RFI Birding break in Colombia (1 Viewer)

[bronze sunbird]

But Norfolk is always promising. When I lived in England our club always started off the new year with a weekend in Norfolk. We usually ended up with 80-100 species.

 

[AveryBartels]

If you're not overly worried about endemics and are interested in more economical routes you could consider the south of the country. Narino and Putumayo departments have several SUPERB reserves, lodges, birding trails etc. that can be done for a pretty reasonable price. You could fly into Tumaco, spend a day birding the pacific lowlands, a few days on the pacific slope at La Planada and Rio Nambi reserves, head into the highlands near Sibundoy (Laguna La Cocha, Paramo Bordoncillo) then spend a week or so on the east slope/foothills around Mocoa, Isla Escondida lodge (incredible new reserve!), Finca El Escondite. If time permits you could even fly out to Puerto Leguizamo for some Amazon proper - River Dolphins as well as heaps of great birds. Alternately, you could head into the upper Magdalena Valley to the El Encanto Lodge and the area around Palestina/Pitalito for a couple very restricted endemics like Dusky-headed Brushfinch.

Other top notch areas include Puerto Inirida (4-5 days) and the Cali area (good for a week or so).

Below are trip reports I've made for South Colombia and Puerto Inirida.

https://www.cloudbirders.com/be/download?filename=BARTELS_Colombia_03_2019.pdf
https://avocettours.wordpress.com/2...astern-white-sands-forests-mar-21-apr-7-2019/

Feel free to shoot me an email at averybartelsAThotmail.com if you want any additional info re sites, local guides, general Colombia Q's. I've spent a cumulative ~2 years in Colombia over 9-10 trips so I know pretty much all the areas and most of the guides.

Cheers,

 

[pandachris]

The birthday happened and she was quite pleased that her main present was a promise of some travel at an unspecified date (plus a copy of the field guide, when it's published).

We talked about a suitable time to travel to Colombia and came up with the idea of December 2022 and wondered if a trip over Xmas and New Year might be feasible, on the basis that she would be able to use the public holidays to reduce the drain on her limited leave allowance (and perhaps use days from both the 2022 and 2023 leave years. We will certainly engage some guides/join tours when in Colombia but will want to do some of it for outselves and I wonder have any visiting birders stayed during the Xmas period? I would imagine that most guides will want a few days off, so any suggestions of places/areas/hotels to stay, where we can at least guarantee to get properly fed on Christmas Day? I'm thinking somewhere coastal might be nice. This might be a better question for TripAdvisor but I thought I'd try here first because contributors will be able to answer from a birdy perspective.

 

[pandachris]

Thanks for the info, Avery (I've obviously not looked at Birdforum for over a month!). I'll certainly have a look at your info as part of my research. Clearly c3 weeks is not going to be enough.

 

[pandachris]

I thought I might as well update this thread as well as the new one that I've posted, in case anyone is interested. We've booked at Palmari Lodge, as recommended in Cajanuma's initial reply. We're actually going in July, contrary to my expectations. We were surprised to find out that the brother of a good friend of ours from Tarragona (Spain) is not only a keen birder but also works in conservation in Colombia and Ecuador. He proposed July/August as a good time to visit the Amazonas region and flight prices dipped somewhat so we went for it. I know it means that we won't see any boreal migrants but we've seen lots of them already and you can't have everything.

Our plan so far looks like this:
Arrive Bogotá about 03:30. Check in to an hotel near the airport (we've paid for the night before), shower, change, get some breakfast then walk to the Botanical Garden where a few hours birding might bring us 20 or so species, half of which should be lifers.
Following morning, fly to Leticia and transfer to Palmari Lodge for 4 days.
Back to Leticia for a couple of days.
Then we're waiting for Edu to get back to us with some ideas. I suspect that Santa Marta will feature. I definitely want to see Cock-of-the-Rock as it's been on my bucket list since 1962 (not sure if bucket lists even existed in 1962 but as soon as I saw that PG Tips card I knew I had to see one!). Edu's conservation work relates to a couple of rare parrots and to my embarrassment I forgot to make a note of which ones they are but hopefully he can arrange access for us and should be able to either propose an itinerary or put us in touch with some good local guides. I'm thinking that we'll probably end up mainly south and west of Bogotá, which is a shame in one sense but I don't want to spend a third of the trip travelling. Might have to come back in a few years.

