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LABIRD-L for Wednesday, February 14, 2001
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Subject: LA Western Winter Hummer report #26
From: Tom & Eloise Sylvest <tomande(AT)STARGAZER.NET>
Date: 14 Feb 2001 5:02am
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Subject: Re: Mark Swan's Bullock Oriole
From: "David J. L'Hoste" <lhoste(AT)LHOSTELAW.COM>
Date: 14 Feb 2001 9:15am
Bill,
I was lucky enough to be in SE Arizona for a few days.
BTW, Mark Swan's video stills of the immature White-tailed Hawk are now
available online: http://losbird.org
Best birding,
David J. L'Hoste
New Orleans
At 07:06 PM 02/13/2001 -0600, you wrote:
>David, Labirders and all,
>
>I sure hope you weren't birding in Louisiana!!! Kidding aside, obviously
>you went birding out west, but where? So, is this a quiz or you going to
>just leave us hanging? I'm guessing southern California maybe.
>
>Continued great work on the LOS web site.
>
>
>At 09:36 AM 2/13/2001, you wrote:
>>Mark Swan's Bullock Oriole is now online and accessible from the LOS
>>homepage: http://losbird.org
>>
>>Sorry for the delay in posting his photos to the website, but I was off
>>birding this weekend. Let's see...Mountain Plover, Gray Flycatcher,
>>Hutton's Vireo, Red Crossbill, Cassin's Finch, Townsend's Solitaire,
>>Golden Eagle, Priairie Falcon, Costa's Hummingbird, etc. Oh yeah, and
>>Eurasian Collared-Dove.
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>David J. L'Hoste
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Subject: Re: Bush's 1st Big Hit - HELP!
From: Bill Fontenot <bbboy(AT)NATURESTATION.ORG>
Date: 14 Feb 2001 9:28am
uppercase paul -
i know you put much time and thought into your comments re: proposed
drilling in the wildlife refuge in alaska. thank you. being environmentally
sensitive is no fun task these days. here at the nature center, i'm forced
to constantly walk a fine line between environmental activism and
environmental professionalism. back when, i cut my teeth on the budding
environmental movement of the early 70s. i rallied, railed, sputtered, and
moaned. i sent my $15 in to a dozen or so organizations who all dutifully
sent back decals that i could paste on my guitar case. my depression and
neurosis re: our environmental woes grew accordingly.
one fine day - i was out of grad school by then - i awoke w/a revealation:
"you know where you stand, no doubt; but what have you DONE on behalf of
the environment?" well. i remember talking it over with lydia. together we
formulated plans to DO stuff on behalf of the environment, starting at our
home, and radiating outward from there. nearly immediately, the
angst/dread, depression, and endless autotoxic rounds of
intellectualization ceased. we were simply too tired (from building bird
feeders/houses planting wildlife plants for ourselves, friends, and family;
and joining together with like-minded individuals to learn how to do more)
to deal with all that. suddenly we began sleeping like babies!
twenty years have passed. within this 2-decade interval, i've learned much
- especially from governmental, academic, and private conservation
scientists - and have watched natural systems reap many rewards as a result
of cooperative problem-solving between resource extractors, resource
managers, manufacturers, and environmental professionals. today i view
environmental activists as barking dogs nipping at the heels of the
politicians, corporations, and other power dudes. so i'm guessing/hoping
that they at least have a role to play in the melodrama, and that they are
somehow feeling that they are accomplishing something, and that they are
somehow maintaining their physical, mental, and emotional health in the
process.
2 years ago, our part-time natualist corps was increased from 1 to 6
positions here at the nature station. these positions are filled by college
kids - thus far, all from ul's deptartment of renewable and sustainable
resources (once known as the department of ag & horticulture). i'm happy
and pumped about the new direction that the university is committing to.
these kids are gung ho about the natural environment, to be sure. they are
also carbon copies of a 20 year old me, spending huge amounts of time
investigating pointing out the hypocrisy in our social, political, and
economic systems, and in me. when i have the time, i point out the
hypocrisy in their lives as well, just to sort of remind them of the vanity
involved in their favorite pastime. so yeah we have some rather tense
discussions, but we do love one another. over time, i'm learning not to
step too hard on their feelings, to exercise patience (like my teachers did
with me), and to stay positive by showing them a continuous parade of
wonderful projects which are being accomplished via cooperative planning
and fundraising between government, industry, and private citizens and
agencies.
bill fontenot
acadiana park nature station
lafayette, la.
