Xenopsaris
Active member
Hello to all
With a job that brings me regularly to this birders' paradise, I have enjoyed a couple of great birding trips around Venezuela. Junglaven is a pretty remote and little known Amazon lodge where one can get to grips with a host of speciality birds hard to find elsewhere. The lodge is basic, but the birding is wonderful and there is often no one else at the lodge - or for miles around - as you soon realise as you fly over uninhabited table mountains on your way in. This is not a luxury lodge, but if you have enjoyed Cana in the Darien then Junglaven will appeal to you.
Booking into the lodge is difficult. One can book through the birding tour companies that visit the lodge including Birdquest and Sunbird. A week is about the minimum time you want to spend there to hit the specialities hard.
For tailor-made visits, I can heartily recommend British ornithologist Chris Sharpe (www.birdvenezuela.com) and his colleagues at Birding Venezuela. They seem to mostly organise and lead tours for the major tour companies rather than individuals, but they will help with groups and are certainly the best way to get to Junglaven. Chris is a really good source of information on Venezuela logistics and also has unparalled knowledge of environmental / conservation issues too which I found enhanced my trips with him.
Below is a recent trip report about birding Junglaven by Guy Kirwan.
Great birding!
DT, Caracas
Notes on birding Junglaven, Venezuela
by Guy Kirwan (GMKirwan AT aol.com)
Participants: Guy Kirwan
During 23–30 December 2006, together with four colleagues, I made a birding
visit to Campamento Junglaven on the middle río Ventuari, Amazonas state,
Venezuela. The trip formed part of my third visit to the country, following
two long trips there in the 1990s. We recorded several species apparently
new for the area based on the lists presented in Zimmer & Hilty’s (1997)
paper in Orn. Monographs 48 (Studies in Neotropical ornithology honoring Ted
Parker), the range maps in Hilty’s Birds of Venezuela (2003), and Dave
Sargeant’s privately published list (c.1994), though bird tours (notably
Sunbird and Birdquest) continue to visit the area and may well have recorded
some of these before. One of the personal highlights was acquiring some neat
field experience with Cinnamon Neopipo in reasonably tall terra firme on
white-sand (having finally tracked down the beast at Alta Floresta, Brazil,
and gotten some experience with the voice helped). The purpose of these
notes is simply to draw birders’ attention to the area, once again, and to
provide some practical advice to those considering a trip to the region.
Additional information can be found at:
http://www.birdingpal.org/BBS/viewtopic.php?t=87&sid=301b42aefb93b7c0128acfc565152aa0.
or http://www.birdvenezuela.com/birding_junglaven_venezuela.htm)
We booked our trip through Chris Sharpe of Birding Venezuela
(www.birdvenezuela.com), who set things up perfectly. Rather than taking a
scheduled service down to Puerto Ayacucho, we flew direct from Caracas
Charallave airport to Junglaven in a six-seater private plane, which
provided an amazing appreciation of the country’s landscape, almost skimming
the tops of tepuis and putting up Jabirus in the llanos (OK, a slight
exaggeration).
There are two camps at Junglaven, the Campamento Junglaven and the
Campamento Camani. We flew into the latter and departed from the former. The condition of Camani is superior to Junglaven in terms of the accommodation, but both were acceptable. Electricity is, needless to say, supplied by a generator and there were thankfully no breakdowns during our stay. One recent trip report mentioned how the staff disappeared to the nearest village on a Christmas drinking binge, leaving them somewhat in the lurch for meals etc. We came mentally prepared for the worst. Fortunately, the lady (Nancy) in charge of cooking did not perform a bunk (though the rest of the staff did) and we pulled through without having to draw lots for who got eaten! The food was generally quite acceptable (the soups indeed were
excellent) and Nancy did her level best to make meals as varied as possible.
Captain Lorenzo, the 80+-year-old owner of Junglaven and a born raconteur,
suggested to us that he would in future not open over the Xmas / New Year
period because of such problems, but Chris Sharpe will be able to let you
know the latest. I didn’t have any problems with biting insects and rarely
even needed to apply any spray or cream to ward the beasties off.
