Peru Birding Rally Challenge Days 7-8 Update

The fourth World Birding Rally Perú has come to an end. We’re all exhausted but at the same time elated and so grateful to the country of Peru for having invited us to take part in this amazing event.

(P.S. an apology for not posting this last night, but the internet was down until I finally got the gumption to ask the receptionist to reset the router; now it works beautifully.)

The event was a huge operation that is hard to comprehend. Each team had its own van and two drivers, and each morning when we departed at 5:00 a.m., our vans were fully stocked with drinks, snacks, and sack lunches. Though each team mostly went its own way, we all had to end up at the hotel and turn in our list each evening on time (or face a penalty, of, say an hour later start than everyone else the next day, a punishment that was meted out once to another team for not having shown up on time to a reception put on by a small community). The hotels were all extremely prepared, and we were always accompanied by a huge entourage of journalists, photographers, support staff, an ambulance staffed with medics, and sometimes regional police escort (for a show of support I presume, as there wasn't a safety issue anywhere along our route). This is the group at last night's awards ceremony, anxiously awaiting the results.

Manuel Bryce, who goes by Mañuco, is the man who pieced it all together like a magician, and this evening he announced the final list results: Our Sunbird/WINGS tour came in first place with 588 species seen in 8 long days of intense birding. What a blast we had.

Some photo highlights from the past two days follow. The suggested itinerary for the next-to-last day, starting at our hotel in Tarapoto, was the dry Upaquihua Valley in the morning, followed by the ferry ride over the Huallaga River and birding on the ground of our next lodge, Lago Lindo. Our team strategized and headed instead up the mountain road directly behind our Puerto Palmeras hotel in Tarapoto called the Escalera, or to birders as the Tunnel Road, the suggested itinerary for the last morning. This is a view of the valley on the other side of the tunnel.

On the stunted ridge forests in this area is the very rare and enigmatic Plumbeous Euphonia, and we’re grateful to Dan Lane and his rally team last year for providing everyone with the location and recordings. (And we're lucky Dan and his group weren't competing this year; they had over 50 more species than we ended up with!)

We finally found a mixed flock after seeing very few new birds all morning, and in it was this cooperative Ocellated Woodcreeper, as well as my lifer Black-throated Brilliant, a scarce and enigmatic hummingbird.

We then spent the afternoon in the Upaquihua Valley, where I had taken my tour group this past February. In just a couple hours we managed to find all but four of the local specialties here, such as Ashy-headed Greenlet, Rufous Casiornis, and Sulphur-bellied Tyrant-Manakin. We then finished the day on the east side of the Huallaga River, birding the entrance road to our next lodge, where Hoatzins and a calling Common Potoo greeted us at the lake. At the end of this day, we retained the lead by a margin of about 15 species, with 81 new ones for the day and 560 total.

We had another very early start so that groups could leave here and drive to the Escalera, but the South African team and we had a similar idea and instead spent most of the morning birding the lush Amazonian-flavored forest in the valley where Lago Lindo is located. It’s hilly, but still quite low, so it has a very odd mix of species, such as Wattled Guan and Screaming Piha.

We dipped on mixed flocks, but we slowly added quite a few very nice birds to our list, such as Golden-collared Toucanet, Yellow-billed Nunbird, and Red-billed Tyrannulet (which I hadn’t seen since 1992 in SE Ecuador, if, indeed I had identified correctly back then, which is doubtful).

This White Hawk was an exciting surprise as it flew in front of the car and landed right above us. (We had a great driver from the hotel, Oswaldo, who was very responsive to our screams and panics.)

I had to take time to get photos of this tiny, fascinating Limacodid caterpillar. I also noticed the tiny orange ants that probably garnished honeydew from it and nectar from the nearby flowers.

This photo shows Paul next to a cliff where, with Jake’s mentioning of seeing a swift pass by him at knee-level, I looked up and found a nest. Look in the upper left.

Here is a classic nest of a Lesser Swallow-tailed Swift, a fascinating meter-long tube of Ceiba seed down (kapok), with the entrance at the bottom. I had only seen two of these before, once on a building at the Umbrellabird Lodge in southwestern Ecuador and another on the side of a huge Ceiba tree on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. This one was by far the most spectacular.

We had to turn in our lists to the judges by 1:30, so we arrived at the hotel back in Tarapoto well in time to account for contingencies. There were no holdups, so this gave us a chance to wander the grounds, where we added our final two species, first this Crowned Slaty Flycatcher, and finally a Black-crowned Tityra by the reception. Incidentally, even though the genus was changed to the shorter Empidonomus from Griseotyrannus a few years ago, this flycatcher still retains the longest scientific name of any bird, with 32 letters in the lead by two. Care to guess which four species come in second place with 30 letters in their names?

The award ceremony was a huge affair, with the very gracious Vice-minister of Tourism of the federal government present (in the center below), as well as other dignitaries from the local governments.