 

[AveryBartels]

I thought I might as well update this thread as well as the new one that I've posted, in case anyone is interested. We've booked at Palmari Lodge, as recommended in Cajanuma's initial reply. We're actually going in July, contrary to my expectations. We were surprised to find out that the brother of a good friend of ours from Tarragona (Spain) is not only a keen birder but also works in conservation in Colombia and Ecuador. He proposed July/August as a good time to visit the Amazonas region and flight prices dipped somewhat so we went for it. I know it means that we won't see any boreal migrants but we've seen lots of them already and you can't have everything.

Our plan so far looks like this:
Arrive Bogotá about 03:30. Check in to an hotel near the airport (we've paid for the night before), shower, change, get some breakfast then walk to the Botanical Garden where a few hours birding might bring us 20 or so species, half of which should be lifers.
Following morning, fly to Leticia and transfer to Palmari Lodge for 4 days.
Back to Leticia for a couple of days.
Then we're waiting for Edu to get back to us with some ideas. I suspect that Santa Marta will feature. I definitely want to see Cock-of-the-Rock as it's been on my bucket list since 1962 (not sure if bucket lists even existed in 1962 but as soon as I saw that PG Tips card I knew I had to see one!). Edu's conservation work relates to a couple of rare parrots and to my embarrassment I forgot to make a note of which ones they are but hopefully he can arrange access for us and should be able to either propose an itinerary or put us in touch with some good local guides. I'm thinking that we'll probably end up mainly south and west of Bogotá, which is a shame in one sense but I don't want to spend a third of the trip travelling. Might have to come back in a few years.

Bear in mind that July/August is rainy season in most of the standard Colombian birding areas (Medellin/Manizales/Ibague, North Coast etc.) and this can definitely put a damper on things. The south of the country has a dry spell during those months so you could consider doing something like Florencia, El Encanto Lodge (Huila), Mocoa, Pasto as that is a route that fits nicely into ~12 days with a good amount of variation in habitats/ecozones. If you want to shorten it a bit to have more time you could axe either end (start in Huila by flying to Pitalito or end in Mocoa/Puerto Asis).

 

[pandachris]

Thanks Avery. I'll do some extra research into those areas.

 

[pandachris]

This might seem like a stupid question (a friend of mine used to say "there are no stupid questions, only stupid people" so make of that what you will). I've been studying the Lynx guide for Colombia quite a lot recently and have realised (remembered) that some species have quite rigid range boundaries and a bird that can be found in one place might not occur in similar habitat 5 kms away. As we're in Brazil for a few nights at Palmari Lodge (and having read up on Grey Wren as mentioned above), am I going to need an extra field guide? If so, is there a 'best' one? We've only got 23 kgs luggage allowance and the Lynx guide seems to be about half of that!

 

[kb57]

I thought I might as well update this thread as well as the new one that I've posted, in case anyone is interested. We've booked at Palmari Lodge, as recommended in Cajanuma's initial reply. We're actually going in July, contrary to my expectations. We were surprised to find out that the brother of a good friend of ours from Tarragona (Spain) is not only a keen birder but also works in conservation in Colombia and Ecuador. He proposed July/August as a good time to visit the Amazonas region and flight prices dipped somewhat so we went for it. I know it means that we won't see any boreal migrants but we've seen lots of them already and you can't have everything.

