Mitu Cachiveira
This area holds the white sand specialities, Jose, Jeff and myself set off and met our guide Miguel at the bridge of the 2 de Octubre village where the road ends. From here we explored the Mitu Cachiveira trails. Even before we had left the village proper we found a
Speckled Chachalaca and roosting
Plumbeous Kite, and with the frustrating numbers of
Tropical Kingbirds that need checking out "just in case". There was plenty of bird activity to get us going, the first bit of dense forest produced a pair of
Amazonian Antshrikes and a bird we had heard but missed seeing a few days earlier,
Pectoral Sparrow, really good views of two birds unfortunately they didn't hang around (typical of most of the Amazon birds.... it doesn't take much movement in the dense undergrowth to lose them and not catch back up with them).
Miguel is another local guide who does his spotting with his ears and he is very very good. He tips his head to one side and points, Jose then translates for us! it worked very well and something that happened a lot today with some fine birds being seen from the direction of his pointed finger.
One of the good birds pointed out was a male
Red Necked Woodpecker, the only one of the trip and a great looking bird. A few regular species were added to the day list,
Blue Crowned Manakins,
Cherries Antwrens,
Purple Honeycreepers, the inevitable
White browed Purpletufts etc.... seems hard now but these sort of birds became easily overlooked as they were numerous and were often seen more than several times a day, what would we all give to have a regular
Purple Honeycreeper or
Cherries Antwren visiting our gardens back home!
Cherries Antwren
Collared Gnatwren,
Great Billed Hermit and
Brown Headed Greenlet all became lifers in a small mixed flock before a little searching and perseverance got us a
Spot Backed Antwren, the lifers and skulkers just keep on coming.
Miguel led us to a clearing in the white sand forest where we would settle down for breakfast. We soon picked up another lifer with a Plumbeous Euphonia perched out in the open, then while unpacking his rucksack Miguel heard a Black Manakin. We looked a little but decided to eat as it called not too far away. Without warning it popped out and perched at virtually ground level 20ft from us, then a fumble of hard boiled egg while stretching for the camera resulted in a stunning view but no image. The bird decided to tease me for the next 10 minutes by flying to every bush in the clearing without actually stopping long enough to get a photo. Its a huge bird compared to the other Manakins that I saw and a great bird for the day, trip and life lists!...... oh but things would get better, and by some way.
Plumbeous Euphonia
Jeff had a hope and a not too confident hope of adding
Pompadour Cotinga to his life list. As we finished packing up breakfast we all had a scan of the surrounding area where I cant remember who saw it and grabbed the scope (Either Jose or Jeff) when I was told "turn round, quick, Scope... look".
Pompadour Cotinga, perched. Some distance away, so we headed off to get nearer views. Miguel was excited too, its not a common bird here and people normally have to travel some way from this area for them. Things got better as the day wore on saw at least 4 individuals (inc a pair in the same tree....).
The good birding continued with
White Fringed Antwrens,
Yellow-Green Grosbeak,
Blackish Nightjar that we accidentally flushed from a fallen tree and it took shelter behind it,
Blue Crowned Motmot and an incredibly hard to get onto
Buff Rumped Warbler, this bird took nearly half an hour to find as was one of the hardest of the trip.
White Fringed Antwren
Plain Brown Woodcreeper,
Epaulet Oriole and a
Chestnut Woodpecker the days total was becoming rather respectable.
An enjoyable moment was the finding of a
Saffron-crested Tyrant-Manakin as it eventually gave up brilliant views deep in the forest off the track and after a fair bit of creeping over vines etc.....a nice moment.
White-eyed Tody-Tyrant,
Grey Bellied Antbird a large flock of
Maroon Tailed Parakeets a
Black Tailed Tityra,
Wedge Billed Treecreeper,
White Fronted Nunbird,
Swallow Winged Puffbirds,
White Crowned Manakins and
Blue Black Grosbeak quickly followed, just before I had an episode with some seriously painful ants. I had sat down on a fallen tree not seeing the ants, wow the pain. Jose and Miguel smiled and I heard Jose say "Dancing ants". Blimey I had to drop the trousers to flush them out which kind of did the trick or so I thought! A while later while the 4 of us tried to get onto a
Silvered Antbird the ants hit back, it was painful and I couldn't keep quiet as I had to take the trousers off ...... we all just about managed to get the bird.
