had only seen it a handful of times, and one of them lived here! Best of the rest included a Scaled Fruiteater, another bird high on our list of targets, three Orange-breated Fruiteaters, a glut of Flycatchers - Cinammon, Ornate, Handsome, Flavescent and Acadian. An Olivaceous Piha was tracked down, and we had unexpected views of an Olive Finch on the path in front of us.

Ornate Flycatcher

A small crowd of agitated birds were gathered around a dense tree hanging over the slope - a Cloud Forest Pygmy-Owl, but try as we might we could only hear it despite knowing almost exactly where it was. That's birding! A heavy shower at about 10am postponed birding for about an hour, but we were reasonably close to one of the shelters so avoided the worst of it. This is an occupational hazard of birding in the Andes, but on our final full day to have any birding time go begging felt distastrous.

Toucan Barbet

Deliveroo

Luckily it cleared again after an hour or so and we were able to resume for a while before another moped lunch. We were a little further down now, and the difference a few hundred metres of altitude makes is remarkable. The birds are not wholly different of course, but there are some that are simply found at this level and no higher. Toucan Barbet was one of these, with three birds seen well in a tree, and also on this stretch of mountainside was a different Tapaculo. Part of what made it different is that I got a photo of it, something I had previously thought impossible, but somehow Tatama Tapaculo made it onto the back of my camera. Not all of it obviously, and the photo is terrible, but it represented a major step up in my interaction with this family. 

Tatama Tapaculo

Tatama

Once again the list of birds seen is too numerous to list out, and with most of them not photographed it would also be pretty boring. When I finally finish these blog posts I'll do a day by day bird list which will allow people to see what was seen where. These take ages to prepare, so make sure you read and appreciate it! A bird I will note here is Lanceolated Monklet, a big prize and one that Dave and Richard were super keen on seeing. Gleison was once again the superstar, hearing the bird deep in the forest and somehow attracting it out so that we could all see it. The views were actually sensational, and as well as the bird here is photo of Richard doing his Monklet face. He also has a Monklet finger but I couldn't possibly publish that.

Lanceolated Monklet

We reached the lodge just before 5pm, a long and fulfilling day, and sat around drinking coffee whilst a mere 15 species of Hummingbird buzzed around the feeders. Fifteen! This is worthy of a pre-list!

White-necked Jacobin, 1
Black-throated Mango, 1
Green Thorntail, 1
Violet-tailed Sylph, 2
Brown Inca, 1
White-booted Racket-tail, 1
Rufous-gaped Hillstar, 2
Purple-bibbed Whitetip, 2
Empress Brilliant, 2
Purple-throated Woodstar, 6
Western Emerald, 1
Crowned Woodnymph, 1
Steely-vented Hummingbird, 1
Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, 2
Andean Emerald, 2

As you will have gathered by now, Montezuma is an incredible place, easily the best location of the trip; we had definitely saved the best until last. We had a final morning the next day in which to try and get a few more species on the list, but with a three hour journey to Pereira and an early evening flight to connect with our international flights we could not hang around!

Silver-throated Tanager

Scrub Tanager

Torrent Tyrannulet

Torrent

A critical mass

The number of birders in Wanstead is growing, I think mirroring a national trend in birdwatching becoming more popular. Excellent news, I am no longer a middle-aged loner weirdo, just the first bit. The various lockdowns and general level of shit all around us is seeing more people than ever turn to the great outdoors for solace. Excellent, yes? An emphatic yes, ditch the screens and get out there, it can literally save people's lives. Wanstead, I am assuming like other areas (although possibly magnified, this is the big city after all), has benefited from this newfound interest in wildlife with a whole host of new faces out birding. Collectively, and this does actually include me (!), all of the existing birders on the patch have been exceedingly friendly, welcoming, and helpful. That patch map I drew up years ago has been getting more impressions that ever as people get to grips with the different areas and the stupid names we gave them. Again, this is good. More people out birding and exploring, more eyes spotting and reporting detrimental activity like arson and fly-tipping, and more birds being seen. Many more birds being seen. And many more birds being reported.....

