A.W.Birder: Always on the lookout for fine birds...: Peru Birding

Showing posts with label Peru Birding. Show all posts

Sunday, 1 December 2019

Peru - Birding in Lima

After a couple of weeks in and around Cusco it was time to come back to Lima ahead of my flight to my next destination, Cali in Colombia. But before that I had time for a morning birding in Lima. I've spent several days birding around the city with Eduardo before (see last post) so wasn't expecting too much in terms of 'new' birds, but several year ticks and some spectacular resident species.

However, things never usually go as planned in birding and we ended up seeing a bit of a rarity, and a very unusual bird, as well as the usual amazing specials... Read on!

On arrival at some wetlands near the city we started scanning around and immediately found this gorgeous Chilean Flamingo, a nice surprise (it was a bit of a rarity where we were), and a bonus lifer!

Chilean Flamingo

However, the strangest bird we found was this totally out of range Red-crested Pochard! A species that should be in Europe/Africa/Asia etc. I'd be keen to have any information on any other South American records. This bird looked pretty wild, no sign of anything too dodgy about it.... other than being a floater!

Red-crested Pochard

The marshes and wetlands around Lima contain some great birds and we had excellent looks at lots of them. Such as Many-coloured Rush Tyrant, Peruvian Thick-knee, Great Grebe, White-tufted Grebe and Inca Tern, to name but a few.

Many-coloured Rush Tyrant

Peruvian Thick-knee

Great Grebe

Great Grebe (young)

White-tufted Grebe

Inca Tern

Kelp Gull

Little Blue Heron

Puna Ibis

Cinnamon Teal

Amazilia Hummingbird

After this it was time to fly to Colombia for some more birding!

Friday, 29 November 2019

Peru - Machu Picchu

After my jaunt around the northeast of the USA I dropped down to Peru for a couple of weeks resting and birding with my colleague and friend Eduardo Ormaeche, Peruvian bird guide extraordinaire (check him out!) and our friend and driver Omar.

Eduardo, Omar, and AWBirder trying our best to block the view of Machu Picchu!

I wanted to see Machu Picchu and there were plenty of lifers for me in the Cusco region having never been there before so we formed a plan. I really enjoyed the city, great for some R&R (great Pisco Sours) and we had some excellent birding in the mountainous terrain. Plenty of lifers were had, and lots of other great birds that were year ticks etc.. some of the highlights included Bearded Mountaineer, Inca Wren, Cusco Brushfinch, Masked Fruiteater, Giant Conebill, and Marcapata Spinetail and usual species like Andean Cock-of-the-rock and Torrent Duck.

It was fun, and also challenging with the new camera setup, but got some ok results. Here are a few of them...

Andean Goose

Bearded Mountaineer

Chiguanco Thrush

Cusco Brushfinch

Fasciated Tiger Heron

Giant Conebill

Golden-crowned Flycatcher

Inca Wren

Marcapata Spinetail

Masked Fruiteater

Ochre-naped Ground Tyrant

Pearled Treerunner

Plushcap

Puna Ground Tyrant

Red-crested Cotinga

Scarlet-bellied Mountain Tanager

Slaty Tanager

Sparkling Violetear

Spectacled Whitestart

Tawny Tit-Spinetail

Tufted Tit-Tyrant

Unstreaked Tit-Tyrant

White-throated Tyrannulet

Yellow-billed Teal

Andy at Machu Picchu

Wednesday, 2 January 2019

2018 Year Summary

I had every intention of updating the blog more frequently during 2018 but in reality I was just too busy birding! Had some great trips, here are some links to the trip reports with some photos below. Ended the year on 2,241 species I think, give or take.... I also started using ebird this year... follow me there: https://ebird.org/profile/NjE1MzA1/world Best wishes to everyone for 2019...