I’d recommend to birders that they plan to stay at both camps, rather than
just visiting Junglaven, as Camani provides immediate access to some of the
best savanna areas (one can get most of the cotingids, Pale-bellied Mourner
etc. right there at the camp), as well as being a much shorter boat journey
to reach some of the better várzea forest replete with Amazonian Black
Tyrant, Blackish-gray Antshrike, Spot-backed Antwren and Cherrie’s Antwren,
amongst others. Junglaven camp, of course, is far better for accessing the
terra firme and the lagoon areas (with Agami and Zigzag Herons virtually ‘on
tap’). Some white-sand birds like Black Manakin were common around both
camps, but other specialities like Yellow-crowned Manakin (Camani) and
Brown-headed Greenlet (Junglaven) appeared to be common only around one or
the other. The terra firme forest is too far to comfortably access from
Camani camp (as we found), especially if Lorenzo’s truck breaks down (as
happened to us), but you can reach tall forest in just five minutes from
Junglaven itself. Lorenzo proffered the information that he thought
curassows were now rarer than they had been in the past, and likewise
primates, because of hunting. I can’t comment on the veracity of that
statement, given no previous knowledge (other than what I had read), but we
saw the Mitu only twice and likewise the Crax just twice, with one encounter
with the Pipile and a couple each with the Ortalis and Penelope. Others talk
of seeing tinamous regularly, but we saw one very briefly (and I missed that).
In sum, we recorded c.290 species including quite a few heard-only.
Undoubtedly, my having spent a lot of time in Amazonian Brazil recently
ensured a higher trip list than might otherwise have been the case. A week
at some Amazonian sites in the latter country would produce 50–75 more
species than we recorded at Junglaven, but for those keen on their Venezuela
lists or searching for an accessible site to see the Imeri endemics then
Junglaven is a great experience, however be prepared for at least one thing
to go wrong during your stay. This is Amazonia not Europe or North America.
I managed to get three out of four of the new birds I was searching for, but
Brown-banded Puffbird continues to elude me…
With a job that brings me regularly to this birders' paradise, I have enjoyed a couple of great birding trips around Venezuela. Junglaven is a pretty remote and little known Amazon lodge where one can get to grips with a host of speciality birds hard to find elsewhere. The lodge is basic, but the birding is wonderful and there is often no one else at the lodge - or for miles around - as you soon realise as you fly over uninhabited table mountains on your way in. This is not a luxury lodge, but if you have enjoyed Cana in the Darien then Junglaven will appeal to you.
Booking into the lodge is difficult. One can book through the birding tour companies that visit the lodge including Birdquest and Sunbird. A week is about the minimum time you want to spend there to hit the specialities hard.
For tailor-made visits, I can heartily recommend British ornithologist Chris Sharpe (www.birdvenezuela.com) and his colleagues at Birding Venezuela. They seem to mostly organise and lead tours for the major tour companies rather than individuals, but they will help with groups and are certainly the best way to get to Junglaven. Chris is a really good source of information on Venezuela logistics and also has unparalled knowledge of environmental / conservation issues too which I found enhanced my trips with him.
Below is a recent trip report about birding Junglaven by Guy Kirwan.
Great birding!
DT, Caracas
Notes on birding Junglaven, Venezuela
by Guy Kirwan (GMKirwan AT aol.com)
Participants: Guy Kirwan
During 23–30 December 2006, together with four colleagues, I made a birding
visit to Campamento Junglaven on the middle río Ventuari, Amazonas state,
Venezuela. The trip formed part of my third visit to the country, following
two long trips there in the 1990s. We recorded several species apparently
new for the area based on the lists presented in Zimmer & Hilty’s (1997)
paper in Orn. Monographs 48 (Studies in Neotropical ornithology honoring Ted
Parker), the range maps in Hilty’s Birds of Venezuela (2003), and Dave
Sargeant’s privately published list (c.1994), though bird tours (notably
Sunbird and Birdquest) continue to visit the area and may well have recorded
some of these before. One of the personal highlights was acquiring some neat
field experience with Cinnamon Neopipo in reasonably tall terra firme on
white-sand (having finally tracked down the beast at Alta Floresta, Brazil,
and gotten some experience with the voice helped). The purpose of these
notes is simply to draw birders’ attention to the area, once again, and to
provide some practical advice to those considering a trip to the region.
