Colombia 2022 Part 1

 Our return to Colombia in 2022 constituted our second trip to the country. Our first tour was 2016 (2016 blog entry).

Our 2022 itinerary route

One wrinkle that almost sidetracked Carol's participation. On December 20, 2021, an uninsured motorist ran a red light causing a multiple car accident which totaled our 2018 Honda CR-V and sent Carol to the hospital with a broken arm (her dominant hand). Surgery on December 28 put her on the road to recovery. Fortunately by the time the tour was to start and still dealing with a damaged wing, she was able to soldier on, able to use binoculars but needing assistance walking on some of the rougher trails.

our Honda is on the right having been spun into another vehicle

On February 8 we drove from Sierra Vista to Chandler, briefly diverting to a Costco in Tucson to buy fuel and then to a Columbia Outlet store in Chandler to purchase some last minute clothing. We ended up at the home of Connie and Russ Upstill who were also on the tour. Time enough for us to have a mid-afternoon meal at a local restaurant before heading to the PHX airport for our overnight flight to Medellín, Colombia. One never knows what kinds of meals are served on airlines these days although international flights tend to have better options.
Our connecting flight in Charlotte was delayed due to deicing the plane followed by a minor mechanical issue. Once airborne it was clear sailing to Miami for another plane change where we caught up with a few more on our tour: John Bruder/Risé Foster Bruder and Nick Athanas, our Tropical Birding guide.

deicing - more familiar service when we flew out of WI

Another brief plane delay waiting for late arriving passengers put our arrival in Medellín twenty minutes behind schedule. Then a long, long Immigration line but at least our luggage was waiting for us at the carousel. Time for everyone to exchange US dollars for Colombian Pesos (COPs) and for Tom to acquire a local carrier SIM card. We reassembled to meet up with our driver, Hermes, our driver for the entire tour. Even in late evening, our drive was unusually slow, over two hours of stop-and-go traffic before reaching the hotel, Hacienda La Extremadura. We still had time to grab a bite to eat and drinks in the newly added hotel restaurant before retiring. Travel days can be exhausting.
February 9 was a "free day" before the official start of the tour. Rather than just sit around the hotel, we had organized a spur-of-the-moment plan to visit the local botanical gardens. We also met up with the rest of the members of our group: Tim and Bridget Widstrand Hill, Marge Hill (no relation), and Amy Sheldon. 
Following a hotel breakfast we departed at 9:00am for the gardens. Fortunately, traffic was light (well, "light" being a relative term in Medellín, a city of over 11,000,000 people).

becoming acquainted with some of the common Colombian fauna

unusual architecture 

La Madremonte: Colombian spirit/deity

We enjoyed a relaxing and pleasant time walking the grounds at Joaquin Antonio Uribe Botanical Gardens, an opportunity to become familiar with some of the more common and widespread bird species. Planning to catch a light lunch at one of the facilities's outdoor food venders, we were more than happy to discover the botanical gardens’s upscale restaurant: "Insitu Restaurante"

surprise upscale dining at the botanical garden;
Carol, Bridget, Tim, John, Risé, Russ, Connie, Amy, Marge, Nick

back at hotel for adult beverages

Back at our hotel by 3:00 we had time to relax. Some chose to bird the grounds a bit. Then we all gathered to partake in some adult beverages before sitting down to dinner at 6:00 which signaled the official beginning of our tour. Nick provided an overview of the next day’s itinerary which became an evening ritual (along with doing the daily checklist).

Hotel grounds

Hacienda La Extremadura was already familiar to us. Our 2016 tour had ended here. There would be some overlap with a few of the early birding locations at the tour’s beginning but since no one else other than Carol and I had been to Colombia before, there was no overlap for the rest of the group.
February 10, the hotel provided a light breakfast and coffee before we set out on a day trip to the Parque Ecologico La La Romera on the outskirts of Medellin.

