With some 1300 species, landlocked Bolivia supports more than forty percent of South America’s bird diversity. From a sky full of Andean Condors to the beautiful endemic Red-fronted Macaw in a cactus-clad rain-shadow desert; from the flightless Titicaca Grebe on its namesake lake to dazzling hummers and a host of endemics in the high Polylepis forest and puna; and from impressive antpittas and mixed-species tanager flocks in humid montane forest to lowland Chaco savannas with fantastic rheas and seriemas, Bolivia offers an exciting chance truly to immerse oneself in the marvelous bird life of the Andes on this Field Guides birding tour. And, sometimes to the surprise of birders—so few have been to Bolivia—our accommodations and transportation are good.
Bolivia is home to fewer than twenty endemic species of birds, but this figure is misleading because we regularly see another 100-plus species confined to a variety of rather limited ecosystems that overlap political boundaries, species that may not be seen readily by birders elsewhere. Indeed, our groups have been privileged to see the Diademed Tapaculo well, a distinctly marked species discovered by Bret Whitney while scouting for a previous tour. A tyrannulet we usually see in the Santa Cruz area has only recently been formally described (after various researchers waded through a nomenclatural quagmire)! No doubt, new discoveries still await us in Bolivia.
With aesthetic highlights varying from seeable tinamous and tapaculos to shy but often responsive Slaty Gnateaters and Giant Antshrikes, the incredible Hooded Mountain-Toucan, the must-see-to-believe Black-hooded Sunbeam, the superb Olive-crowned Crescentchest, dazzling and exhilarating flocks of Hooded and Scarlet-bellied mountain-tanagers to subtly beautiful Whistling Herons and Scissor-tailed Nightjars, our efforts will be rewarded. We begin our birding in the lowlands at Santa Cruz and work our way slowly westward and northward before ascending the altiplano to end in La Paz. En route we will visit both the Serranía de Siberia, cloaked in a lush cloudforest at elevations of 8000 to 9000 feet at the southern limit for numerous forms of Andean birds, including the endemic Rufous-faced Antpitta, and the arid valleys of the Rio Mizque, with its surrounding cliffs furnishing nesting sites to some of the remaining 3000 Red-fronted Macaws, surely among the most beautiful of the macaws. In the nearby rain-shadow desert, the endemic Bolivian Earthcreeper scoots over rocks and cacti, while White-tipped Plantcutters clip leaves with their pruning-shear bills. Between this lovely area and Cochabamba await such specialties as Maquis Canastero and the strange Bolivian Blackbird. We end our main tour in the moist Yungas forests of the north, with their varied temperate and subtropical avian beauties.
The Field Guides Bolivia’s Avian Riches tour brings scenic and avian variety and surprises every day. Join us for this wonderful birdwatching adventure!
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