Oregonian
Well-known member
Three birders from the Northwest crashed the 20th Annual Colombian National Birding Encounter last month. Colombian birders and ornithologists have been getting together annually for a weekend of field trips and talks for twenty years, moving the meeting around the country to diversify the event. This years meeting was organized by my friend Sergio Ocampo-Tobon. 130 birders gathered near Manizales, Caldas, for field trips ranging from the paramo to the lowlands along the Cauca River.
Sergio has been encouraging me to come to these meeting for years, so this year, Karen Sharples from Clark County, Washington, Judy Meredith from Bend, Oregon, and I decided to go. Since Sergio would be busy, we engaged Diego Calderon-Franco to pick us up in Bogota, take us to the encounter, and on a short birding tour of Central Colombia. We visisted a wetlands near Bogota and Otun Quimbaya near Pereira, Risaralda before the encounter, and afterwards went to Antioquia, to spend some time in the Western Andes at Jardin, and some other Central Andes locations on the way back to Bogota. We traveled in a rented Toyota Prada, giving us plenty of room and flexibility to travel on some pretty rough roads. We listed about 350 species of birds, depending on who was counting, including some very nice limited range specialties.
Diego is working on a more complete report, and I'll post a link later, but I'll start an outline now.
November 8 - Parque La Florida, Bogota. Andrea Morales, a graduate student, studying, among other things, hybridization in Ramphocelus tanagers, joined us to show us around the wetlands, where she has studied Apolinar's Marsh Wren. We heard the wren "singing", but couldn't bring it in for a look. We did get good looks at some other specialties, including Bogota Rail, Subropical Doradito, Rufous-tailed Tyrant, and Rufous-browed Conebill.
Attached is a photo of Diego and Andrea. Note that Andrea has binoculars from the ABA Birder's Exchange, a program well worth support. Also attached is a photo of the marsh, and a Rufous-tailed Tyrant.
We left Andrea in Bogota before noon, drove across the Magdalena Valley and crossed the Central Andes to Armenia on the way to Otun Quimbaya, near Pereira, arriving late.
More later,
Jeff
Sergio has been encouraging me to come to these meeting for years, so this year, Karen Sharples from Clark County, Washington, Judy Meredith from Bend, Oregon, and I decided to go. Since Sergio would be busy, we engaged Diego Calderon-Franco to pick us up in Bogota, take us to the encounter, and on a short birding tour of Central Colombia. We visisted a wetlands near Bogota and Otun Quimbaya near Pereira, Risaralda before the encounter, and afterwards went to Antioquia, to spend some time in the Western Andes at Jardin, and some other Central Andes locations on the way back to Bogota. We traveled in a rented Toyota Prada, giving us plenty of room and flexibility to travel on some pretty rough roads. We listed about 350 species of birds, depending on who was counting, including some very nice limited range specialties.
Diego is working on a more complete report, and I'll post a link later, but I'll start an outline now.
November 8 - Parque La Florida, Bogota. Andrea Morales, a graduate student, studying, among other things, hybridization in Ramphocelus tanagers, joined us to show us around the wetlands, where she has studied Apolinar's Marsh Wren. We heard the wren "singing", but couldn't bring it in for a look. We did get good looks at some other specialties, including Bogota Rail, Subropical Doradito, Rufous-tailed Tyrant, and Rufous-browed Conebill.
Attached is a photo of Diego and Andrea. Note that Andrea has binoculars from the ABA Birder's Exchange, a program well worth support. Also attached is a photo of the marsh, and a Rufous-tailed Tyrant.
We left Andrea in Bogota before noon, drove across the Magdalena Valley and crossed the Central Andes to Armenia on the way to Otun Quimbaya, near Pereira, arriving late.
More later,
Jeff
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