Back in the old days there was no such thing as instant local bird news. News of birds was shared face to face on the patch, or if there was something demanding immediate attention, people phoned each other. Sometimes even on landlines! Things have moved on, almost everyone has a smartphone, and there are loads of ways that news can be shared. Too many ways in fact, and for a while the local birding scene here suffered from a mishmash of communciation methods that resulted in a logistical nightmare and an absurd amount of duplication. There were numerous Twitter accounts for example. I had two, my own one called Wansteadbirder and then another called Wansteadbirding, essentially to separate my usual drivel from the dissemination of local bird news, if you wanted "in" then all you had to do was follow the account. In theory if you used hashtagging, or @'tting (is that even a word?) then you could report sightings. I gave a number of people the password to this latter account so that they could use it directly, but with several cooks the waters started getting muddier. The account started to follow other accounts related to London Birding, the idea being that we would get a view of what was happening across London, migratory arrivals and so on, but this then morphed into following bird observatories, nature-themed good causes, climate biologists, local water companies and so on, and before long it was impossible to have that coherent view of the local patch that it had been expressely created for. And that was without the advertising and emojis! Every now and again I would go into the settings and have a good old purge, but this was only ever temporary and it would soon bloat out again as different people have different views (more on which later). 

We then hit upon the idea of using the messaging function. It looks like a little envelope and it turned out that as well as one to one messaging you could add several people to a conversation, and so provided you had a Twitter account you could be added to this by one of the people that had the password. WhatsApp by another name. You can probably guess where this is going, but so many people were added to the list that it became a giant chat room, and worse than that, some of the additions were essentially random, people visiting for the first and perhaps only time were added on as well. Seemingly all you had to do was stop and ask what people were looking at and you were on! The need to sift through endless chit-chat to get to actual bird news from somebody you actually knew became distinctly unsatisfying, time-consuming, and above all distracting. And then there were the notifications. My God! Any time anyone said anything my phone beeped, but ironically as any of the longer-standing birders to whom I'd given the password were assumed to be "me", my phone did not beep when they posted something (as why would I notify myself?) so I was basically getting push notifcations for all of the chat and very little concerning birds of interest! Disaster!

What to do? Split, that's what. Thus a breakaway faction started a local WhatsApp Group by invitation only! For a while this worked very well. A small group of more experienced birders who knew what was good and what was normal, and generally sticking to bird news only, although I should point out that we could degenerate with the best of them. At around the same time one of the most active birders on the patch lost his phone somewhere, and when he finally got a new one he decided to eschew both Twitter and WhatsApp, and instead started group-texting people. And then of course all birding patches have at least one luddite who doesn't have a mobile phone at all....So now we had a plethora of information pipelines that were impossible to manage.This was never more keenly felt when a locally important bird was flying over. The unlucky observer woud need to try and recall who used what method of communication versus where they lived and what direction the bird was flying in to make a split second decision as to whether to first tweet, whatsapp, text or phone. Or go home and write a letter. I cannot begin to describe the panic that set in when this happened to me, and I would inevitably make a hash of it, missing somebody off, sending it from the wrong account. 

Worse than this, the word had got out about a select WhatsApp group and there were whisperings of elitism that did not sit very comfortably. The truth hurts. Why wasn't so-and-so allowed to be on this group, were they not good enough? Don't you like them? It was a fair challenge, and whilst it might have been created to cut through the noise, perception is everything and so is inclusivity. Not everyone agreed, but one day I made a new one, moved everyone over, and added as many other people as I had phone numbers for to it. Over the following days those birders we saw on the patch got added and people continue to join today, although the closed nature of the application means it is still de facto invitation only. We also used this opportunity to consolidate platforms, encouraging people to stop tweeting and only use WhatsApp going forward. The last Twitter message was in April 2022. With the exception of the guy who still texts and is not for turning, all bird news is now in one place.

So this is nirvana right? Loads of new birders, loads of birds being seen, all the bird news being shared in a single place. Well, err, yes. And no. I am not sure exactly how many local birders there are now, but judging from the stream of WhatsApp message there are a lot. And it is not a stream, it is a torrent, and herein lies the issue. Inclusivity is a good thing for local birding but it is not without its failings. Whenever anyone joins they get given a set of guidelines, but any social media group with upwards of 30 people on it is inevitably going to suffer from a dilution of purpose. It seems not to matter how many times the guidelines are shared, it isn't long before it starts to meander. It starts with a casual emoji, disappointingly WhatsApp has the ability to "like" a message amongst other sentiments. Confidence builds, and someone will sneak a "well done!" in there. As it is January many birds are temporarily exciting again, and so someone will report a Fieldfare as it might be new for the year. Why stop at Fieldfare though when there are Redwings? And Green Woodpeckers! Left unchecked you eventually get to this:

I do appreciate that a birder who is new to the patch and perhaps also new to the hobby might not be able to confidently work out what counts as notable, but come on! A Wren! This is but one example of many (I am not in the game of deliberately wanting to make an individual feel bad), and I am sure it is plain-old over-enthusiasm, but taken en-masse it has the impact of making the local bird news group more or less useless. I would rather miss a good bird than have to sift through this, I just don't have the time. So here is the conundrum, do I throw my elitist toys out of the pram, or do I patiently try and provide some guidance? 

