Dash for the Cloud Forest

Canary-winged parakeets were in the fruit trees at our hotel, Puerto Palmeras.

My next-to-last full day in Peru was spent near the town of Tarapoto in the north-central part of the country, at a higher elevation than we'd experienced along the Amazon. We had arrived late the night before after traveling all day, flying from Iquitos, south to Lima, the back north to Tarapoto. We got to our lodging just in time to gobble some dinner and hit the hay.

We got up early for a short birding excursion the next morning, but I had the first birds of the day even before I got out of bed. A tropical screech owl and a ferruginous pygmy-owl were both calling outside my room. I could hear them well because the upper half of the wall facing the courtyard was all screen--the temperature here being moderate all year 'round.

This ferruginous pygmy-owl had the audacity to wake me up.

Our birding excursion was short and modestly birdy, but the overcast daylight made picking out colors difficult. We did manage to see black nunbird, a couple of distant trogons, magpie jays and the ubiquitous roadside hawks.

There are birders from eight different countries in this photo of our morning birding outing near Tarapoto.

Black nunbird.

Most of the day was spent attending the Peru Birdwatching Fair at the Puerto Palmeras Resort, hearing programs (including one from John O'Neill about the new Field Guide to the Birds of Peru), and speaking with ecotourism companies and lodge operators. Peru is trying, like Guatemala and Colombia, to overcome a reputation for political unrest and instability. It has a single, well-known destination: Machu Picchu, but has so much more to offer the cultural or ecotourist. I think you can tell from my long list of posts here on BOTB that I really enjoyed my trip to Peru. If they government keeps setting aside large tracts of habitat for parks and reserves, and if things continue to be stable politically, the number of natural history tours coming to Peru will certainly increase.

The booths at the Birdwatching Fair were all outdoors.

My birding pals and I had planned to split as soon as things were concluded, to try to make it up higher into the cloud forest to see a very special bird: the Andean cock-of-the-rock. But the humid afternoon brought on a big thunderstorm, and it looked like night would fall before we could organize our expedition.

Then, all at once, the skies cleared and we saw our chance to make a mad dash up to the cloud forest 25 minutes away. We knew we'd be racing the remaining daylight, but the site for the bright orange cock-of-the-rock was reportedly a good one. The bird had been seen there late in the day just a week earlier. Steve made arrangements for a guide and a driver. We wanted to keep our group small so we could all fit in one vehicle and get moving quickly. Steve, Chris, Pete, the other Chris and I got into the resort's Land Rover with a driver and guide. It was 4:15 pm and the light was fading. If we did not make it up to the site before about 5:30, we'd have no light for birding.

Just as we got loaded and were about to leave, another participant of the event spotted us and invited himself along. This person had seen the bird on his portion of the week-long tour, so we explained that we really wanted to get going, we had no room in the vehicle, and it was a LIFE BIRD for all of us! He would not be denied, though. And our vehicle was forced to turn around at the gate to come back to pick him up. Not only him, but his non-birding wife, too. We muttered curses, but shifted and scooted and made just enough room. I straddled the gear shift, getting to know our driver more intimately than was truly necessary.

Last light fading over the cloud forest.

The sun did not wait for us however, and as we made our way out of town and up slippery dirt roads, still flowing with the run-off from the afternoon rains, I tried to counsel myself that "it's about the journey, not the destination." If I did not see this spectacular bird, it would be OK.

Well that was a load of guano. If we missed the bird because Tommy Tagalong glommed onto us like a beggartick, I was going to have to say something to him. I was seriously worried that we'd been cock-of-the-rock blocked.

Mototaxis are everywhere in Peru.

We drove for nearly 30 minutes until we were halted by a traffic stop. There were landslides ahead and no one could pass. Police were everywhere and we were flagged to the side of the road. Our driver made our case with the policeman (who was very well-armed). The policeman radioed to his superior. All the while we were losing light. My legs were numb from sitting on the metal bar between the front seats.

Eventually this policeman let us pass up the mountain road.

Evidence of the landslides that closed our road.

Finally we were permitted to go ahead. The crowd of people vehicles we left behind stared at us in disbelief. Some of them had been waiting for four hours.

On the way up the muddy road, we slipped sideways, even in four-wheel drive. We also dodged huge trucks and heavy equipment coming down. The road was only just opened. To the left the mountainside was almost vertical. To the right it dropped off several hundred feet. There was no guard rail.

Finally we got to the spot. A small hut indicated the trail head. This was a small park with a trail that climbed up along a rushing stream, leading into the dark cloud forest. Our guide indicated that, though it was not far to the place where the bird was, we must hurry to beat "la noche." We clambered out of the Land Rover and began climbing up the trail, which wound over mossy, wet rocks and was a bit treacherous in our haste. Up, up, up we went, the light diminishing as we got deeper into the forest.

Then all at once we were at the foot of a giant waterfall. The air was full of mist. The scene was so incredible--magical really--that we momentarily forgot to look for the bird. An orange flash caught my eye. OHMYGODTHEREITIS!

