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April
21st,
2018
Hot,
hazy and sunny day that clouds over mid-afternoon.
Up
at 5:30 a.m. again but this time to pack and get going on up the
valley to Huinco, the next planned stop. Well I am ready to go by six
but unfortunately no staff will be in before eight! I go birding.
On
the way at last, after some photographs by all of the staff with
their smartphones, well they don't get many visitors who look like me
and who have such an interesting and heavily laden bike do they?
Backtracking for four hundred yards, I get on the correct road and so
begins the steep climb. I am surprised that the road from here
consists of dusty, compacted stone instead of tarmac or concrete. To
emphasise the dusty nature of the road, eight motor cyclists pass and
I am enveloped in dust clouds. Each one greets me as I make my
non-motorised struggle. Thumbs up time!
The
hills look amazing both to the west where the vast rocky slopes are
now in the sunlight and to the east where the hills are still in
cloud and therefore the view of them is of hazy layers, each hill
appearing lighter than that afore it. Now I call them hills but these
must be over 7,000 feet high. They would tower over Ben Nevis, the
highest mountain in the UK but as where I am going the real mountains
approach 20,000 feet and are snow-covered I will stick to calling
these hills. As for my present altitude, I am at 5,000 feet and
rising!
Turning
a corner there is a juvenile Black-breasted
Buzzard
Eagle
sitting on a rock above the road. It ignores me completely as I pass
by. Additions to the Green bird list begin. The way I see this World
record attempt is that I need to see just over three new birds each
day of the adventure. I will be Green Birding for 204 days and the
current record held by Dorian Anderson is a magnificent 618. Before
today my average has been 5.2 so I feel that I am ahead. I love
statistics like these and have the details with graphs on a
spreadsheet. A pale phase Variable Hawk soars overhead. It is mostly
white with black primary tips, terminal tail band and dark along the
primary and secondary wing edge. The whiteness of the tail shows
translucent allowing the bird's feet to be seen. The face is white
with black on each side.
Parts
of the road cling to the hill's sides and there are precipitous drops
down the river far below.
Rounding corners along these stretches give
wonderful views of valleys heading off into the distance. The river
has carved it's way for millennia and left such beauty that it is
quite breath-taking to stop and stare. This just has to be one of the
most spectacular Biking Birder days ever for scenery. Other parts of
the road go along these valleys and sometimes there is shade to be
given by roadside trees. Villages are becoming less frequent and
smaller, with the road becoming more and more degraded, bumpy and
stony.
The
road eventually crosses the river by way of a strong steel bridge
beside some beautiful waterfalls. Here an overloaded motortaxi stops
to chat. The driver wants to know where I come from, from which
country and where I am going. His motortaxi has three large
mattresses and a table skilfully tied on!
Midday
and I arrive at my destination, Huino. Three and a half hours of
pushing (!) and cycling to reach here. A few small stalls sell fizzy
drinks, Coke and the like, chocolates and biscuits and cheap, one
sole packets of sugar puffs, nuts and other cereals. One lady sells
roast potatoes and I buy three. I eat one straight away. It is
delicious and somehow she has got some cheese inside it which has
melted. I ask about a hostel in the village and am pointed up a road.
On reaching it I find it is closed for refurbishment or just not the
season to be open and on telling the potato lady this she takes me to
a small house and shows me a room with five beds, a sofa and a table
in it. It looks like a storeroom but it is perfect. She also shows me
a room upstairs that has a single bed in it and a tiled floor. It has
only a very small shuttered window though and I prefer the larger
room. Maybe it is the large snake sealed in liquid inside a large
bottle that makes my decision easier! Fascinating, I wonder why?
With
bike and possessions stowed away in my storeroom bedroom, I head off
birding back to the river. There is a large dam here that hides a
lagoon created for electricity production but there is no access for
a keen birder wishing to view it. Privado to all except workers at
the hydro-electricity plant. Where water gushes violently from within
the wall of the dam there are a series of steps being splashed by the
surging water. A White-capped
Dipper
is exploring each step in turn for morsels to eat. Two Black
Phoebes
are on the rocks below here. The road from here zig zags steeply and
I want to explore the scrubby vegetation on the dry slopes. Scrub
Blackbirds are common and noisy in small family groups of five and
six. It takes half an hour to reach an area where I can view down
into the vegetation and here there are Cinereous Conebills, Collared
Warbling Finches and a few Band-tailed Seedeaters. The best bird
though is a single Yellow-billed
Tit-tyrant,
a superb black and white stripy little bird.
On
the way back down a cleft in the hill has tall flowers and these are
being aggressively shared by Giant
Hummingbirds
and Sparkling
Violetears.
Peruvian Sheartails sneak in for their own share of the nectar. An
Oasis Hummingbird makes up a set of four Colibri.
Back
down to the village for another potato and then up hill again, this
time on the more thick vegetated east bank.
Two Peruvian
Pygmy Owls
stare at me as I pass by. Brilliant to see these smashing tiny little
owls. In a deeply cut flash flood scar on the hill there are a lot of
very tall comfrey-like plants and shorter but still six foot or so
pale orange flowered foxglove-like plants. Here there are a lot of
Sparkling Violetears and a couple of Giant Hummingbirds. An immature
Chiguanca Thrush is being fed by an adult.
I
descend and cross the gully and walk along a pathway that leads to
another gully cut by a flash flood in the not too distant past and
the village's cemetery. More hummingbirds are here, all Sparkling
Violetears or Giant. I sit and watch their antics and sounds.
Turning
back towards the village as time approaches twilight, birds are being
ab it more visible than before. Golden-bellied Grosbeak now number
six and a startling and startled Least
Seedsnipe
explodes out of some scrub and disappears again angrily calling all
the way.
Green
Year list : 111 birds average new birds to list per day : 5.29
birds
Distance
cycled, pushed and walked : 11.71 miles
elevation
up : 5,399 feet, down 3,880 feet altitude : 6,186 feet
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