September 11-27, 2024 with Dan Lane
The name "Bolivia" conjures up some very disparate images in people's heads: llamas, condors, the High Andes, Lake Titicaca, and perhaps the place where Che Guevara, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their ends... These are only a small portion of what this large, varied, and remarkably underappreciated country has to offer! From a biogeographic point of view, Bolivia is placed at the junction of some of the richest and most varied of South America's habitats: Amazonian rainforest, Pantanal, desert-like chaco, humid cloud forest, Altiplano, and the unique arid interior valleys. Given the variety of habitats, Bolivia is a rich country (at least in biodiversity), with about 1400 bird species (and this without a coastline! Don’t remind Bolivians of that loss, however, as it still stings). Our tour took us across three quarters of the country, allowing us to sample most of these habitats, passing through its three largest cities: Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Cochabamba, and La Paz. As we saw, the landscape, the people, and (of course) the birds change drastically, as well.
Around Santa Cruz, the cattle-ranching center of the country, the land is rather flat, with several very distinct habitats: the patches of forest here are part of a local biome called "Chiquitano," a semi-deciduous woodland which represents the transition between the southernmost Amazonian humid forest and the dry, arid Chaco. Open areas, which have been widely used for cattle grazing or cultivation, have conspicuous termite mounds, and represent the western edge of the Brazilian "cerrado." Wet areas here show affinities with the Pantanal, only about 500 km to the east. In this area, we spent time in the open habitat around Viru-Viru airport (named for a local tree), perhaps one of the world’s best birding airports! Rheas stalked the grasslands, Burrowing Owls watched us curiously from sentinel perches, Guira Cuckoos straggled from one bush island to the next, and several raptors circled overhead. Some specialties we encountered here and nowhere else included Spectacled Tyrant, Grassland Yellow-finch, Grassland Sparrow, and Red-winged Tinamou. A visit to the edge of the Pirai River gave us views of Bare-faced and Puna Ibis, a hunting Aplomado Falcon, and a small group of migrating Hudsonian Godwit! We also visited Laguna Guapilo--though mostly dry from the drought, it still hosted a hoard of Ringed and Brazilian teal, as well as other waterbirds--and the Santa Cruz Botanical Gardens, where Chiquitano woods held Scaly-headed Parrot, Bolivian Slaty-Antshrike, Red-crested and Red-capped cardinals, among others. South of the city, a visit to the Lomas de Arena reserve gave us an impressive list of well over 80 species with highlights including White-eared Puffbird, Blue-tufted Starthroat, and the prehistoric Red-legged Seriema.
Santa Cruz has so much to offer the visiting birder, but we had to pull ourselves away and head into the foothills to the west. We got to our next lodge at Refugio Los Volcanes, nestled in a picturesque valley below towering red sandstone blocks. Here, the sounds of thousands of Mitred Parakeets, Military Macaws, and Turquoise-fronted Parrots echoed from the cliffs while the occasional Andean Condor lazily passed overhead. Despite rain, we managed a hike, and enjoyed skulking Ochre-cheeked Spinetails, Yungas Manakins, Slaty Gnateaters, and an unexpected Sunbittern as fruits of our walk. After returning to the highway, our amazing driver, Carlos, knew a spot where we could spot the recently-split Yungas Guan and also got us on a pair of large and impressive Cream-backed Woodpeckers. That afternoon, we arrived at the town of Comarapa, which rests in the center of the unique Bolivian "Valle" region: a series of arid intermontane valleys at the border of Santa Cruz and Cochabamba departments. From here we explored the “Siberia Ridge” which straddles the humid and dry sides of the ridge above, allowing us our first taste of cloudforest birding as well as some specialties of the drier habitats such as Spot-breasted Thornbird, Olive-crowned Crescentchest, and Giant Antshrike. The following day, we headed on to the Frente Roja reserve, named for the spectacular endemic Red-fronted Macaw, where we also enjoyed Bolivian Blackbird, Bolivian Earthcreeper, Cliff Parakeet (recently separated from Monk Parakeet), and of course the Red-fronted Macaw, among others.