A male Andean cock-of-the-rock! Wow! Florescent orange head and shoulders, black underparts, weird comb of feathers on the head. He settled into a small crevice on the left side of the waterfall. We got him in the scope. Such a great bird. We high-fived and silently hooted and hollered.

Tommy Tagalong took this moment to begin bragging on all the other, better looks he'd had at this species. His wife began making noises about getting back to the resort. I briefly began looking for a spot to hide their bodies. There were a lot of good options.

We shut our ears and focused our minds, eyes, and optics on the bird, now probably settling in to roost for the night. For the next 15 minutes we just let the waterfall do the talking while we soaked in the view and the experience.

It was now almost too dark to see the path, so we headed down. We could not conceal the spring in our steps. An hour later we were off the mountain and back at Puerto Palmeras. Several rounds of celebratory cervezas were enjoyed, along with another of the ubiquitous pisco sours.

After all, it's not every day you get to see a bright orange life bird at the last possible few minutes of the day.

BOTB at the COTR spot. Photo by Steve Rooke.

My crummy COTR shot. I had a shot that was pretty dang good, but I accidentally deleted it from my camera! DOH!

This is what the Andean cock-of-the-rock really looks like. Photo by Peter Price/Naturetrek Tours.

Intermission, then More Peru

I need to take a short intermission here to focus on some other things (new podcast episode coming for This Birding Life, magazine deadlines, recovery and SuperFund cleanup after The Big Sit!). But I wanted to give you advance notice that BOTB will be heading back to Peru for a couple of posts. I still have a story or two to share with you.

For now, I'll leave you with the image above, taken at dawn on my last day aboard El Delfin on the Amazon tributary system in northern Peru. ¡Hasta mañana!

66*

This is the very same eastern phoebe I thought I heard during the Big Sit.

If I were a person of lower moral fiber than I am (if that's even possible), I would now be crowing to you that we broke our Big Sit record after all! Yep! It's true! We got 66* species!!!!

How?

Well, during the Sit I heard what I took to be a very het-up eastern phoebe chipping in the side yard. We always hear phoebes over there this time of year--plenty of insects on warm afternoons and evenings and lots of great hunting perches from which a flycatcher can sally forth.

I heard this chip note in the morning and several times in the afternoon. Each time I called out "I think I hear a phoebe chipping!" But no phoebe ever appeared. And when a phoebe is around, you see it--they aren't shy and retiring woodland flycatchers, like the members of the Empidonax family. Phoebes perch on the wires, on the fence, on the roof, on the deck railing, all the while wagging their tails up and down. You ALWAYS see a phoebe if one is around.

But I could never get my eyes on an actual phoebe. Still the chip went on intermittently. I thought it might be a palm warbler, which has a pretty loud, sharp chip note for a warbler. And someone (named Jim McCormac) mentioned swamp sparrow during the course of the day in the context of birds we had not yet seen. Late in the evening on Big Sit Day +1, I was talking to Jeff Gordon and mentioned hearing a phoebe chip but not seeing it. He said "Yeah, their chip note sounds like several other chip notes. I think they can sound a little like swamp sparrows."

It still was not registering in the cold bowl of porridge that passes for my brain.

So this morning, Julie and I were sitting in the front yard for a few minutes, after launching the kids onto the school bus, and I heard it again.

"There's that dang phoebe again! The one that wouldn't show itself for the Big Sit. Doesn't it KNOW we named our first child Phoebe?"

Julie: "I'm not sure that's a phoebe. It might be a palm warbler."

She went to look while I sat aimlessly sipping my cold coffee, letting it dribble down my chin onto my beggar-tick-covered sweatpants.

"I just saw its tail and rump as it flew away! I think it's a swamp sparrow!" she shouted.

I was up and after the bird.

Sure enough. It popped up into view and gave about nine of its trademarked chips. At this close range they sounded sharper, more emphatic and metallic than the phoebe's chip. And more robust than the palm warbler's.

SWAMP SPARROW. And it's the same bird (probably) that was chipping on Sunday.
It would have been species #66 for us, had I been tuned-in to the possibility.

Swamp sparrow image by Mike McDowell from BirdDigiscoping.com

That's what's great about bird watching. You never know WHAT'S going to show up (or not show up).

So I'll list this year's total as 65. But I really want to list it as 66* (with an asterisk). Barry Bonds and Roger Maris got their baseball records recorded with an asterisk. There were no performance-enhancing drugs used in our Big Sit (that I KNOW of--the drug testing results are not yet in). Honest, we thought it was just flaxseed oil....

What's the lesson here? While you're keeping your eyes and ears open, it's a good idea to keep you mind open, too.

* Species #66 (swamp sparrow) was heard during The Big Sit! but not identified by any member of the Big Sit circle during this very special event (An event so special in fact that it has its own exclamation point!). No punctuation was harmed in the creation of this *%$#@#@ blog post!