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Subject: Re: White-tailed Hawk IMMATURE at Welch dump
From: "R. D. Purrington" <rdp(AT)ROSEBUD.PHY.TULANE.EDU>
Date: 14 Feb 2001 1:14pm
To second Phillip, the bird we saw on the way back from the Johnsons Bayou
count was a beautifult adult White-tailed Hawk....amazing, no?
dan purrington
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Subject: Re: Bush's 1st Big Hit - HELP!
From: "R. D. Purrington" <rdp(AT)ROSEBUD.PHY.TULANE.EDU>
Date: 14 Feb 2001 1:31pm
I will not engage in a political discussion in this venue, and besides my
political views and those on the environment are widely known anyhow. I would
like to make one point, however. It is NOT necessarily true that there will
be drilling in the ANWR; pressure from environomentalists, which can be found
in the GOP as well, can stop it. I suspect the compromise that may have to
be made will be that exploration will take place in order to determine the
magnitude of the resource; this will involve 3D seismic, etc. But production
makes no sense for several reasons, including 1) energy independence is better
assured by shepherding our own resources and consuming those of the rest of
the world, 2) even Prudhoe (sp?) Bay represented a little blip on the total
world production curve, and the damage to the environment is there for all
to see, and 3) the fossil fuel era is winding down, whether you give it decades
or a couple of centuries. With that in mind, we should not rush to extract
the last drop at the expense of fragile ecosystems that will recover on an
even longer time scale.
dan purrington
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Subject: Re: NAMC May 12th
From: "R. D. Purrington" <rdp(AT)ROSEBUD.PHY.TULANE.EDU>
Date: 14 Feb 2001 1:38pm
Trouble is, of course, that by 12 May most of our migration is history.....
dan purrington
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Subject: Birds and Natural History in Latin America
From: Jennifer Coulson <Jacoulson(AT)AOL.COM>
Date: 14 Feb 2001 3:48pm
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Meetings of the Orleans Audubon Society are open to the public.=A0 Please jo=
in
us for Peter's talk.
Birds and Natural History in Latin America--Veracruz to the Galapagos
Tuesday, February20, 2001
7:30 p.m., Tulane University, Dixon Annex, Recital Hall
Dr. Peter Yaukey, University of New Orleans
Latin America harbors an amazing collection of bird species, set in an array
of landscapes that is fascinating and varied. From coastal Veracruz, Mexico,
where the convergence of coastline and mountains pinch diurnally migrating
birds into the greatest passage concentrations known on the globe, to the=20
vast rainforests of South America that harbor the greatest variety of specie=
s
on earth, Latin America is a region of superlatives. Whether the bizarre
fauna of the Galapagos Islands, the rarified air of the high Andes, or the=20
weird tepui topography with its incomparably tall Angel Falls, it is a regio=
n=20
of extremes. This slide program will visit some of the most interesting and=
=20
special places for birds and natural history in tropical America.
(Please call Jennifer Coulson if you need more information: (504) 279-8549)
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Subject: Re: Birds and Natural History in Latin America
From: Kolibri Expeditions <kolibri(AT)NETACCESSPERU.NET>
Date: 14 Feb 2001 6:37pm
<< "the rarified air of the Andes" >>
I am monitoring your list for a month. Wonderful that one can sit in Lima,
Peru and hear about birds in Lousiana. One of these days I´ll do a trip to
the States. Maybe giving talks about bird conservation in the Peruvian
Andes.
Anyway, I thought I´d share with you this wonderful trip report that Shane
Hunt shunt(AT)bu.edu sent to me. It should get you into the mood for Peter
Yaukey´s slide-show.... Gunnar Engblom
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Gunnar Engblom
Kolibri Expeditions,
Lima, Peru
Birdwatching in South America
www.netaccessperu.net/kolibri
kolibri(AT)netaccessperu.net
Up to Marcapomacocha
Shane Hunt
September 23-24, 2000
Scarcely 24 hours before the trip, I learned we would definitely be going.