Well you know me..... Hah! Actually it is a bit of both. So yes, I did bash out a message about Wrens, Chaffinches and all the other common birds recently reported as being very definitely not notable, and I also went one grumpy step further than our very polite guidance, big killjoy that I am, and stated that I deemed general chit chat and congratulatory emojis as non-essential. But I also very helpfully pointed people in the direction of the Wanstead Birding Blog which has a number of really quite useful pages on it that are specifically designed to demystify the patch and the birds found on it and over it. So for example we have a full site list which gives clear information on the status of each and every species, whether resident breeder or rarity. Of course the time of year is also important, and so we also have a page which clearly shows the range of arrival and departure dates for our expected migrants. And then finally we have detailed annual bird reports that go into a lot more detail, especially since the advent of consolidated eBird use on the patch. When I started birding not only was I clueless, but very little of this information existed about my local area, certainly not to the extent it does today. Other than the somewhat deal-breaking issue of actually being able to identify a bird in the first place, everything that someone unfamiliar to the patch might need is readily available in order for them to make a reasonable assessment of how interesting a bird might be. 

Of course I immediately felt rather guilty about being a big misery-guts arsehole, birding is supposed to be fun rather than a military operation to record birds. And this brings me to my final point and one that I am perhaps not very good at. Empathy. People go birding for all sorts of reasons, just being outside is perhaps the biggest one of all at the moment. My perspective on birding, focussed as it is on notable species, lists, numbers and statistics, is likely a long way from the perspective of a casual birder, or the perspective of somebody picking up binoculars for the first time. I once picked up binoculars for the first time of course, but thankfully not everyone turns out like me. I would do well to remember that.

Ultimately I think we will come good, but certainly the transitional phase is becoming a little trying. It all comes down to good communication, right now we have over-communication, and I expect that many patches will have travelled this same road before settling down. The best examples of how to disseminate bird news that I know of are in London and Fife, both bigger areas than Wanstead by some margin, and with many more participants. Perhaps this is actually helpful, as rather than feeling like a chummy club where everyone knows everyone, there are so many people you likely don't know it forces a little more circumspection when typing a message. The London group has 79 members at the latest count and is admirably clear of distractions. It does stray from time to time of course, but there are a number of more intolerant people than me on there who very quickly shut it down. Fife Bird Club has a different solution, and has two groups. There is a Bird News group, c200 strong, that is most definitely for news only. You have to post the date, the time, the location, the species or list of species, and finally your name, in that order and that order only. It is ruthlessly enforced and woe betide anyone who gets it wrong or attempts to stretch the boundaries. The human need to interact and communicate beyond raw data is satisfied by having a separate group only for chat, questions, directions and anything else. Interestingly this group only has half the number of participants, yet if a rare bird comes up on the News group all questions about it will without fail be on the other group. Again this only works due to a certain ruthlessness on the part of Admin, but it seems to me to be the perfect model.

But here is the rub. Although I created our WhatsApp group I have no desire to administrate it. A thankless task, and most of the time I am at work and can't respond anyway. But my vision of what it was for and how it should work seems to currently be a little different to how it is working and what it is being used for, and finding a happy medium has the potential to be challenging. People eh? So at the moment I think a second group just for the chatty aspect, photos, and less news-oriented messages would allow for a space that a decent number of the participants would enjoy and feel comfortable in. But I would want everyone to be in both lest we end up with any kind of "us and them" type divide, even if that were just perception. I would then feel better about being ruthless in shutting down the spam on the news one, but then I would be a de-facto administrator.....Oh dang it! Maybe I just need to chill out!

Colombia - Day 7 - Camino Montezuma (upper)

Guess what? We woke up in the dark and drove for an hour and a half to be somewhere by dawn. This was becoming shattering! Accompanying us this time was Gleison, a local guide in some way connected to the Lodge - in other words he knew the area like the back of his hand! This time we left the lodge at about 4am, and in the same jeeps as yesterday drove the whole way up the track to the Communication Tower at the very end. This is also the site of a small military outpost and so we were watched by soldiers as we ate a quick breakfast and had some much-needed coffee. The birds came thick and fast, the main target of Chestnut-bellied Flowerpiercer seen really well. Rufous Spinetail was here too, as well as Velvet-purple Coronet and Violet-tailed Sylph, both new Hummingbirds. The view from this spot was magnificent, with Cerro Tatama at one stage being almost completely visible, an immense mountain with many waterfalls running down it. A Crab Fox observed proceedings, and was rewarded (as I suspect it is always rewarded) with some fruit.