Swallow Winged Puffbird
White Fronted Nunbird
We had walked a fair distance up this track and the elevation had started to get steeper, my thought were wandering between have I had enough of this clinbing and I hope something good is at the top...... oh boy was it. I was only a few paces behind Miguel when even I can understand in broken Spanish\English
"Cock of the Rock" Effing hell, a Male
Guianan Cock of the Rock perched a little distance away. Blimey I wasn't expecting that. It was brilliant, we all got onto it as it flew to a few various trees, it eventually perched near enough to allow me to get a prized image, not the best ever, but one that I will cherish for sure, what a bird and what a moment. Miguel said that we could climb for maybe 10minuted more..... we declined the offer and trudged back down in a jovial mood.
Guianan Cock of the Rock - male
A mixed flock gave us
Green and Gold and
Flame Crested Tanagers as well as a
Black Throated Trogon,
Grey Antwren,
Long Tailed Woodcreeper and some other stuff that we all missed. We heard a Screaming Phia..... nothing unusual there then, and as we headed back to the village we got onto
Fuscous Flycatcher, unfortuantly Jeff missed this as he was fending off Hornets which took a swipe at his ear and upper lip,
Chestnut Bellied Seedfinch,
Plain Breasted Ground Dove and more
Squirrel Cuckoos. As a last hoorah, we drove a short way into the edge of Mitu and easily picked up a
Point-tailed Palmcreeper, a very nice end to a great day.
I emptied the rest of the ants from my trousers, Jeff got a cool bear to ease the pain from the sting and we reflected on a great day with Miguel and seeing 4
Pompadour Cotingas and a
Cock of the Rock.
One of the best bits today was Miguel. He took great pleasure in getting us good birds and genuinely looked please when we saw them, often resulting with a high five, great bloke.
Jose with the camera and Miguel with the scope
Ceima Cachiveira
In the morning after coffee we set off towards the indigenous village of Ceima Cachiveira. Miguel couldn't make today so Agripino stepped in again. We had two choices, to go left and find Cock of the Rock again or go right and see what happens. We chose to go right and see what happens, we can look for COTR later.
A great start when we got two difficult bird in quick succession, a Pair of
Black Throated Antbirds and our only Antthrush of the trip when we eventually got onto a
Rufous Capped Antthrush. The morning eventually turned out to be very warm and very hard work, we still picked up most of the more common birds such as
Cobalt Winged and
Marooned Tailed Parakeets, Tanagers, and Tyrannulets, while some skulkers gave good views as well with
Gray Antbird,
Coraya Wren, we eventually got brilliant views of
Bicolored Antbird and Jose and myself managed good but brief views of a
White fringed Antwren.
Rufous Capped Antthrush
Marooned Tailed Parakeets
We decided to walk back and head for the COTR track. Surprisingly while walking back we got our only sighting of the trip of a single
Rufous Browed Peppershrike, while adding even more
Blue Crowned Manakins,
Turquoise Tanager,
Magpie Tanagers and a new hummer,
Black Bellied Thorntail, Black faced Antbird,
Slender Footed Tyrannulet,
Amazonian Motmot made the walk back more productive than the walk out....
Black Faced Antbird
Turquoise Tanager
We went off the main track and started to climb to the rocky area that should be good for the Cock of the Rock. We had to wait a little while when a
Male Guianan Cock of the Rock showed really well high above us, Jose spotted a second bird as they both flew out of sight. Unfortunately they didn't show again.
We climbed down through a labyrinth of large boulders that had formed a sort of cave system, here we disturbed some bats. We came out the other side to come face to face with a
female Guianan Cock of the Rock. It turned out that in the next ten minutes we saw 4 females including one sat on a nest.
The birding got harder as the day wore on so we decided to drive back and do the cerro Urania and the Urania bridge area again.
We stood for an hour in the cover of the bridge (out of the burning sun) and picked up
Rusty Margined Flycatchers,
Buff throated Saltators, a
Chestnut bellied Seedeater,
Rusty fronted Tody-Tyrant, the very smart
Pygmy Antwren,
Cherries Antwren and the usual mixture of the more common
Tanagers, Palm, Silver Beaked, Blue grey etc. We also got the 60th species of hummingbird for the trip with a
Green Tailed Goldenthroat.