Our plan so far looks like this:
Arrive Bogotá about 03:30. Check in to an hotel near the airport (we've paid for the night before), shower, change, get some breakfast then walk to the Botanical Garden where a few hours birding might bring us 20 or so species, half of which should be lifers.
Following morning, fly to Leticia and transfer to Palmari Lodge for 4 days.
Back to Leticia for a couple of days.
Then we're waiting for Edu to get back to us with some ideas. I suspect that Santa Marta will feature. I definitely want to see Cock-of-the-Rock as it's been on my bucket list since 1962 (not sure if bucket lists even existed in 1962 but as soon as I saw that PG Tips card I knew I had to see one!). Edu's conservation work relates to a couple of rare parrots and to my embarrassment I forgot to make a note of which ones they are but hopefully he can arrange access for us and should be able to either propose an itinerary or put us in touch with some good local guides. I'm thinking that we'll probably end up mainly south and west of Bogotá, which is a shame in one sense but I don't want to spend a third of the trip travelling. Might have to come back in a few years.

If you've got a full day in Bogotá then I would also recommend going up Monserrate - it's a taxi ride from the botanical gardens to the hills at the eastern edge of the city, but accessible by funicular (in the morning) and cable car (in the afternoon - and don't walk up - path is reputedly unsafe). You'll get a few more eastern Andes species there you might not come across otherwise, and it's a great view from the top. Download and use the taxis app (EasyTaxi I think it's called) too, it's safer if you're travelling in yellow cabs.
My bucket list requirement for COTR stemmed from the same PG Tips cards as yourself, and was well sated by the very accessible lek site in Jardin, south of Medellin. If you go with @AveryBartels suggestion and head for the south of the country (Jardin was wet enough in a March visit BTW, so this is probably very good advice!) there may well be other less well-known lek sites you can visit.

WRT your field guide question, I read Beckers & Florez's Birdwatching in Colombia guide and it features Palmari Lodge as a destination from Letitia (as a future 'wish list' destination, I've never been...)- they list about a dozen species which don't cross the river and hadn't been at that time recorded in Colombia. Probably easiest to just check the eBird lists against the Lynx guide, as this is much more recent than the birdwatching guide, and may have incorporated some new records.

 

[AveryBartels]

Regarding Andean Cock-of-the-rock leks, yes there is one in Florencia on the Via Antigua and a small one at the Amazonian Umbrellabird lek site (you'll get reasonable looks at the umbrellabirds but it not the most breathtaking lek). Nether lek compares to the one in Jardin, but you'll get good looks at the COTR displaying. There is also a more distant lek (you have to look across a ~100m mountain slope) along the Trampolin de las Aves above Mocoa.

There are a lot of random birding stops in the south such that it is helpful (though not totally necessary) to use local guides. They tend to charge pretty reasonable rates, know their stuff and are great company:

Florencia: Jorge Munoz Jorge Muñoz Garcia and on whatsapp at +57 310 230 2711
Mocoa/Puerto Asis: Diego Rocha Diego Rocha - López and on whatsapp +57 313 256 3094
Sibundoy/Laguna la Cocha: Brayan Coral Jaramillo Brayan Coral Jaramillo and on whatsapp at +57 322 5424196

 

[pandachris]

Thanks both. Here I was thinking that it was just me, COTR and PG tips

EBird was going to be my next port of call for Palmari Lodge and most other places. We'll be carrying three weeks worth of luggage so an extra field guide is not ideal

Monserrate is on the radar. We arrive around 03:30 in the morning so it will be a case of "wait and see" for the afternoon. Depends on how tired we are. Our flight leaves the UK at just before midnight so hopefully we'll get some kip over the Atlantic. We managed a 24 hour stint for a festival in Tarragona in September (02:30 alarm for a flight at 06:30 and then staying up for most of the Baixada de l'Aliga - highly recommended but you can't tick the eagle) so we should be ok for the morning but we then have an 09:00 flight to Leticia the next morning so we'll need to be a bit aware of that. We'll probably have two nights in Bogotá before flying back, so we should have time to see more local birds and will probably take a guided tour. There seem to be several available.

We'll certainly be interested in using local guides as appropriate, so thanks for the recommendations. Is the Umbrellabird lek the one at Mitú?

 

[AveryBartels]

Is the Umbrellabird lek the one at Mitú?

Near Florencia.