It had depended on finding another paying customer, raising the total from
one to two, and on Thursday evening Gunnar Engblom, a Swedish birding guide
recently settled in Lima, called to tell me that the customer had been
found. In a trip lasting less than 36 hours, we would go from smoggy,
coast-bound Lima to the high reaches of the Peruvian sierra, a land above
the tree line marked by jagged peaks, empty valleys, scattered lakes and
bogs, and very little oxygen. We would search for some rare species of
birds, see what we could see, and then come back down from the mountains to
reenter the urban world.
Our destination was a bog called Milloc. Located at some 14,000 feet along
the dirt road leading to the mining encampment of Marcapomacocha, it has
acquired some fame in the birding world as a prime site for the diademed
sandpiper-plover, a bird described in one book as "almost mythical." While
most other sandpipers and plovers pass contented lives along ocean shores,
this species has chosen for its only habitat Andean bogs above 4,000 meters.
I wanted to see one, and I wanted to see anything else that came by.
For the prior two months, ever since I had learned that Gunnar was in Lima,
and that I was going to visit there, I had tried to latch on to a trip to
the sierra without having to pay for it all by myself. Fortunately, at this
same time Gunnar decided to experiment with one- or two-day birding trips,
moderately priced, as fillers between the major guided tours that are his
bread and butter. But his first efforts, the weekend before, had not been
auspicious. On that earlier Saturday, Gunnar, his birding assistant Goyo,
and his driver Juvenal had scheduled an outing to the Pantano de Villa, and
I was their only customer. The following day they had a full-day outing to
Puerto Viejo, a coastal lagoon 70 kilometers south of Lima, and once again I
was the only customer. Common business sense said that this could not go on.
For a trip to Marcapomacocha, priced at a modest $80 that included
transportation, food, and overnight accommodation, at least two paying
customers had to be found.
Gunnar's principal interest was not in the diademed sandpiper-plover but in
an even rarer bird, the white-bellied cinclodes, also an Andean bog dweller
but over an even more limited range. The few bogs where this species has
been found have been shrinking in size because of peat extraction by local
campesinos. For these people, peat has become an urgently needed source of
cash, since it is sold to commercial mushroom growers based in Lima. Gunnar
has rather taken up the cause of the white-bellied cinclodes, and has gotten
into rather acrimonious debate with mushroom growers over the extent to
which the peat extraction threatens the survival of this species. Thus he
was very well pleased with the appearance of the second customer, not only
because the trip could go forward, but also because the customer was a
biologist from INRENA, the government agency concerned with natural resource
management. Having been alerted by Gunnar to the threat to an endangered
species, INRENA wanted one of its own people to see what was going on in the
bogs.
The INRENA biologist turned out to be a very nice kid who had finished his
undergraduate training at the Agrarian University only two years ago. Daniel
was a bright guy who turned out to be a good birder and a good traveling
companion. On Saturday at noon he showed up at the meeting point in Lima and
the expedition took off in a solid but slightly beat up Dodge van. The group
consisted of the two customers, Daniel and me, the driver Juvenal, and the
birding guide Goyo. Gunnar was under the weather and did not go along.
We headed up the valley of the Rio Rimac via the crowded Central Highway,
through Chaclacayo and to Chosica. Then we veered off to the side valley of
the Rio Santa Eulalia. A few kilometers past Chosica, still at low
elevations, the pavement ended and the road became unpaved, one-lane, bumpy,
and dusty. The valley sides were precipitous the roadsides parched, the
vegetation brown, and all crops dependent on irrigation water. Soon the
valley bottom pinched out and the road climbed up the slopes on one side.
Goyo saw something, the van stopped, and we all piled out.
The tree tops were below us, and in the tops a flock of scarlet-fronted
parakeets was feeding and squabbling. I had had glimpses of these birds
before in the parks of San Isidro, but always hidden in tree tops and
silhouetted against a bright sky. Now we were above them, and their colors
shone, their bodies a brilliant green that glowed with just a shading of
yellow.
