Thursday, November 16, 2017

Friday, August 04, 2017

Peru part 3

We took a bus from Moyobamba up into the Andes to the tidy cloud forest reserve of Fundo Alto Nieva. Staying in one of the two basic cabins, we birded the trails and sat by the two hummingbird feeding stations for a couple of days, seeing a decent range of the local specialties including plenty of hummingbirds. It rained almost constantly (making photography rather tricky, as can be seen from my efforts below!) but a 2 hour window on the first night allowed us to get into the forest with the rangers and tape-lure in a Long-whiskered Owlet, a real star bird and the main reason to come up here. The next day we were taken to a spot where a pair of Rusty-tinged Antpitta, a very range-restricted specialty have been habituated to come in to worms. Walking back from the Antpittas we managed to pick up some other goodies including Jet Manakin, Mountain Wren, Andean Solitaire and Spotted Barbtail. After standing in the rain by the side of the road for an hour we were quite relieved to flag down a bus to take us back to the heat of Tarapoto and a flight back to Lima.

Bronzy Inca 
Booted Racket-tail

Collared Inca

Collared Inca

Chestnut-breasted Comet

Greenish Puffleg

Long-tailed Sylph 
Long-tailed Sylph

Long-tailed Sylph

Long-Whiskered Owlet

Long-whiskered Owlet

Black-faced Tanager

Pale-edged Flycatcher

Rusty-tinged Antpitta

Rusty-tinged Antpitta
Rusty-tinged Antpitta

Green Jay


Rufous-vented Whitetip

Speckled Hummingbird

White-bellied Woorstar

Thursday, August 03, 2017

Peru part 2

From Pumarinri we returned to Tarapoto, and found a car to take us to Moyobamba. Despite having pretty much zero espanol, I managed to persuade the driver to stop at the Quiscurummi Bridge to take a look at the colony of Oilbirds that live in the ravine below. We had fantastic views of these weird owl/nightjar things in the scope, but photography was rather tricky.
At Moyobamba we got a room in a guesthouse near the thermal springs for a couple of nights, and spent most of our time either in the hot springs or at the Waqanki reserve watching their fantastic hummingbird feeders.
Black-throated Mango

Brown Violetear

Grey-breasted Sabrewing

Golden-tailed Sapphire

Long-tailed Hermit

Many-spotted Hummingbird

Paradise Tanager

Purple-throated Euphonia

Rufous-crested Coquette

Rufous-crested Coquette

Rufous-fronted Thornbird

Yellow-tufted Woodpecker

Fork-tailed Woodnymph

Violet-headed Hummingbird

White-chinned Sapphire

White-necked Jacobin

Oilbirds