Chestnut-bellied Flowerpiercer

Crab Fox

As the track here was extremely precarious we drove back down the steepest section before we started birding, and quickly started adding to our sightings. It is a little difficult to know what came when, especially as most of it went unphotographed, but highlights included a Narino Tapaculo which we actually saw, a Yellow-breasted Antpitta which we heard and then Gleison persuaded to run/fly across the track, and White-faced Nunbird. Throughout our descent we were kept watered and fed by John and Duber who followed us in the vehicles.

Munchique Wren

We pinned down Muchique Wren fairly early on, which replaces Grey-breasted Wood-Wren in this area, and at an open area we had sensational views of Gold-ringed Tanager and Chestnut-breasted Chlorophonia, a knock-out bird if ever there was one. A pair of Tanager Finches were also seen rather well, and both Green-and-Black and Orange-breasted Fruiteaters. An unusual sighting was a juvenile Semi-collared Hawk perched out in the open, unconcerned by our presence.

Chestnut-breasted Chlorophonia

Gold-ringed Tanager

We broke for lunch at one of several shelters constructed along the track. These are apparently new, put up during the hiatus caused by Covid. The lunch stop was the largest, a two storey affair with mid-canopy views. Lunch was hot, and delivered from the Lodge on a moped - a brilliant idea! The rain that had been threatening all morning really kicked in at this point, and so we all at on the platform looking at Hummingbirds and drinking coffee and chocolate until it eased sufficiently that we could continue. The gap did not last long, we got about another hour during which we saw lots of new Flycatchers (Ornate, Flavescent, Golden-bellied) and our first Collared Trogon. We also had some terrific view of Ochre-breasted Antpitta near a small shelter, but as with majority of the birds seen today the photography opportunity simply wasn't there. Our 12th and final Antpitta species of the trip! As the rain hammered down we decided to return to the accomodation, reaching the Lodge by about 4, where we had more coffee and were perfectly content to sit around and watch the multiple Hummingbird (11 species - list here!) and Tanager feeders. Black-headed Brushfinch was seen at the forest edge, and a Black-chested Jay was clearly a regular, feeding from the tables. Before dusk we tried for Crakes and Rails at the pools behind the main building, but could only get Torrent Tyrannulet and a large number of Flame-rumped Tanagers and Rusty-margined Flycatchers.

Velvet-purple Coronet

A female Violet-tailed Sylph

Purple-throated Woodstar

Dry January

My goodness have I had a lot of fun lately. The bathroom scales are not as fun. Well, they are for other people, but not for me. Gah! It is not pretty, and I am not getting any younger either. So, dry January then. I couldn't face it during the various lockdowns and other pandemic-affected periods, but now feels like a good time for a reset. Wine is my main vice, but as I may have hinted at here from time to time I do like a proper cocktail. Several, normally.

One of my five a day

A convivial evening around Christmas.....

I just really really enjoy a glass of wine. Thinking about wine, about where to get it, how much to stock up on, what food it will go with, what to open and so on takes up a serious amount of my waking hours. But I reckon I can give it up with no issues at all, certainly temporarily. I may get the White Burgundy shakes after a few days but I'll work through it. How hard can it be?

So, with a few definite exceptions towards the end of the month I am going to keep my hands off the cellar and out of the drinks cupboard. It will all keep, indeed much of it will actually get better, and hopefully I will shed the excess pounds as quickly as I appear to have put them on. Will you see me jogging around Wanstead? Unlikely at this point, but let's see if this does anything first.

Round Two in the Park

As threatened I got up reasonbly early and headed for Wanstead Park. In winter it provides very different habitat to Wanstead Flats, and I was looking forward to a number of new species for the year having closed the opening day on 40 species. I heard Nuthatch and Stock Dove in the first few minutes, but straining for Firecrest and Treecreeper produced only Goldcrest, but at least my ears still work at this point. My arms are now almost not long enough to hold small print at a readable distance....

On Shoulder of Mutton I found a drake Teal and a Water Rail, and three Shoveler became 12 when a trio of out of control dogs charged in on the northern side. Amazing how the margins of small ponds can shelter so many wildfowl. Without help from dogs you wouldn't get anywhere near a decent WeBS count....