We proceeded upwards, the road rising to hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet
above the valley floor. It was so narrow that when a vehicle came in the
opposite direction one driver would have to stop at a point where some extra
width would permit the vehicles to scrape past each other at a snail's pace.
Juvenal was a very reliable driver, but he was also a birder, and his
attention to the road was only intermittent. I wasn't actually scared but I
was constantly alert to the danger of the road. It triggered a nagging
reminder in the back of my head that would not go away.
A few hours and several kilometers after the parakeets, we stopped again, to
watch condors wheeling in the sky on the far side of the valley. A small
bird was spotted in the bushes on the slopes below us. We stood on the edge
of the road, the tips of our shoes over the edge. It didn't seem too scary
because below was a slope, not a sheer drop. I did note, however, that if
one fell down the slope it would be hard to stop. Perhaps one could by
spread-eagling. And perhaps one couldn't.
The bird was a great inca-finch, but I never saw it well enough to claim it.
Toward the end of the day we came to a fork in the road, one branch
continuing up the valley and the other going across it. At this point the
valley below us disappeared and became a narrow slit in the rock, hundreds
of feet deep but spanned at the top by a bridge no longer than perhaps 100
feet. We crossed the bridge and continued up a side valley to the town where
we would spend the night. We were so much higher now that there was greenery
on the slopes, and more farming activity. We stopped in an area thick with
eucalyptus trees and had a bounty of several spectacular birds, among them
yellow grosbeaks, a blue-and-yellow tanager, and a black-necked flicker.
This last bird, a Peruvian endemic, was working away on a eucalyptus branch
with such determination that we were able to get the scope on him, giving
everyone had close-up view.
The sun had set and the chill of an Andean night had come upon us by the
time we reached the town, San Pedro de Casta. The van's headlights moved
along dirt-packed streets flanked by adobe walls, all shrouded in a darkness
relieved by only an occasional weak electric light in a doorway. We entered
an open space that was the town's plaza, then into more narrow streets, and
suddenly we came to a stop. One of the dark buildings by our side was our
hotel.
The hotel had no other customers, and the owner was a bit surprised to see
us arrive. We had to wait while he found sheets and put them on two beds.
The room had the two beds, and two metal chairs, and an electric light bulb
that hung from the ceiling. There was a bathroom down the hall and
everything was clean, but bare and tiny. I asked Daniel what the thought the
room cost and he guessed 10 soles - about 3 dollars. We didn't know for sure
because Goyo had arranged everything. It was part of the package.
While Daniel and I unpacked, Goyo and Juvenal went to find a restaurant, and
they soon came back to lead us through a pitch-black alley back to the
plaza. The restaurant consisted of 2 or 3 tables outside and a kitchen and
family room inside, the two areas connected by an open counter cut into the
side of the building. It was so cold by this time that they moved a table
inside, so the four of us ate in the kitchen.
Inside it was warm but the noise was deafening. On one side was the stove,
powered by a propane gas tank that gave out its flame with a continuous
roar. A television set was also turned up so as to provide its own roar. The
food preparation area consisted of a stove and a table, both darkened by
grease. The cook, who was also the owner, I think, was a señora of
indeterminate age with a large baby wrapped in a manta and slung over her
back. She offered us lomo saltado or pollo con tallarines. I don't remember
which I ordered, but I do remember that my back was to the stove, and that
was fine with me. I didn't want to have to contemplate the preparations.
Instead I watched the TV. Canal 5 was on, with a variety show featuring a
frenetic M.C., a lot of music and a lot of girls dancing in scanty costumes.
The cameraman must have been lying on the floor, so as to have an angle
where he could see the girls from the legs on up, a view that was half
absurd and half obscene. At the table next to me - there was room for only
one other table - was a señora indígena, her face wrinkled, her head covered
by a traditional straw hat in whose headband she had placed, incongruously,
some sprigs of fresh flowers. She was watching the TV show, her face
impassive, and I wondered, "What in God's name is she thinking?"
Suddenly, from over my shoulder, a plate of food appeared. It was pollo
saltado, a nice compromise, and it was excellent. And I didn't get sick
later. Goyo paid - it was part of the package - and if I heard correctly the
bill was 22 soles - about 6 dollars - for the four of us.
