Sueños 2015...

Even though it was a rest day, which means I get to sleep in a little bit more, dad woke me up at ten o’clock in the morning and we left to Jardín after breakfast. Jardín is about four hours away from dad´s house and so, as usual, dad and I played games in the car. After beating dad a few times, because I scored a lot of points by seeing a cat on a roof and a Motmot, which are very rare and are worth the most, we got to the most beautiful stretch of the road, where “Matarratón” trees covered with pink flowers hang over the road forming a tunnel, like cherry blossoms in Washington D.C.

Finally, we arrived in the town square of Jardín, where we sat waiting to find our birding guide, which we thought to be impossible because we had never seen him before. Once I found him, because he totally looked like a birder with his vest and bag and binoculars, we got to know him better and make a plan for the next few days. He also told us how to get to the lodge where we were to be staying.

At the lodge we met Doug, an ex middle school science teacher, who is an expert at identifying birds and trees, and now owns a lodge and reserve twenty minutes out of Jardín. So, after a long day of driving and a good dinner we went to bed early to get up at four thirty the next morning.

At five o’clock in the morning we were already in Jardín with our guide José Fernando Castaño, the best local guide. José has led many birding outings for many people, including the man who identified the most bird species in the world. His final thesis for his biology degree was on bird songs, which made spotting birds really easy because he could identify them by song and then sight. He is also a co-founder of Proaves and the yellow-eared-parrot reserve, which was the first place we went to that morning.

The yellow-eared parrot is a very special bird to find and observe, because there used to only be a population of about twenty in Ecuador many years ago, and then when they suddenly disappeared, they were declared extinct by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Later, in 1998, a small group of them was rediscovered by a local ornithologist in the Cordillera Occidental in Colombia, so Proaves and the Reserve were founded and now there are about 1000 yellow-eared parrots in the world, and they all live in these mountain tops of Colombia. Now, birdwatchers from all over the world gather here to try to spot this rare endemic bird.

We drove an hour up through the cloud forest to an open area where wax palms grow, which are their favorite trees for nesting and eating. There, we met a group of hardcore Swedish birdwatchers, who were all bundled up with thick coats and umbrellas. Stupidly, I only had on a t-shirt and thin raincoat, so at about three thousand meters above sea level I was freezing. After about ten minutes José heard and pointed out a few pairs of parrots flying at a distance and disappearing behind another hill. About five minutes later, we got to see several of them close by and even another pair up close mating on a dead palm.

After the cold became too unbearable and the parrots flew away, we decided to go to a close-by farm where my dad and I switched jackets because his jacket was thicker, and I had two warm bowls of aguapanela. While I was starting to warm up, we watched some hummingbirds drink from the hummingbird feeders and land on the posts from which they hung. So, I thought that if I placed my hand on top of the post one might land on my hand. So when our guide saw me doing that, he came out with a spoon of sugar water and handed it to me and took away all the other feeders, so the hummingbirds would come drink from the spoon in my hand. I now know that there were four different species of hummingbirds that came, including the sword-billed hummingbird, which has a beak that is longer than its whole body.

After we took a few pictures, we slowly drove and walked down the hill stopping to see the birds. At one point, I was sitting on the hood of the car with my binoculars while dad drove slowly. It felt like a flying carpet with a full view to spot birds. Suddenly, I told my dad to stop because I saw a raptor, so we stopped and watched it tuck its wings and drop down and land on a tree where we could identify it as a white tail hawk. After watching it and taking pictures through telescope we headed back to Doug’s for a well-deserved rest, after 13 straight hours of bird watching.

The next day we got up early to be at the “lek” of the cocks of the rock at 6:00 am. A “lek” is a place where male birds of certain species gather to compete for the attention of the females to mate. After only seeing a few parrots at a far distance after an hour of driving, we were expecting to maybe see a few cocks of the rock from a distance after at least an hour of hiking, far from Jardín, especially because dad had never seen one in the wild.

So, when we parked in the middle of Jardín and walked five blocks down towards the river and could already hear the really loud noises of the screaming males, we were really surprised. After entering a small farm on a steep cliff face next to the river, we stepped on to a small observation deck, where we watched about 25 screaming males competing for two or three females. A cock of the rock is an almost chicken-sized bird with a neon-orange body and head, with black wings and a silver lower back and a black tail. Its head has a giant crest of feathers, going from above the eye to the tip of the beak, making it look like it is bouncing a slice of an orange on its nose.