After eight long days in the field together, smelly, and irritable from lack of sleep (and my having been down with a cold and downright sick for two days), we should have been at each others’ throats, but I had an amazing time with my teammates and am grateful to all of them.

Gustavo Bautista, our local guide from Cusco. Charming, super energetic, an eager learner, and very sharp ears. He guides for Manu Expeditions and is great fun to be with.

Steve Howell, wicked humor, razor-sharp ID skills, and the birder I have learned the most from. We were all very lucky to bird with him.

Jake Mohlmann, the nicest guy you could ever go birding with, and a very fast learner. You would have never known that this was his first time to the South American tropics, and that he never flinched at our having to move on after only hearing birds.

Paul French, with the sharpest eyes of the group, always cheerful, a fun guy to bird with, and like Jake a fast learner who didn’t stress about having to walk away from so many lifers (this was his first trip to South America). He saw 449 lifebirds on the trip and has a newly-found desire to return to Peru. I'm tempted to think of ways to sneak on his future Azerbaijan tour.

Peru Birding Rally Update Days 5-6

Just a quick update:

After Day 5, the Sunbird/WINGS team again gained the lead, but not by much. But it was perhaps our clever idea of walking across a small mudslide that had stopped all the buses that saved the day. On the other side we took a taxi to the next birding spot with theMarvelous Spatuletail, where we waited for the buses. Then we were able to continue birding up the road while the other teams used the rest of the day watching hummingbirds.

Yesterday was unbelievable. We tallied 214 species on the long drive from Florida de Pomacochas to Tarapoto, starting with a fabulous Lyre-tailed Nightjar and ending with a Tropical Screech-Owl, just before a Varzea Thrush and two White-chested Swifts at a last minute roadside stop to utilize the few remaining minutes of daylight.

A Purple-throated Sunangel above Leymebamba.

What's more amazing is that we retained the lead even with our adding 154 new species yesterday. The Field Guides team must have seen as many, but I bet there was significant non-overlap in our species list. This is such a bird-filled area.

A nest with two young Spot-throated Hummingbirds in the Utcubamba Valley.

A Marañon Thrush just as we were leaving its range and thought we had missed it.

Our group at the Huembo station.

White-collared Jay in the Abra Patricia area.

Yellow-scarfed Tanager at the Owlet Lodge.

Peru Birding Rally Challenge Day 4 Update

Oh well, not surprisingly the Field Guides team saw 10 more new birds today than we did, putting them 3 birds ahead of us. We had three scheduled events with local communities these days, and they gained an extra hour of birding on us by our getting mixed messages about what time we had to be at one location. And the South Africa team gained a Striped-headed Antpitta on us because they skipped out on the required morning event in Cruz Conga. Here's our team member Paul French dancing to the loud music at the reception.

Later in the day we birded the Marañón Valley, seeing several of the exciting endemic birds, as well as this amazing Dalechampia sp.

We ended the day in Leymebamba, but not before a fabulous late afternoon rainbow over the high elevation cloud forest.

Peru Birding Rally Challenge Day 3 Update

Whew! We barely managed to stay ahead again, but the Field Guides team has a collection of birding experience in this area that probably can't be matched, and they will probably pass us soon. We're probably mostly just lucky up until this point and have had some good strategy, but once we hit the bird-filled Amazonian slope, it's anyone's guess what will happen. We have a total of 229 species as of today.

We ended the day in the Chonta River canyon very close to the city of Cajamarca, and that's our van there in the photo above. I was there for a short time with my friend Alan Grenon nearly four years ago, and we missed the main target then. But today we connected with the Gray-bellied Comet, a large, not-so-colorful hummingbird with a very distinctive shape and restricted range.

One of our better birds of the day was this Many-striped Canastero. The habitat looked right, I played the song with my iPod, and it flew right in and nearly fell asleep on this bush as we watched it through the spotting scopes.

Another good one was this Band-tailed Sierra-Finch, singing around mid-day.

But it was also another great day for flowers. We're here just after the rainy season, so everything is lush and in full bloom. Take this amazing white Calceolaria. Nearly all species in this genus are yellow.

And this gorgeous cactus, hugging the ground with many other alpine-like flowers in a rocky tundra at 11,000 feet elevation.

Tomorrow we drop down into the Marañón Valley with several regional endemics, then climb back up another ridge of the Andes to Leymebamba.

Peru Birding Rally Challenge Update 2

It was a long hard day for everyone. Even though we saw 124 species today, only 51 were new for the list, and with my mis-count by two yesterday, we now stand at 181. But that's still 7 ahead of the competition. Amazingly, the cumulative number of species seen by the four teams is around 230.

My personal highlights from today:

Spotting a Least Seedsnipe as it flushed as we were driving 90 kph. But more impressive was Paul French's spotting this Common Miner only a few minutes later –  from the back seat!

Tumbes Sparrows on a quick highway stop.