Red-bellied Grackle Photo: Nick Athanas

Yellow-headed Manakin Photo: John Bruder

This was the best and pretty much the only place for a target endemic: Red-bellied Grackle, which we found almost immediately upon our arrival. Nick mentioned that Yellow-headed Manakin and Stile’s Tapaculo were two more target birds of interest, the former being very difficult to find.
The manakin was heard and eventually Tom found one perched low in the understory. We lost track of it for a bit but eventually tracked it down for the rest of the group. Nick related that finding the manakin wasn’t always a given since he, in his three previous visits to the preserve, had only found it once. We felt pretty good, specially, since Carol and I had missed the bird during our 2016 stop at La Romera.
As for the Stile’s Tapaculo, tapaculos are notorious heard-only birds owing to their almost invisible mouse-like movements in the understory. Like the manakin, though, we eventually managed to get good looks.

Tom enjoying local cup of coffee with the owner

Hermes, our devoted driver throughout the tour

birding from the deck

Black-capped Tanager

Back at the hotel we gathered our luggage, checked out and loaded into our van headed to our next overnight in the town of Jardin.

leaving Medellín behind

passing the sacred peak of Cerro Tusa

On the way we stopped at a private home, Finca La Bambusa where we were treated to a light snack of pastries and coffee by the family plantation's doná while observing Scrub Tanager, Blue-necked Tanager, Black-capped Tanager and Crimson-backed Tanager coming to feeders. A brief view of Black-chested Jays, our only sighting during the tour.
Arriving in Jardin, instead of immediately checking into Hotel Valdivia Plaza, we drove a few blocks to the town’s outskirts to visit Gallito de Roca Reserve, an Andean Cock-of-the-rock lek at the bottom of a steep gully. An Andean Cock-of-the-rock was by no means a life bird having seen them infrequently in Ecuador. However, the sight of so many males lekking so close together - almost within arm’s length from us at times - was an amazing experience.

Andean Cock-of-the-rock

Lek: A communal area in which two or more males of a species perform courtship displays. Varying degrees of interaction occur between the males, from virtually none to closely cooperative dancing. Females visit the lek briefly to observe and select mates.

La plaza del Jardin

Church of the Immaculate Conception, Jardin

Dinner that night was at a small cafe in the town square across from our hotel.
Our marching orders for the next day dictated that we wake very early and load into a small convoy of 4WD vehicles. Riding in 4WDs was to be a repeated theme throughout the rest of our tour.

early morning arrival at Mirador El Roble

cheeky Slaty Brushfinch

Fortified with an infusion of caffeine, we set off on a ride up a rough road in the dark to a small private preserve, Mirador El Roble. There we hoped to see Yellow-eared Parrots which have been declining in population owing to agricultural expansions decimating the wax palm the parrots use for nesting and roosting. Other important targets included a couple of antpitta species.
Antpittas, similar to tapaculos, are far more often heard and not seen well, if at all. That has changed somewhat in the past 15-20 years or so with the discovery that antpittas can be coaxed out into the open with offerings of mealworms. This was due to the early work of Angel Paz, dubbed the “antpitta whisperer”, in Ecuador. We visited Angel’s farm during our 2008 Northern Ecuador Tour with Tropical Birding to witness first hand this remarkable man/bird relationship.
Arriving at the the reserve at daybreak we kicked off our visit with a sumptuous breakfast as we met our charming hostess “Donã Lucia”. Nearby feeders attracted hummingbirds which lead to the one-on-one experience of feeding many hummingbirds by hand. Species included Lesser and Sparkling Violetears, Speckled Hummingbird, Buff-tailed Coronet, White-bellied Woodstar, Fawn-breasted Brilliant, Bronzy and Collared Incas, and Tourmaline Sunangel.

Marge interfacing with hummers

A flock of White-capped Tanagers made an appearance easily disrupting breakfast as people scrambled for binoculars. A pretty common occurrence on bird tours when eating outdoors. An emboldened Slaty Brushfinch made repeated visits to our outdoor dining space to steal tidbits of food.