Additional information can be found at:
http://www.birdingpal.org/BBS/viewtopic.php?t=87&sid=301b42aefb93b7c0128acfc565152aa0.
or http://www.birdvenezuela.com/birding_junglaven_venezuela.htm)
We booked our trip through Chris Sharpe of Birding Venezuela
(www.birdvenezuela.com), who set things up perfectly. Rather than taking a
scheduled service down to Puerto Ayacucho, we flew direct from Caracas
Charallave airport to Junglaven in a six-seater private plane, which
provided an amazing appreciation of the country’s landscape, almost skimming
the tops of tepuis and putting up Jabirus in the llanos (OK, a slight
exaggeration).
There are two camps at Junglaven, the Campamento Junglaven and the
Campamento Camani. We flew into the latter and departed from the former. The condition of Camani is superior to Junglaven in terms of the accommodation, but both were acceptable. Electricity is, needless to say, supplied by a generator and there were thankfully no breakdowns during our stay. One recent trip report mentioned how the staff disappeared to the nearest village on a Christmas drinking binge, leaving them somewhat in the lurch for meals etc. We came mentally prepared for the worst. Fortunately, the lady (Nancy) in charge of cooking did not perform a bunk (though the rest of the staff did) and we pulled through without having to draw lots for who got eaten! The food was generally quite acceptable (the soups indeed were
excellent) and Nancy did her level best to make meals as varied as possible.
Captain Lorenzo, the 80+-year-old owner of Junglaven and a born raconteur,
suggested to us that he would in future not open over the Xmas / New Year
period because of such problems, but Chris Sharpe will be able to let you
know the latest. I didn’t have any problems with biting insects and rarely
even needed to apply any spray or cream to ward the beasties off.
I’d recommend to birders that they plan to stay at both camps, rather than
just visiting Junglaven, as Camani provides immediate access to some of the
best savanna areas (one can get most of the cotingids, Pale-bellied Mourner
etc. right there at the camp), as well as being a much shorter boat journey
to reach some of the better várzea forest replete with Amazonian Black
Tyrant, Blackish-gray Antshrike, Spot-backed Antwren and Cherrie’s Antwren,
amongst others. Junglaven camp, of course, is far better for accessing the
terra firme and the lagoon areas (with Agami and Zigzag Herons virtually ‘on
tap’). Some white-sand birds like Black Manakin were common around both
camps, but other specialities like Yellow-crowned Manakin (Camani) and
Brown-headed Greenlet (Junglaven) appeared to be common only around one or
the other. The terra firme forest is too far to comfortably access from
Camani camp (as we found), especially if Lorenzo’s truck breaks down (as
happened to us), but you can reach tall forest in just five minutes from
Junglaven itself. Lorenzo proffered the information that he thought
curassows were now rarer than they had been in the past, and likewise
primates, because of hunting. I can’t comment on the veracity of that
statement, given no previous knowledge (other than what I had read), but we
saw the Mitu only twice and likewise the Crax just twice, with one encounter
with the Pipile and a couple each with the Ortalis and Penelope. Others talk
of seeing tinamous regularly, but we saw one very briefly (and I missed that).
In sum, we recorded c.290 species including quite a few heard-only.
Undoubtedly, my having spent a lot of time in Amazonian Brazil recently
ensured a higher trip list than might otherwise have been the case. A week
at some Amazonian sites in the latter country would produce 50–75 more
species than we recorded at Junglaven, but for those keen on their Venezuela
lists or searching for an accessible site to see the Imeri endemics then
Junglaven is a great experience, however be prepared for at least one thing
to go wrong during your stay. This is Amazonia not Europe or North America.
I managed to get three out of four of the new birds I was searching for, but
Brown-banded Puffbird continues to elude me…