San Pedro de Casta is at above the same elevation as Cuzco, perhaps 11,000
feet, but the night wasn't too cold inside the hotel room and I slept well.
Goyo and Juvenal slept in the van; Juvenal explained that they did so to
forestall vandalism by local kids, but I suspect that the cost of a hotel
room also had something to do with it. Next morning there was a knock on the
door at 5:30AM. Daniel and I staggered out and found a cup of piping hot
mate de coca waiting for us on a camp stove that had been set up beside the
van.
I stood on the side of the plaza sipping the brew and watching the buildings
take shape in the strengthening light of early dawn. The plaza was of an
amorphous oval shape and ran downhill. Flat ground didn't exist in this
area. In shape and slope it seemed a small, humble version of the Piazza del
Campo in Siena. It was unpaved, just dirt and dust, but a couple of bright
flower beds had been set up and fenced in on the sides of the plaza. As a
project for urban beautification, it was a start. On the upper side of the
plaza there was a church that was charming even in its shabbiness, and also
some kind of government building. On the lower side was our restaurant and
various other one- or two-story adobe buildings. And over everything were
the looming peaks, their outlines etched against a sky that was getting blue
with the coming day. Somewhere on one of those peaks were the ruins of
Marcahuasi, the Inca citadel that is closest to Lima and the objective of
weekend outings by intrepid hikers from the city.
We headed out of San Pedro de Casta well before 6AM, returned down the side
valley, recrossed the 100-foot bridge over the 1000-foot gorge, and resumed
our climb up the valley of the Santa Eulalia.
The valley was flatter now, and the road stayed in the valley bottom. The
flanking hills were still high above the valley floor, but we had passed the
steepest part of the flanks of the Andes, and could expect to see the valley
widen as we approached its upper reaches. We had some wonderful surprises as
we bumped along close to the roaring river. First there was a pair of
white-capped dippers, then a torrent duck, then another pair of dippers.
After perhaps an hour's time we turned on to a side road and left the Santa
Eulalia valley for good. We would head up and over a pass and into the
watershed of the upper Rimac valley, and to Milloc.
After an hour's progress on this side road, at about 9AM, Goyo called a halt
and announced that we had arrived at the polylepis forest.
I had read of these forests in various birding guides and was curious to see
what they looked like. I knew that they were in the high Andes, that they
were shrinking at an alarming rate as campesinos searched for firewood, and
that they were home to a number of unique species not found anywhere else.
We were going to look for one of the rarest of these species, the
white-cheeked cotinga. Another Peruvian endemic, it is known from only a few
locales, and this was one of them.
The valley was fairly shallow and open at this point, the pastures below the
road sloping down to a roaring stream. Above to our right, the slope was
steep, with a rivulet emerging from a ravine above us and rushing down a
steep slope to join the larger stream. Goyo had been pushing us on because
he wanted to arrive early at this place. He explained that early in the day
the cotinga came down from the ravine above us to feed and drink at the
river, but that after mid-morning it went back into the higher ravine and
was hard to find. He feared that we might already be too late.
Goyo, Daniel, and I started up the slope toward the ravine while Juvenal
stayed with the van to do some maintenance work. The climb was steep and
after every few paces I had to stop and gasp for oxygen in the rarefied air.
We were at about 12,000 feet. Between the massive boulders, the slope was
covered with bushes that were 10 feet high in some places, maybe 5 feet in
others. Goyo showed me that they were in fact trees, with gnarled trunks
under their bushy exteriors. These were the polylepis trees.
The birding was spectacular. A giant hummingbird perched on a branch and
rested long enough for good views through the scope. A Peruvian sierra-finch
perched on a rock, showing its brilliant ochre breast, and a white-browed
chat-tyrant landed briefly on another rock. A puna hawk wheeled through the
sky, coming close to investigate and giving us stunning views. But no
white-cheeked cotinga. I didn't much care. I had seen so much that I was
well satisfied, and I said so to Goyo so that he wouldn't feel bad. Also, I
was tired. The sun was hot, the oxygen was insufficient, and a retreat to
the road and the van and a glass of water seemed an acceptable conclusion.
