Colombia Birding 2020: Introduction

This blog documents a two week birding trip to Colombia in, February and March 2020, by three birders from Buckinghamshire, England. These were Jim Rose, Neil Fletcher and Dave Ferguson. All three of us had visited South America or Central America previously but only Dave had been to Colombia before. For all of us there were a lot of interesting birds to see.

All three of us are keen birders and who like to be able to take photos of birds if the opportunity arises. So we managed to photograph a large number of birds during the trip, some of which are no more than record shots. The blog is organised into pages (see menu along the top of the screen) and with usually one site per page. The scarcer and more interesting species are usually towards the top of the page. Jump to the first page here.

Our group plus a few others at Rio Sucio.
From the left Dave 2nd, Neil 3rd, Jim 5th, Manuel 7th

Buffy Helmetcrest - See more pictures like these on the main blog pages!

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The trip was arranged through Luis Uruena of Manakin Nature Tours who are a Colombian based company. The first discussions were held with Luis at the 2018 Bird Fair. Detailed plans were then done via email and a final meeting held with Luis at the 2019 Bird Fair at Rutland Water in the UK. Our guide for the trip was Manuel Espejo.

Manakin Nature Tours

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The trip started with an overnight flight from Heathrow on an Avianca Boeing Dreamliner we arrived at Bogota at 04.00 where we were met by our guide Manuel. We changed our currency and then we were off in our minibus, which was designed for far more then four passengers, so proved to be very comfortable. We also had a dedicated driver, for the whole trip.

The route is shown on the map below and each main site is covered on different pages within this blog. For details on our first day go to the Chingaza page.

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Manakin Nature Tours - Our recommendation

The arrangements made by Manakin Nature Tours though Luis Uruena regarding the selection of our bird guide, transport, accommodation and arrangements to visit various reserves was excellent. We did not experience any problems throughout the trip. The accommodation was very varied but always comfortable and safe. This varied from forest lodges to rather plush city hotels. The arrangements with the vehicles was quite complicated as we had to switch to four wheel drive vehicles more than once, but again there were no problems and they were available when needed. Our main vehicle was large and very comfortable. The food was again varied in styles but always of a good, if not to an excellent standard.

Our guide was Manuel Espejo who spoke excellent English, a pleasant personality and was interesting to talk to. He provided us with lots of interesting facts about Colombia, it's natural history, the birds plus some history and politics also. Manuel was known by many of the other guides and by the owners of lodges etc and certainly knew the areas we visited very well. His had an excellent knowledge of birds identification including song/calls, despite his birding tour experience only being over three years or so. We missed very few species. We all enjoyed our time with him.