Day 23 - April 23rd Huinco to unnamed place. Tough day's push and cycle!

April 23^rd, 2018

Hot, hazy and sunny day that clouds over mid-afternoon.

Up at 5:30 a.m. again and after making sure my room is tidy and the bed made, I set off in the semi-dark. Today will be the toughest yet with steep roads but there will be new birds to see and incredible scenery to explore. I pass the dam by the hydro-electric plant and am delighted that progress up the initial steep zig zag road is easier and quicker than I thought it would be. An early start has also meant that it is is cooler as the Sun is yet to reach down here in the valley, although I can see it's progress as the hills to the west start to be bathed in sunlight.

As the road climbs higher and higher the views get more spectacular. One particular incredibly deep gorge would be a major tourist site if in the UK. Here this magnificent gorge, carved by the river Eulalia, is followed by another and another with beautiful valleys between them.

Variable Hawks, American Kestrels and seedeaters I see as I cycle and push, cycle and push. The Sun arrives at my level and immediately the heat is on. A Miner is on the road ahead of me, scuttling along, I get great views before it flies over the rocky edge and down the cliff descending to the riverbed far below. 

A Thick-billed Miner, a brilliant bird to get I feel and so feel elated. I carry on pushing and cycling, pushing and cycling. Greenish Yellow Finches alight upon a cliff's rocky protrusions, another bird for the list.

The rock layers are so distorted along sections of the road, incredibly bent and twisted, what forces can do such?

Views all the way along the road are magnificent and the Sun makes shadows and changes of tone. Beautifully the road clings to cliff edges. I had thought that The Manu Road would be the only one like this that I would encounter. How wrong I am.

I arrive after a couple of hours at a closed and boarded up cafe which is beside an incredibly deep cleft in the rock. There is a short bridge and standing here in a gale force wind emanating from far below, I stand as around twenty Andean Swifts dash about at terrific speeds.

Miles pass, the road gets rougher, dustier and steeper. The valley gets narrower and the feeling of claustrophobia makes me imagine falling rocks. New birds appear and are photographed and watched. 

Streak-throated Bush Tyrants chase each other by the river, perching on twigs and branches. Andean Condors, eleven of them, appear flying high over the ridge tops. A Black-bellied Swallow flies around catching flies over the river. A Black Metaltail is a new hummingbird.

Eventually the afternoon reaches the moment when the shadows from the descending Sun reach further than just the valley floor and it starts to get cold. Rain starts to fall and I put up the tent but the rain quickly stops. I decide to camp here and go birding for the last hour or so of light. I find a superb, surely one of the best drakes anywhere, male Torrent Duck, who is being followed everywhere by two attendant female birds. I photograph and film them. Fabulous to watch the females subservient displays towards the splendid male.

Green Year list : 125 birds average new birds to list per day : 5.43 birds

Distance cycled : 10.87 miles

elevation up : 6,922 feet, down 4,324 feet

altitude : 8,696 feet

22nd April 2018 Birding on the Eastern Slopes at Huinco.

April 22^nd, 2018

Hot, hazy and sunny day that clouds over mid-afternoon yet again.

Up at 5:30 a.m. again and out early to climb the hill beyond yesterday's cemetery track. Soon at the first flash flood gully, a male Peruvian Sheartail has taken up station on a high twig and is aggressive when another male comes along. The display towards each other involves making their two long tail plumes horizontal at right angles to their bodies. Wonderful to watch, the display is quickly over as the intruder departs and the original male takes up his original position. To think last week I had been worried about seeing this superb tiny hummingbird species. Here there are lots of them. Smashing little birds!

Along to the second flash flood gully and a strange pair of rabbits are sitting on rocks totally ignoring me. Long black whiskers descend vertically from their mouths and they have very long, curly tails. Called a Southern Viscacha, they are beautiful and their fur looks thick and warm, coloured a uniform grey-brown.

White-tipped Doves are in bushes here and they finally give all the features I needed to place them definitely on the Green Bird list. A Peruvian Pygmy Owl is in a bush and, just as elsewhere it's presence is told by a few birds mobbing it. In this case the mobbing birds are Sparkling Violetear hummingbirds and a couple of House Wrens.

Ascending beyond the height of the cemetery, a very curious and relentless horse follows me along what path there is on the ancient terraces and through the bushes. I am getting a bit concerned, animals in Peru are much more free than in the UK, roaming everywhere and to be this close to an unknown animal has me a tad nervous. I lose him by ducking behind some bushes and almost crawling along for twenty yards or so. He goes off thinking I have gone further down the path.

There aren't many birds and I concentrate on butterflies for a while before heading back to Huinco village for some lunch. A strange morning, I really expected some more bird species to be on the list and to be honest I am annoyed at myself at not knowing a couple of species briefly seen in the vegetation but hopefully will see them again this afternoon.

The Biking Birder with his Opticron binoculars

Afternoon

Lunch eaten, more of those delicious potatoes and a bowl of soup, which the seller tried to give me in a polystyrene dish. I refused and asked for a real crockery dish, saying that I would wash it up for her. She went and got one so I asked her how much each polystyrene tray cost, half a Sole. Now the soup cost two Soles. Why waste half a Sole on a throw away tray. Increase your profit and use a proper dish! We both laughed but I can't see this wasteful practise changing anytime soon. What a waste of money and such a shame for the environment.

Up to even greater heights on the eastern slope this afternoon and Mountain Parakeets fly over and land on the other side of a shallow valley. A new hummingbird species lands nearby too but speedily departs when it notices me, a Bronze-tailed Comet. Damn it! I don't like it when I don't get a photograph of a bird as I want full evidence for every bird specie I see.

Once up a very steep and high section with many cacti species, flowers and scrubby bushes, the area levels off into a series of terraces and, although very overgrown, it is possible to scrabble and walk along searching for birds. And birds there are; Great Inca Finches come close, as do Black-necked Woodpeckers.

An Andean Tinamou walks out, spots me and is off. Taking off in front of me, somewhat like a partridge would in Britain, making a loud tuew, tuew, tuew sound, it flies over a nearby ridge edge.

Birds, they have been few and far between until reaching this area, lots of Scrub Blackbirds but just as one gets a flock of one hundred titmice in a woodland, suddenly I am surrounded by birds. They obviously stay together and roam the hillside feeding. The most common birds are Cinereous Conebills and Rusty-bellied Brush Finches, as well as a lot of Collared Warbling Finches.

The flock moves off and I come across two huge rocks precariously sitting on the edge of a cliff. I sit on one, hoping that a sudden earthquake doesn't disturb me and the rock, and look at the fabulous views of the mountains and the valley.

Back down in the village, a lady walking with a toddler in a pushchair asks me to take a photograph of her and her child. I obviously oblige and wonder if I could email the village council to send it to her.

Green Year list : 118 birds average new birds to list per day : 5.36 birds

Distance cycled : 2.38 miles

elevation up : 1,333 feet and down

highest altitude : 6,708 feet

21st April. It is all the way up to Huinco, Peru

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April 21^st, 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