Our next long drive saw us headed on to the city of Cochabamba. Cochabamba is the third-largest city in the country and sits in another dry intermontane valley. However, just to its north is a highway that crosses over to the humid Amazonian slope of the mountains, a region called the Chapare, and which gave us several opportunities to get to know the Yungas birds better. Such little jewels as Great Sapphirewing, Tyrian Metaltail, and Amethyst-throated Sunangel mingled with the likes of Line-fronted Canastero, Black-throated Thistletail, Buff-banded Tyrannulet, and a surprisingly extroverted Bolivian Antpitta. After lunch, we stopped at another spot and landed White-collared Jay and a very obliging Hooded Mountain-Toucan! Our birding in the lower elevations fared well too, allowing us to see Black-streaked Puffbird, Crested Quetzal, Green-throated Tanager, and Blue-banded Toucanet, among other denizens of the mid-elevation Yungas. Also near Cochabamba is the impressive road up Cerro Tunari, our first introduction to truly high elevation! From the dry slopes we spied Mountain Parakeet, Large-tailed Dove, Fulvous-headed Brushfinch, Red-tailed Comet, Wedge-tailed Hillstar, the less expected White-sided Hillstar, and Cochabamba Mountain-Finch. We continued up the slope to higher elevations, reaching the puna, replete with Bright-rumped Yellow-Finches, Gray-breasted Seedsnipe, Ornate Tinamou, several species of ground-tyrant, and Bar-winged Cinclodes... not to mention alpacas and llamas by the bushel ("Hello!").
Eventually, our time ran out in Cochabamba, and after a morning spent around Laguna Alalay (which gave us some nice ducks, Andean Avocet, and a few other goodies), we had to bid Carlos goodbye and thanks for all his hard work. He would then drive back to Santa Cruz while we flew on to La Paz. The next morning--now riding with our new driver, Victor--found us visiting "La Cumbre" ("the ridgecrest"), the highest point on the Coroico road and our tour, where a confiding pair of Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe foraged at the edge of a peat bog with another group of Gray-breasted Seedsnipe nearby for convenient comparison (so much smaller!). We descended into a dramatic valley and looked for other "above-treeline" birds such as sierra-finches, canasteros, and such, and managed to clench a Black-hooded Sunbeam from the jaws of defeat (whew!). By afternoon, we were on the “Road of Death” birding on some savagely beautiful landscapes, with a real reward being a Scimitar-winged Piha that performed well--what a thrill! We spent the night in Coroico, and the following morning returned upslope, nabbing several good yungas birds, with the Orange-browed Hemispingus being our final new bird before heading to the barn at La Paz. The last day of the tour, we headed west across the altiplano towards the famous Lago Titicaca, spotting Darwin’s Nothura, Puna and Correndera pipits on the way. At the lakeshore, we saw the well-named Titicaca Flightless Grebe, but perhaps the highlight was the huge mass of flamingos of three species—Chilean, James’, and Andean—the last being Jeff’s 6000th species! What a great way to wrap up the tour!
Mammals encountered:
Brazilian Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis)
White-eared Titi Monkey (Plecturocebus donacophilus): H only
Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus)
Cape Hare (Lepus capensis)
Bolivian Squirrel (Sciurus ignitus)
Montane Guinea Pig (Cavia tschudii)
Greater Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris)
Brown Agouti (Dasyprocta variegata)
Common Mountain Viscacha (Lagidium viscacia)
Culpeo (Lycalopex culpaeus)
South American Coati (Nasua nasua)
Lesser Grison (Galactis cuja)
I thank you muchly for joining our tour of this great, and underappreciated, country. I hope you enjoyed your visit as much as I did, and look forward to having you along again somewhere else with binoculars in hand and adventure in the heart!
You can see my complete trip report on eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/tripreport/278874
You can download a combined PDF of this page and the eBird report at this link: https://fieldguides.com/triplists/bol24TRIPLIST.pdf
Dan (the Barbet)