June
12th,
2018
Warm,
Cloudy morning some light rain in the early morning clearing to give
sunny intervals in the afternoon
In
semi-darkness I leave the Bed & Breakfast and make my way past
the queue for the coaches that take the tourists up to the fabulous
World Heritage site of Machu Picchu. My aim is to walk up to the
mountain top site birding all the way. Along the low water river I
start to count the birds I see. Black Phoebes and Torrent Tyrannulets
with occasional Blue & White Swallows are the first birds on the
day list. Tropical kingbirds are by the Aguas Calientes plastic
recycling area where a number of large posters try to persuade people
to do just that, recycle. A male Torrent Drake sits on a rock.
Reaching
the double bridges, one for the coaches, the other for pedestrians, I
am asked for my passport and Machu Picchu ticket and once these are
checked I cross the river. Finding the excellent stepped pathway I
start my ascent. On reaching a dirt track road that bisects the path,
I stop to watch birds in the canopy as rain steadily falls. A female
Versicoloured
Barbet
shows herself, as does a Glossy-black
Thrush.
Two good birds to get, I feel chipper as I continue upwards.
Dusky
Green Oropendulas, eight Andean Guans, a fair number of
Slate-throated Redstarts, Chestnut-fronted Coronets and Sierran
Eleanias keep me alert and even better than these, a White-throated
Quail Dove
walks slowly along the path in front of me. Getting photographs of
these birds is very difficult in the gloom of the forest, especially
as the cloud is so low and the rain quite heavy. In fact I have to
put my camera, my canon SX50 bridge camera, onto its maximum ISO
setting of 6400 in order to get a shutter speed of 1/60th
of a second. I just hope the image stabiliser does its job well.
My
ascent is very slow as I search for birds. White-winged
Becard,
looking
like an antbird in the bush tops
and
Tropical
Parula
get added to the list. A Yellow-bellied
Seedeater
is extremely tame as it searches for food amongst the rocks on the
path. A Bright scarlet Hepatic
Tanager
shows itself atop a tree in a clearing as the rain finally stops.
Green & White Hummingbirds become quite common and I count
seventeen of them during my climb up the extremely well maintained
steep pathway!
I
meet a number of people during the four hours it takes me to get to
the entrance. One young, ebullient man is from New Zealand. Named
Nick, we chat about general travel things for half an hour! Nick's
photograph of Rainbow Mountain, the famous wedge-shaped striped
mountain of many colours is unusual in that it shows only white. The
recent blizzards that covered the mountains along the Sacred Valley
with snow have done their winter work there as well. I think that
Nick is lucky to have seen Rainbow Mountain in this guise and tell
him so. A couple descending have a drone with them which they fly
high above the canopy in order to photograph the ruins high above
them but not the drone. On talking with them the usual question is
asked, especially as I think I recognise the World's best accent of
the man. “I'm from Birmingham,” he says. It turns out that Aimee,
a misspelling of my Grandmother's name on my Mother's side of the
family and Scott live very near to the centre of the city of my
birthplace, in Ladywood. It was there back in the early 1930s that my
mother, Mary was born. Talking to these two lovely people it turns
out that they have an excellent blog detailing their travels and
characters called Birkenstocks and backpacks, The Good, The Bad and
The Clumsy.
Reaching
the entrance at last with its crowds and coaches, I search the bamboo
around the complex of buildings for the famed Inca Wren.
A pair of
Hepatic Tanagers show themselves nicely but after twenty minutes of
searching with no luck on the wren I enter the sacred sanctuary. I go
around the initial walkway and take route one to the left in order to
go towards The Sun Gate. As I slowly negotiate the path I see
White-winged Black Tyrant and the usual and very common
Rufous-collared Sparrows before reaching an area of bamboo just after
a long section of Inca terracing. A bird is singing and I sit down to
watch as a large streaky-headed Inca
Wren
emerges from some tall bamboo. Brilliant! I don't know why but seeing
this iconic bird on Machu Picchu itself really lifts my spirits and
my fist thumping, Henman style, amuses a small group of people
passing by.
With
low cloud covering Machu Picchu itself, I carry on up the path
towards The Sun Gate and stop at some walls about half way up to it
for lunch. Clouds disperse and the glory that is Machu Picchu reveals
itself once more. People arrive and stop to take selfies or pose for
others to take photographs of them with the famous backdrop. I do the
same self consciously. One lovely couple is from Chicago and on
asking where I am from and why I am alone, I tell them that I am
trying to beat an American, the amazing Dorian Anderson, and become
the World Green Birding Champion. They and a couple of Peruvians who
live in Florida standing nearby wish me luck and ask for my details
so that they can see whether I manage to do so.
As
The Sun Gate is in deep cloud I decide to explore Machu Picchu's
ruins and spend the next two hours doing precisely that. At times I
stand near to groups of people who have an English-speaking guide.
One such guide talks of the Incas use of three and points out the
recess and window numbers of a special building, three of each.
Whilst sitting on the high terraces admiring the wonder of Machu
Picchu a fabulous, happy Columbian couple stop for a chat.
At
three o'clock I leave and have a splendid meal at the cafe of a
superb, extremely deep leek quiche followed by a hot apple pie with a
large mug of hot chocolate. I am surprised at the excellent quality
of the food and have to tell the staff how fantastic I think it is
once I have finished.
I
start my descent by following the road. I have company. A dog decides
to follow me and does so for about half of the way before following a
group of people who are using the more direct way of the steps that I
ascended in the morning. The switchbacks and long almost horizontal
road gives plenty of opportunities of seeing birds that use the top
most branches of the trees.
Smoke-coloured
Pewee
is soon seen as it perches from a prominent dead branch and makes
forays out to catch a passing insect. Later back on the downward
steps a thrush sized bird with a prominent white throat is my first
ever Chestnut-capped
Brush Finch
and the photograph in the gathering gloom doesn't do the bird
justice. I prefer to remember what I saw with my Opticron binoculars
as it made its way along the path below me.
I
reach the bridges with it almost dark and see two Blue & Gray
Tanagers in a tree.
Green
Year list : 260 birds average new birds to list per day : 3.56
birds
altitude
: 6,807 feet (highest point on Machu Pichu – 8,450 feet)
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