The following is the first of five magazine articles I wrote last year detailing my amazing Peruvian Biking Birder adventure.
Each was written for a particular month and so here is April 2019.
Birding
in Peru, what could be simpler? Those of you who met me at my talk
will know that I have not chosen the simple route. Neither as the
literal, where one gets to Amazonia as fast as possible and sees and
hears four hundred bird species in a week. Nor as the mode of
transport, I choose bicycle and packraft, kayak to you and me. I
choose to Go Green!
May
has started for me and in the thirty days hath April there have been
plenty of birds, as one would expect in a country that has just over
1,800 different species.
Pied-billed Grebe
Black Skimmers with Neotropic Cormorants
Willets
The
start of The Biking Birder IV Adventure was on the first of April at
Los Pantanos de Villa, a nature reserve with coastal lagoons,
reedbeds and scrubby desert habitats but I was no fool as the reserve
gave me sixty three species, including fifteen different species of
wader! Turnstone and Sanderling we will be familiar with but watching
flocks of Stilt Pectoral, Least and Semi-palmated Sandpipers with
good numbers of what used to be a separate species but now lumped
with Whimbrel, the Hudsonian Whimbrel with their all-dark rumps.
Hundreds
of Black Skimmers and Franklin's Gulls were with Inca Terns and
Moorhens on the lagoon, whilst on the sea were Neotropic Cormorants,
Peruvian Boobies and Peruvian Pelicans.
Black Skimmers
Killdeer
Harris Hawk
Now
due to a tooth showing that a far in my past mugging had left it with broken roots, I had to have it removed together with bits of root. The removal was don by a superb dentist in Lima but stitches were required. So I had
almost two weeks to wait around Lima, the capital of Peru, two weeks before the stitches could safely be removed. Not
wasting any days I spent five more days birding at Los Pantanos and added
Blue-footed Booby, Peruvian Thick-knee, Semipalmated sandpiper and a
lone Laughing Gull to the Green Birding list. With Red-legged
Cormorant, Elegant and Royal Terns going past on a seawatch, the
growing list was just what was needed for a birder with ambitions of
becoming the Green Birding World Champion.
American Oystercatchers
Belcher's Gull
Black Skimmers
Cabot's Tern
Bird previously known as Hudsonian Whimbrel
Yellow-headed Blackbird
In
Lima itself, at the famous Olive Tree Park, the spectacular Vermilion
Flycatcher was the pick of the birds found there. In two forms, the
red form is startlingly bright where as it's dark form is just that,
a small, dark-plumaged flycatcher. Parakeets were flying around but
not countable as they are a feral population grown from escapes.
Eventually, with stitches removed I could set off for The Andes. After
negotiating Lima's incredible traffic I reached the desert hills and
immediately encountered different birds. Seedeaters, Collared
warbling Finches and best of all different Hummingbird species, such
as Sparkling Violetear, Amazonia and Oasis Hummingbird. The superb
Peruvian Sheartail has a split tail, well the male does anyway, that
is twice the length of it's miniscule body. The intensely hot weather
didn't prepare me for what was to come next as my altitude increased.
Along
dirt track mountain roads that clung to precipitous slopes around
which each bend was yet another breathtaking view, birds such as
Variable Hawk, American Kestrel and Black-breasted Buzzard Eagle were
seen. Then imagine the thrill as looking up to the top of one high
mountainous ridge I could count eleven Andean Condors.
As
altitude increased past the 10,000 foot mark and road quality
deteriorated the valley got more claustrophobic with towering cliffs
seemingly about to crash down. Bird species changed and Sierra
Finches became more common. Andean Woodpeckers became frequent, not
just being for being seen but also for being heard. Quiet they are
not and their frequently given call is reminiscent of our own Green
Woodpecker.
Eventually
High Andean lakes could be explored with their ducks and grebes.
Silvery and White-tufted Grebes, Yellow-billed teal and Pintail
It
hasn't all been fun birding. The road has been extremely steep as you
would expect when one goes over 15,000 feet in just one hundred
miles. I was also attacked by a bull at Huanza and was very lucky to
escape with just cuts and bruises! One of the horns hit my upper arm
which made pushing the bike a bit difficult for a few days. Ouch!
So
with the summit of my route reached, 15,670 feet, it would be
downhill all the way from here. Landscape changed to Puna grasslands
where shallow pools in valleys had numbers of Chilean Flamingos and
Puna Ibis.
April
finished with a bird total of 180, a total way beyond my dreams. Five
months to go, my route will take me along the Andean range to the
famous Machu Picchu and down the equally famous in birding terms,
Manu Road. More adventures to come, more landscapes to take my breath
away and best of all, more incredible birds to see.
If
you would like to follow my cycling and birding adventures then
please take a look at my blog at :-
If
you would like to see the photographs of the adventure they can be found on my Biking Birder community Facebook page :
I also have my personal Facebook page at :
https://www.facebook.com/gary.prescott.92