But Goyo wouldn't give up. He moved up the slope and no more than 10 minutes
had passed before he signaled to us that he had spotted a cotinga.
Daniel and I scrambled up to join him. Meanwhile, fortunately, the cotinga
remained perched on a distant polylepis tree, on an inner branch where his
head was obscured by some of the leaves of outer branches. We got the scope
on him and all of us had good views. A robin-sized bird, he was facing us
showing a spectacular breast of burnished cinnamon, covered by thick
intermittent black streaks set in geometric order on the cinnamon
background. Each component of a streak was shaped like a dangling rubber
band, or perhaps an elongated race track oval. As soon as each of us got
views, off it flew. I had seen the white-cheeked cotinga, even though I
hadn't actually seen the white cheek.
Back in the van, we resumed our progress along the road, always going
upwards, parallel to the roaring stream. We were in a high grassland now,
the puna. The trees had been left behind, even the stunted polylepis trees.
The land was utterly empty. I lost track of time. I don't know how long it
was before we came to the source of our roaring stream, in a lake that
filled a broad bowl at the head of the valley. On the boggy ground by the
lake's shore we saw a flock of Andean geese grazing. The road curved around
the far side of the lake, past a very solid building with a porch. I was
later told that it had been headquarters for the sheep ranch that the old
Cerro de Pasco Corporation had run in these parts. Nobody was about.
We left the lake and kept climbing, to another lake, and a third, and a
fourth. The second lake was a metallic greenish color, contaminated by
mining operations, but the higher lakes were clear and fresh. We saw black
siskins, and in the fourth lake nesting giant coots, crested ducks, and a
solitary Andean gull that was hanging around the coots' nest in hopes of
getting lucky.
As we ascended to higher and higher elevations the temperature dropped,
grass became sparser and the ground more littered with rocks of all sizes.
Patches of snow clung to the shady sides of the clumps of ichu grass. The
drop in temperature was not entirely related to elevation. Clouds had blown
in, the sun was gone, and a storm seemed to threaten at any minute. We
crossed the pass at perhaps 14,000 feet and entered a wide, treeless valley,
devoid of any sign of habitation. The valley was flanked by jagged hills,
and behind the near peaks one could see the tops of nevados, the higher
snow-capped peaks reaching above 20,000 feet. We made our way down into this
wide valley, where one could see for miles in any direction. Suddenly we
came, incongruously, to an intersection. We had reached the road that ran up
the valley from Casapalca to Marcapomacocha. At the intersection Juvenal
pulled the van off the road. This, Goyo explained, is Milloc.
A bog? Well, sort of. The valley floor looked like a broad rich pasture, but
it turned out to be spongy when one walked on it. And it had certainly been
mined for peat. All about were the signs of ruin, broad areas where the
grass and soil had been stripped away, leaving shallow rocky depressions. In
some places the peat had been stacked in small towers to dry out before
being trucked off to Lima. Daniel got busy estimating the extent of peat
mining and taking photos to supplement his report to INRENA. Goyo and
Juvenal set off in different directions, in search of the white-bellied
cinclodes. I occupied myself with birds that were more common but still of
great interest: an Andean flicker with his raucous call, various
plain-capped ground-tyrants, a pair of Andean geese.
Goyo returned. No luck. It was getting late in the day. Once again, Daniel
and I were satisfied and ready to call it quits, but Goyo wasn't done. We
got into the van and found a side road that went over a low ridge and down
into a lower valley bottom. Again we spread out and walked across a treeless
plain. But no luck again. We did see a pair of gray-breasted seedsnipes,
which I thought pretty exciting, but no cinclodes. And no diademed
sandpiper-plover. We returned to the main road in the valley and headed for
Casapalca, and for Lima.
But Goyo was not finished. A few kilometers down the valley, over another
low ridge and to a lower valley floor, Juvenal pulled the van well off the
road and once again we set off across a spongy green carpet, jumping from
tuft to tuft to keep our feet dry. The clouds were very dark now, and
thunder claps were loud and close. I noted that we were in the center of a
flat valley with no high points that might attract a lightning strike. I was
however consoled to see that this valley was relatively small, the peaks
close and very high above us.
