[Tweeters] recent trip to Colombia

[David Cook]

Three of us just returned from a birding excursion (Dec. 6-18) in Colombia
that I organized.  We began by spending 3 days birding in the area around
Bogota with Camilo Orjuela as our guide.  He was very tuned into finding
our target birds, knew the locations we went to very well and was a
wonderful person to be with. We went to 6 locations at various altitudes.
The top highlights were seeing an Andean Potoo, which is very difficult to
find, 16 hummingbirds including Black Mango, and 13 tanagers.
Then we flew to Inirida, which is in far eastern Colombia and has only
become a notable destination in the past 10 or so years. Inirida sits
within a geologic formation known as the Guiana Shield and has plant and
animal species unique to this formation.  We spent 8 days birding there
with our guide Daniel Orjuela.  He is the foremost guide for this area and
is employed by all the major birding companies when they bring clients to
the area.  He worked very hard to find as many of our targets as possible,
arranged all our logistics fabulously including a fine chef to prepare our
lunches and dinners, knows the birds of the region like the back of his
hand and was very thoughtful of our needs and a pleasure to be with.  We
saw many wonderful birds but probably the top highlights were the
Capuchinbird, 4 puffbirds, 5 Jacamars, 10 woodpeckers, 18
antshrikes-antbirds-antwrens and 7 cotingas.
All together I saw 324 species on this 12 day trip including 130 life
birds.  I think this is very good considering I have made 2 previous trips
to other parts of Colombia and 3 previous trips to Ecuador.
If you would like more details about this trip, please email me off line at
41cdcook at gmail.com.

Dave Cook
Seattle, WA
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