Heronry was a quiet affair barring two drake Pochard and a couple of Redwing, but it all kicked off on Perch with a Grey Heron, a Little Egret, a pair of Coal Tit and five Cormorant. The Dell held at least ten Siskin, reported at the very end of last year, and continuing into the Old Sewage Works added Chaffinch and more Redwing feeding in the paddock. I walked all the way to the Gates of Mordor in the hope of Cetti's Warbler and Kingfisher but found neither. It was however very pleasant and I even took my red hat off in the weak sunshine.

Exiting the Old Sewage Works towards the stables the Cetti's did the decent thing, the first time I think I have had it away from the water's edge. As it did so some gulls came past, loosely following the Roding but perhaps now cutting the corner. One of them was extemely large and slow-flapping, and pleasingly dwarfed a Herring Gull ahead of it. There had been a GBBG on the Flats both yesterday and today, both of which I had missed, so this was quite handy as it can be a hard bird here - mostly I see them flying across the Flats on some kind of commuter route. A Kestrel hovered above the paddock as I hit the stables. Plenty of finches at the usual spot on the corner, including my first Greenfinch of the year, but no Grey Wagtail on the dung heap.

My final stop of the morning was Bush Wood in the hope of Treecreeper, a bird that had eluded me all of last year but that Louis and Gosia had 'thermaled' earlier in the day. Pah! I can't complain, this is the way things are going, and thermal imaging is no different to noc-mig when you think about it. Anyway, next week I am getting my bionic eyes fitted. The left will have a 20-150x zoom, while the right will house the infrared. A retractable parabolic microphone will be installed in my left shoulder at the same time, connected directly to both the Merlin App and eBird, and visible via a HUD display in the brim of my hat. There will be no stopping me. Anyway, I couldn't refind the Treecreeper but I did bump into a Firecrest whilst searching for it. Once again I did not have my camera, but look, my trusty phone has done the job!

I am back to work tomorrow, so the fun is over for a few days. I find myself on 58, a semi-decent start. Last year it took me three weeks to get there, though the year before that I had 65 at this point. You can track my progress, should you be so inclined, on this page. Right, I am off for a drink. Oh wait, I am not drinking.....

Starting again

I was expecting it rain, and therefore to be able to have a nice lie in. Unfortunately it was nice and clear and I was forced to get up. I delayed for as long as possible by having a small coffee and looking out of the window, but I had soon exhausted the slip pickings in the garden and was forced to go looking for more. Best bird out of the eleven species, Sparrowhawk. I didn't count the Golden Mallard, Anas fantabulosa, which hopped onto the balcony to stretch its wings - a spring migration to Ireland awaits and it needs to get into shape for the journey.

I tootled off towards Jubilee, not quite a spring in my step, but happy to in the fresh air. The days leading up to this point have all been spent indoors as the weather has been filthy. I just don't enjoy birding in high wind and rain, and Wanstead Flats does not have the same potential as Shetland to justify getting out in it. But today was nice, a bit breezy perhaps, but not too bad at all. Messages regarding bird sightings were coming in thick and fast, everything is exciting again after all. The best message regarded the continuing 2023 presence of a Dartford Warbler located in the brooms by James. The Stonechats that it came in with fled at the first sign of snow and ice, but these hardy little birds somehow stuck it out and are still with us. Note how I say bird plural. For a while now we have thought that there might be two, but nobody has really be able to prove it beyond doubt. Well this morning Tim, Sean, Bob and I did - with both birds in the same view at one point. Both active, and very vocal, and seemingly chasing each other around.

I ended my morning on 40 species, easing myself back into it slowly. The patch total was a pretty decent 62 I think, from multiple contributers. I'll go to the Park tomorrow rather than the Flats, it will have different ducks, Siskin, Nuthatch and the possibility of Grey Wagtail and Water Rail. 

By the way, the fireworks last night were spectacular. I generally hate fireworks, mainly because it takes almost nothing for people to set them off round here, but for the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve I will make an exception. We watched from the balcony at Chateau L, and were treated to 180 degrees of sound and light, quite extraordinary. Many I suspect were simply from Londoners' gardens, but there must have been some official displays as well as some of these things were huge. The glut was obviously around midnight, but they continued for some time afterwards as there was no off switch....Anyway, so here we are in 2023. Happy New Year!