Goyo saw it first. Perhaps 100 yards ahead of us, moving past the tufts of
grass, then motionless. We got the scope on it. It was a diademed
sandpiper-plover, a male, with its dark head giving emphasis to the white
line above its eye that extended completely around its head. That was the
diadem. It behaved like a killdeer, its abundant relative, standing
perfectly still for extended periods and then moving very fast to another
point of standing still.
I remember that as we got the scope on the bird, a snowsquall hit us. But it
didn't matter. Daniel showed the instincts of the true birder with his
reaction as he looked into the scope: "Wow! Fantástico!"
But we weren't done. We moved forward. The snow stopped but the thunder kept
rolling over our heads. Goyo and Daniel got another bird, sitting on a rock
just ahead of us. A hummingbird? Indeed it was, although there wasn't a
flower within miles. It was an olivaceous thornbill, and so tame that Goyo
got to within 6 feet with his camera snapping away before the bird flew.
Goyo still wasn't done. We continued in the same direction. I looked back at
the van and it seemed awfully small. Goyo saw movement along a fence line
some 200 yards in front if us. Again we got the scope on it. A white-bellied
cinclodes, unmistakable because of its size and the whiteness of its breast
and belly. We all got good looks at this rarest of birds. Gunnar and Goyo
estimate that perhaps as few as 20 individuals remain, although this is
disputed by certain mushroom growers who are also good naturalists. Goyo
asked if we wanted to move in for a closer look but Daniel and I
respectfully declined. We were content. All the birds targeted for the trip
had been spotted. As we made our way across the bog back to the van,
hailstones started to fall on us.
Before we got down the dirt road to rejoin the Central Highway at Casapalca,
it was dark. We had started up the side road from the Santa Eulalia Valley
at about 8AM and reached Casapalca at about 5PM. During that entire time, we
hadn't seen any other vehicle.
By what seemed to me a miracle of endurance, Juvenal negotiated the twisting
Central Highway back to Lima without getting sleepy. The rest of us dozed.
We were back in Lima by about 9PM, 33 hours after we had started off.
In my view, the trip would have been spectacular even if we hadn't seen a
single bird. In so short a time, we had escaped the confinements of city
living, with its noise and smog and traffic lights and locks on doors and
limited vistas, and we had entered a world of silence and space, with vistas
uncluttered by houses or people or trees, where you can see across the lake
and down the valley to the farthest mountain, taking in every bit of an
entire valley in one view. It is a world where the solitude is both
beautiful and terrifying. It is a land that is wonderful to visit, but tough
to live in.
For a birder, however, the trip was even more spectacular. I finish simply
with a bird list, where "L" designates a life bird. (Others in the group had
other sightings that I missed.)
Saturday September 23
Santa Eulalia Valley
Scarlet-fronted parakeet
Long-tailed mockingbird
Andean condor
Rufous-collared sparrow
American kestrel
Chiguanco thrush
Yellow grosbeak (L)
Black-necked flicker (L)
Blue and yellow tanager (L)
Scrub blackbird
Rusty-bellied brush finch (L)
Great thrush
Croaking ground dove
Eared dove
Mourning sierra-finch (L)
Sunday September 24
Santa Eulalia Valley
Sparkling violetear
Andean Tinamou
Rusty-bellied brush finch
White-capped dipper (L)
Torrent duck
(Fox)
Polylepis forest
Giant hummingbird
Peruvian sierra-finch
Puna hawk
White-browed chat-tyrant
White-cheeked cotinga (L)
D'Orbigny's chat-tyrant (L)
Mourning sierra-finch
High Lakes and Vicinity
Andean goose
Bar-winged cinclodes
White-winged diuca-finch (L)
Black siskin (L)
Giant coot (L)
Andean gull
Crested duck
Puna snipe (L)
Andean lapwing
Milloc and Vicinity
Plain-capped ground tyrant (L)
Andean flicker
Andean goose
Gray-breasted seedsnipe (L)
Diademed sandpiper-plover (L)
Olivaceous thornbill (L)
White-bellied cinclodes (L)
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BIRDxxxx
US:South
ARBIRD-L
LABIRD-L