Cherries Antwren
Pygmy Antwren
As the day got slightly cooler we climbed the cerro Urania to the top where the birding was virtually non existent but the views were impressive looking down on the expanse of forest only broken by the Vaupes river and the mountainous very distant skyline that marks the Colombia \ Brazil amazon border.
Back down at the bridge area we had just enough time to capture a few small flocks of
Mealy Parrots and 4
Red Fan Parrots as well as a family party of
Back Caracara flying over. a great end to a difficult afternoon in the baking heat.
juvenile Black Caracara
adult Black Caracara
A little sad that Agripino was "gently" hassled by a local who had too much to drink, I believe the locals don't like some people trying to earn an honest living by showing outsiders the wonderful birds of the area, they would rather get drunk and expect someone to give them money for doing nothing. Fair play to people like Agripino for getting involved and trying to make a difference.
A difficult day made a whole lot better with the brilliant views of the Cock of the Rock.
Tomorrow we have a few hours birding before we take a flight out of the Amazon and back to Bogota.
Day 18
Our final birding morning, we had 4hrs before we would have our final pack and head for the airport. Miguel too us down the short Bocotoma trail. We tried for a
Spotted Puffbird but got no response so we carried on towards the trail picking up the usual
Plumbeous Kite,
Tropical Kingbirds, Epaulet Orioles but added a nice
Channel Billed Toucan.
Epaulet Oriole
Plumbeous Kite
We were soon back onto the Antbirds....
Blackish-Grey Antshrike,
Scale Backed Antbird was new for the trip, as well as
Amazonian Antshrike. A very brief glimpse of a flushed
Umbrellabird followed by a pair of
Ruddy Quail-Doves on the flooded tracks. A few new hummers for the life list came in quick succession with a
Versicoloured Hummingbird and a
Grey Breasted Sabrewing. We spent the next 30+ minutes chasing a
Ringed Antpipit that gave us one hell of a runaround. I got at least 2 flypasses straight out infront of me while Miguel at least managed to see it walking the forest floor for a second, what a hard bird. Here is where we got our guaranteed
Chestnut Woodpecker, taking away the doubt of whether to count the one a few days before that could have been a
Scale Breasted! We now at last caught up with the very plain looking but needed
Screaming Piha while it perched high above us and in a clearing we found our only
Bat Falcon of the trip perched high and in the distance.
Birding Amazon style
somewhere in there is a Ringed Antpipit ...... and its probably walking on the floor
Blackish-Grey Antshrike
A nice moment for Miguel as we got him onto a lifer...... a party of
Bobolink fed close to a bridge and as it turned out Miguel had never seen this species before. Everyone's happy now.
Bobolink
Cinereous Antshrike and
Yellow Browed Antbirds were the best of the rest as we headed out of the forest and into open land towards the village. This time around Miguel heard the bird that we tried very early this morning for,
Spotted Puffbird and very quickly we were onto it as it perched in just about the only place that wouldn't allow descent pictures. Great bird to end with..... or so we thought!
We had just enough time to find 3
Drab Water-Tyrants, although not the most inspiring species as the name suggests they became my last life bird of the trip.
Drab Water-Tyrants
And those two species just about sum up the Mitu experience...... some amazing birds and some very frustratingly quiet periods.
Spotted Sandpiper and
Yellow-rumped Cacique were the last birds seen in the Amazon.
the last hoorah....
This Spotted Sandpiper looks out onto the Vaupes River, it was a species that followed us around Colombia as it featured in just about every habitat.
Time eventually caught up and we headed back to town to pack up and head to the airport. A final night in Bogota and a long flight home.
our route out of here and back to civilisation
Amazon Man
It had been an amazing experience taking in the diverse habitats of Colombia, the trip was planned that way to maximise these differing habitats. We have left enough untouched locations to make another visit one day.
Thanks to my companion Jeff for sharing the trip, it was amazing to have Noah Stryker with us for 6 days as we contributed a little to his world record attempt of 5000 species and to Jose and Gabo for guiding us around Colombia.
Chris Calonje at
Colombiabirdwatch.com for organising this private trip.
Booked through this company
My personal trip total of bird species - 666 of which 464 were life birds.