It was even more amazing that they were not bothered by us and danced four or five feet away for a whole hour and a half. At 7:30 am it sounded as if someone had pressed a mute button or flicked off a switch and all the crazy dances and screams abruptly ended and they all flew away to feed downriver.
After our incredible experience at the lek, we decided to try our luck birding at the central plaza of Jardín, which I think nobody had ever done before, because everyone was looking at us like we were crazy with binoculars and telescope. We even were able to add a couple new species to our list, especially some birds that have adapted to living on the tower of the church, like the streaked flycatcher and the black phoebe.

Then we drove to the coffee plantations to see a different ecosystem at a different altitude and where it was warmer than the cloud forest. Our best luck was in a guama and orange patch, where we saw almost thirty new species. Out of those thirty, most were migrants, because if they were to live any higher in altitude, it would be just as cold as if they had not even migrated from the wintery North and lower it would be too hot and there would not be enough food.

Finally, we went back to Doug´s lodge and as soon as we pulled up José identified the call of a small endemic woodpecker, called the grayish piculet. At first, when we finally spotted it, I was not impressed by a little gray bird hopping up a tree, but dad and José went crazy and ran up to tell Doug about it. When he heard we had spotted it on his property he went insane and eagerly said he was going to post it on Facebook and that these news were his best 60th birthday present. That confirmed how lucky I
was to see all these endemic species.

Our second day of birding ended with another difficult siting, in which José had to use his IPod and speakers to play the song of the whiskered wren for it to answer back, because otherwise it is perfectly camouflaged, so it is almost impossible to see. Closing my list that day and two more hummingbird species, I was very excited to count my total for Jardín.

After my two trips to the Amazon in August, my vacation in El Ocaso, four days in Venecia and all the time I have spent at dad´s house, I had been able to identify and record a total of 108 species of birds, and thanks to our awesome guide and a lot of good luck, in these two days we identified and recorded 110 new species for me, not including the other birds I had seen before. Of course this didn´t come to easily, because we had to get up before dawn and focus on birdwatching 13 hours a day, two days in a row.
]dwatching in Jardín

Even though it was a rest day, which means I get to sleep in a little bit more, dad woke me up at ten o’clock in the morning and we left to Jardín after breakfast. Jardín is about four hours away from dad´s house and so, as usual, dad and I played games in the car. After beating dad a few times, because I scored a lot of points by seeing a cat on a roof and a Motmot, which are very rare and are worth the most, we got to the most beautiful stretch of the road, where “Matarratón” trees covered with pink flowers hang over the road forming a tunnel, like cherry blossoms in Washington D.C.

Finally, we arrived in the town square of Jardín, where we sat waiting to find our birding guide, which we thought to be impossible because we had never seen him before. Once I found him, because he totally looked like a birder with his vest and bag and binoculars, we got to know him better and make a plan for the next few days. He also told us how to get to the lodge where we were to be staying.

At the lodge we met Doug, an ex middle school science teacher, who is an expert at identifying birds and trees, and now owns a lodge and reserve twenty minutes out of Jardín. So, after a long day of driving and a good dinner we went to bed early to get up at four thirty the next morning.

At five o’clock in the morning we were already in Jardín with our guide José Fernando Castaño, the best local guide. José has led many birding outings for many people, including the man who identified the most bird species in the world. His final thesis for his biology degree was on bird songs, which made spotting birds really easy because he could identify them by song and then sight. He is also a co-founder of Proaves and the yellow-eared-parrot reserve, which was the first place we went to that morning.

The yellow-eared parrot is a very special bird to find and observe, because there used to only be a population of about twenty in Ecuador many years ago, and then when they suddenly disappeared, they were declared extinct by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Later, in 1998, a small group of them was rediscovered by a local ornithologist in the Cordillera Occidental in Colombia, so Proaves and the Reserve were founded and now there are about 1000 yellow-eared parrots in the world, and they all live in these mountain tops of Colombia. Now, birdwatchers from all over the world gather here to try to spot this rare endemic bird.

We drove an hour up through the cloud forest to an open area where wax palms grow, which are their favorite trees for nesting and eating. There, we met a group of hardcore Swedish birdwatchers, who were all bundled up with thick coats and umbrellas. Stupidly, I only had on a t-shirt and thin raincoat, so at about three thousand meters above sea level I was freezing. After about ten minutes José heard and pointed out a few pairs of parrots flying at a distance and disappearing behind another hill. About five minutes later, we got to see several of them close by and even another pair up close mating on a dead palm.