Lots of gorgeous wildflowers, including this Trixis, so very similar to the one in Arizona. But I think this one must be T. cacalioides.

This amazing hairstreak, which I haven't ID'd yet.
Update: This is Ocaria ocrisia, the Black Hairstreak (west Andean form).

This immature male Andean Condor that Steve Howell spotted as we were driving along.

And some incredible scenery as we ascended the Andes to arrive in Cajamarca for the night. We're here for two nights, so tomorrow will be a much more relaxed day.

Peru Birding Rally Challenge Day 1 – The Dry NW Andes of Peru

Today was the first of eight straight days of big-day competitions between four international birding teams on the northern Peruvian NorAmazonica birding route for the fourth Peru Birding Rally Challenge. I'm one of the four members of the Sunbird/WINGS team along with Steve Howell, Jake Mohlmann, and Paul French, and we were lucky to be assigned Gustavo Bautista as our local Peruvian guide.

But since we've now been up for nearly 19 hours and have only five hours of sleep to look forward to before tomorrow's challenge, here are just a few photos. Much of our morning was spent hiking a gorgeous canyon above the village of Laquipampa, to the northwest of Chiclayo. My favorite bird from here was my long-wanted Henna-hooded Foliage-gleaner (the only bird with "henna" in its name). We also saw the very rare White-winged Guan on a distant hillside.

We ended in the lowlands near Chiclayo where we discovered these Peruvian Thick-knees next to the road.

Here are my teammates out our two drivers at the end of a great day and 132 species. We're in first place now, with the Field Guides team right on our heels.

My First WINGS Tour to SE Brazil This Coming November

I’m now in Peru, where I’m part of the Sunbird-WINGS team for the fourth Birding Rally Challenge, and I’ll be writing about that soon, but I can’t promise anything. We don’t actually begin the race until tomorrow morning, and I just might find the energy to post a photo a day if I’m lucky.

Until then, here are some photos that might encourage you to think about my upcoming WINGS tour to southeastern Brazil, scheduled for November 13-26. I posted a few of these photos last November during and just after my scouting trip there, but I never did get around to doing a full-fledged blog about it.

We start at Itatiaia National Park (I’ll be teaching everyone how to pronounce it), driving there from the São Paulo airport. Yellow-legged Thrush is surprisingly widespread in all the forests in this region, but it isn’t always so easy to see. Its song is one of the most haunting and characteristic sounds of the forest.

One road goes to rather high elevations where we should see the confiding Bay-chested Warbling-Finch.

Then we head to the forests of Tres Picos State Park near Rio De Janeiro for a rather different mix of birds. The lodge we stay at, Serra dos Tucanos, has some wonderful feeders with great hummers. These two are Brazilian Ruby and Black Jacobin.

This is my artsy photo of a Ruby-crowned Tanager, which may seemed well named based on this lucky shot, but in real life the bird rarely shows any red in the crown at all (and otherwise looks just like a White-lined Tanager).

The adorable White-throated Spadebill is a loud but inconspicuous bird of the understory in many of the areas we bird.

The higher elevation forests near Pico de Caledonia have the handsome Brassy-breasted Tanager.

This is where we’ll also probably see the amazing Diademed Tanager.

Driving a little further inland, the habitat dries out a bit, and Crested Black-Tyrant is a possibility along the roadsides.

A major target, for being rare, very localized, and a Brazilian endemic is the Three-toed Jacamar.

The plants in the SE Atlantic Rainforests are fabulous. Take this blooming bromeliad.

Or this stunning tree-like Tibouchina.

I have no idea what this flowering tree is, but I’ll find out some day.

There are a lot of pipeworts (Eriocaulon spp.) in Brazil, a distant relative of sedges and rushes.

This Carineta diardi cicada probably is responsible for ruining many of my bird recordings, but it has to be one of the most beautifully colored members of the family Cicadidae.

A lot of people have seen owl butterflies in the genus Caligo, but few have seen its caterpillar. The host plant is Heliconia (which is confusing since there is another genus of butterflies called Heliconius, but their caterpillars feed on Passiflora).

This butterfly is the satyr Pierella nereis.

I have excellent recordings of the song of this frog, but I don’t have a field guide or sound guide to this region and haven’t spent the time to figure it out. Maybe when I do, I’ll get the recording posted to a website.

But this Proceratophrys boiei, Boie's Frog was not hard to get a name for. It was amazingly cryptic on the forest floor. This was at Intervales State Park where we’ll finish our tour, in the southern highlands of São Paulo state.

This is also where I found this surprisingly cooperative Rusty-barred Owl (despite being so easy, I know better than to guarantee it on my next visit with tour participants).

And this Long-trained Nightjar was just down the road from our lovely hotel. And again, it was drop-dead easy this time, but I know birding groups have been rained out on the one night they had a chance. But we’ll look for it, and I’m really excited about returning to this fascinating area this coming November.