Martin trying to get Chestnut-named Antpitta to show but no luck

"Linda"

As mentioned earlier, one reason for being at the reserve was to observe antpittas being cajoled to come into the open to feed on mealworms. Following an arduous hike lead by Lucia and local guide, Martin, we crowded into a clearing hoping to glimpse “Linda”, a Chami Antpitta (recently split from the Rufous Antpitta group). “Linda” and one of her offspring were quite showy. Alas, the second Antpitta species we had hoped to see, Chestnut-naped Antpitta, was a no show. But we did hear Slate-crowned Antpitta vocalizing nearby.
Chami Antpitta is a medium-sized antpitta. Its range is restricted to high elevation cloud forest in the western Andes of Colombia. Chami sp. was previously considered to a subspecies in the Rufous Antpitta complex. When the Rufous Antpitta species complex was split into 13 separate species, Chami became a separate species and yes, this was a now a life bird. And an endemic.

"Doná Lucia" posing with group

Martin posing with group at El Roble property

Upon our return to Lucia’s dwellings, we encountered a mixed flock containing Cinnamon Flycatcher, Streak-throated Bush-Tyrant, Saffron-crowned Tanager, Crimson-mantled Woodpecker, and Blue-and-black Tanager. Before lunch we added Pale-edged Flycatcher, Green Jay, Mountain Cacique, Acorn Woodpecker and White-sided and Masked Flowerpiercers. But still no Yellow-eared Parrots and it was time to leave.

crossed the clearing to get to forest area to view antpittas

hiking back up to have lunch at El Roble

Typically, sightings of Yellow-eared Parrot occur around the Lucia’s lodge. It wasn’t until we were driving back and slowed at a location where Nick had seen the parrots on earlier tours. Sure enough, Nick heard Yellow-eared Parrots flying nearby. We leapt out of our vehicles just in time to have a pair fly low directly overhead and eventually land some distance away for scoped views. Whew! Dinner that night was again in a small cafe alongside the Jardin town square where we toasted our day’s successes!

Yellow-eared Parrot

With another pre-daylight departure, we left Jardin behind and dropped into the Cauca Valley to bird along the Cauca River searching for three endemics: Grayish Piculet, Antioquia Wren, and Apical Flycatcher. The spot we stopped isn’t even an official eBird hotspot (a nearby restaurant is the closest spot mentioned in eBird). This location was simply noted as “road to Concordia km 3”. But it proved to be  very reliable as we quickly managed to garner all three endemics.
Endemic: “restricted or peculiar to a locality or region”. A main attraction to any bird tour in addition to seeing as many bird species as possible, is seeing as many endemic species as possible. By the way, Colombia has 85 endemic bird species. How many are there in the United States? 16.
The valley also proved fruitful as we added Spectacled Parrotlet, Scale-fronted Parakeet, Bar-creasted and Black-crowned Antshrikes, Streak-headed Woodcreeper, Rufous-naped Greenlet, Black-striped Sparrow, Yellow-backed Oriole and Golden-crowned Warbler.
After a couple of hours birding we had built up an appetite. A stop for brunch at the aforementioned eBird hotspot restaurant, Cafe la Manchuria, filled the bill.
Topped off with food and drink we struck out on one of our longer drives made even longer by road construction delays before reaching our next overnight in the town of  Manizales: the Recinto del Pensamiento Hotel and Convention Center. Arriving in the rain we checked into our rooms and then put our umbrellas to work for a short walk around the grounds where we found an unusually cooperative Golden-faced Tyrannulet.  Reassembling for adult beverages and our evening meal we couldn’t help observe a very large and raucous wedding reception. Fortunately the hotel venue for the event was some distance from our rooms so we didn’t have to mingle with the revelers (and they with us).

Golden-faced Tyrannulet