After the cold became too unbearable and the parrots flew away, we decided to go to a close-by farm where my dad and I switched jackets because his jacket was thicker, and I had two warm bowls of aguapanela. While I was starting to warm up, we watched some hummingbirds drink from the hummingbird feeders and land on the posts from which they hung. So, I thought that if I placed my hand on top of the post one might land on my hand. So when our guide saw me doing that, he came out with a spoon of sugar water and handed it to me and took away all the other feeders, so the hummingbirds would come drink from the spoon in my hand. I now know that there were four different species of hummingbirds that came, including the sword-billed hummingbird, which has a beak that is longer than its whole body.

After we took a few pictures, we slowly drove and walked down the hill stopping to see the birds. At one point, I was sitting on the hood of the car with my binoculars while dad drove slowly. It felt like a flying carpet with a full view to spot birds. Suddenly, I told my dad to stop because I saw a raptor, so we stopped and watched it tuck its wings and drop down and land on a tree where we could identify it as a white tail hawk. After watching it and taking pictures through telescope we headed back to Doug’s for a well-deserved rest, after 13 straight hours of bird watching.

The next day we got up early to be at the “lek” of the cocks of the rock at 6:00 am. A “lek” is a place where male birds of certain species gather to compete for the attention of the females to mate. After only seeing a few parrots at a far distance after an hour of driving, we were expecting to maybe see a few cocks of the rock from a distance after at least an hour of hiking, far from Jardín, especially because dad had never seen one in the wild.

So, when we parked in the middle of Jardín and walked five blocks down towards the river and could already hear the really loud noises of the screaming males, we were really surprised. After entering a small farm on a steep cliff face next to the river, we stepped on to a small observation deck, where we watched about 25 screaming males competing for two or three females. A cock of the rock is an almost chicken-sized bird with a neon-orange body and head, with black wings and a silver lower back and a black tail. Its head has a giant crest of feathers, going from above the eye to the tip of the beak, making it look like it is bouncing a slice of an orange on its nose.

It was even more amazing that they were not bothered by us and danced four or five feet away for a whole hour and a half. At 7:30 am it sounded as if someone had pressed a mute button or flicked off a switch and all the crazy dances and screams abruptly ended and they all flew away to feed downriver.
After our incredible experience at the lek, we decided to try our luck birding at the central plaza of Jardín, which I think nobody had ever done before, because everyone was looking at us like we were crazy with binoculars and telescope. We even were able to add a couple new species to our list, especially some birds that have adapted to living on the tower of the church, like the streaked flycatcher and the black phoebe.

Then we drove to the coffee plantations to see a different ecosystem at a different altitude and where it was warmer than the cloud forest. Our best luck was in a guama and orange patch, where we saw almost thirty new species. Out of those thirty, most were migrants, because if they were to live any higher in altitude, it would be just as cold as if they had not even migrated from the wintery North and lower it would be too hot and there would not be enough food.

Finally, we went back to Doug´s lodge and as soon as we pulled up José identified the call of a small endemic woodpecker, called the grayish piculet. At first, when we finally spotted it, I was not impressed by a little gray bird hopping up a tree, but dad and José went crazy and ran up to tell Doug about it. When he heard we had spotted it on his property he went insane and eagerly said he was going to post it on Facebook and that these news were his best 60th birthday present. That confirmed how lucky I
was to see all these endemic species.

Our second day of birding ended with another difficult siting, in which José had to use his IPod and speakers to play the song of the whiskered wren for it to answer back, because otherwise it is perfectly camouflaged, so it is almost impossible to see. Closing my list that day and two more hummingbird species, I was very excited to count my total for Jardín.

In the very beginning of my homeschooling, dad asked me what bio-diversity and bio-frequency are, and as an example, why Colombia has the most bird species in the world. And of course, when we met José, I asked him why and he explained to me how geology determines the plant-life and the plant-life determines the wildlife. So, with three separate mountain ranges that came up at different times separated by two long valleys in between (Cauca and Magdalena rivers), the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (a single mountain far from the other mountain ranges), Los Llanos (Orinoco flat lands), Pacific Rainforest, Caribbean dry-forest and Guajira desert, the Amazon basin, and the islands of San Andres and Providencia - with twelve different ecosystems in a comparatively small country, there can easily be the most bird species in the world.

After researching the numbers of bird species in different parts of the world and the land masses these are the percentages that I found.

Even though Colombia has only 12.4% of the landmass of the US, with 1903 species of birds, Colombia has an equivalent of 214.3% of the number of bird species recorded in the US.

If I were to do the same comparisons with all of Europe they would be… Colombia has an equivalent to 11.4% of the landmass of Europe, but has an equivalent of 379% of the number of bird species recorded in all of Europe.

Last, if I were to do the same comparison with the whole world the numbers would be… Colombia, with 0.7% of the world´s landmass has 19.1% of the world´s total number of bird species.