Colombia - Day 6 - Otun Quimbaya

La Florida

Oh look I'm getting up in the dark again. Love being on holiday! We were staying in La Florida, the last village before the paved road ran out, and that followed the Otun river south-east into the Otun Quimbaya reserve. Ernie got a morning off and we all squeezed into a single jeep that had come to take us up the track. We stopped when it was still dark for an attempt at a very special target - Hooded Antpitta. This is a reasonably well-known stake-out, but the window is extremely brief, the bird sings at dawn and not thereafter. Naturally Alejandro heard it first, but finding it was another matter entirely - this is one of the small ones that bounces around trees rather than runs along the ground, and it was very gloomy indeed at this hour. It seemed as if we strained into the forest with every ounce of our sense for ages, but in reality it was probably only a few minutes. Then all of a sudden it was directly in front of us, facing away, so dark that we could barely see it. It flicked left, movement giving it away, and then back again, and I caught a sensational view of the front half of it on a diagonal branch before it zipped away again and deeper into cover. Before coming to Colombia my experience of Antpittas was minimal, but I was beginning to see why they captivate birders so much. Magical. 

We carried on up the track until we could no further and paused for breakfast. We were introduced to a new fruit, Grenadilla, some kind of enormous passionfruit with the tasty bits enclosed in small translucent sacks that you kind of have to suck in in one go! Bloody delicious! A Colombian friend of mine said he could never eat them as a kid as they reminded him of bogeys! The road crosses the river here, before passing through some locked gates. Lots of bird activity at this time in the morning, including a Sickle-winged Guan, Common Chlorospingus, a pair of Andean Solitaire and also two Red-rumped Fruitcrow, but no luck with the hoped for White-capped Dipper and Torrent Duck. Some Bronze-winged Parrots flew over on their morning commute.

Sickle-winged Guan

Cauca Guan

The rest of the morning was spent slowly walking back down the track, with the jeep following a short way behind us in hops. We had not been birding long when a bird wave passed through that had Multicoloured Tanager within it, a much wanted species and one that is completely mind-blowing. I have no photo and you would not belive me if I tried to describe it! We saw masses here. Cauca Guan were fairly common, usually high up in the trees on seemingly rather insecure narrow branches, and we very nearly managed another Antpitta, Moustached, but the bird was only seen for a nano-second by Bob and Alejandro and the rest of us missed it. Red-crowed and Smoky-brown Woodpeckers got added to the list, and amazingly I actually saw a Tapaculo. Stile's Tapaculo is an endemic and we all needed it, and in a reserval of fortunes from the Ash-coloured Tapaculo experience at Rio Blanco I got a decent view of this tiny mouse-like bird peering around the edge of a thick dark tangle. Get in! Needless to say there are no photos, and in fact even though I carried my camera the whole morning I barely used it - too much birding going on and that was the clear priority. 

Spotted Barbtail

Andean Motmot

La Chiva!

Strong-billed Woodcreeper, Montane Foliage-gleaner, Spotted Barbtail, Variagted Bristle-Tyrant - apart from anything else aren't the names of these South-American birds simply fantastic? At a slightly open area that had been cleared for cattle were a pair of Southern Lapwings with chicks, and some small flocks of both Golden-plumed Parakeet and Scalet-fronted Parakeet flew over.

We returned to the hotel for lunch before leaving for Tatama National Park, initially back down the river to Pereira. A couple of quick stops in the forlorn hope of Torrent Duck did net Spotted Sandpiper and Torrent Tyrannulet, both new for the trip. Then it was a long drive through the city, heading west towards La Virginia and Apia. We made one stop along the road for Turquoise Dacnis, another endemic. Alejandro had a particular tree in mind, and remarkably this tree not only had the Dacnis, but also Green Honeycreepers, a Bar-crested Antshrike, four Blue-grey Tanagers, a couple of Bay-headed and Summer Tanagers, a Rose-breasted Grosbeak, an Acorn Woodpecker and a Black-billed Thrush. All in the one tree! I wish I could remember what it was, but it was clearly extremely attractive to birds! This is the value of a local guide; by ourselves we would have driven right past it....

Summer Tanager

We stopped at the mountain town of Pueblo Rico to transfer into jeeps for the final days of our trip - the famous Camino Montezuma. Ernie's van couldn't go up this track and he was headed back to Bogota. Duber and John were waiting for us in the main square, right on time, and after a quick coffee, an umbrella shopping spree, and some Cattle Tyrant photography we bade our farewells to Ernie and set off on the final leg. We arrived at the Montezuma lodge at dusk. Two and half full days of birding this highly anticipated area awaited us.

Cattle Tyrant