October 31-November 10, 2024 with Jesse Fagan & local guide
Colombia is one of the top birding destinations in the world. You really can’t go wrong with a single trip in this bird-rich country, but this southern Cauca Valley tour is a good place to start. Lots of birds, lots of feeder action, and multiple night stays at destinations make it a comfortable tour, and more bang for your buck, so to speak. This year we recorded over 400+ species in 10 days (that’s 40 new birds a day on average!), and enjoyed highlights like Dwarf Cuckoo, Buffy Helmetcrest, Moustached Antpitta, Multicolored Tanager, Munchique Wood-Wren, Gold-ringed Tanager, and Moustached Puffbird. You can probably tell by those species that there is some time spent in the Choco endemic region. That’s right (at Montezuma in the Western Cordillera), but we don’t confine ourselves to just this area, we cross the Cauca Valley a few times, ending up in the Central Cordillera for several days, too. Visting the foothills in two mountain ranges near the equator in the New World tropics is a recipe for some excellent birding.
We started the tour in Santiago de Cali (or just Cali), home of salsa music and dancing, at our comfortable hotel located at the base of the Western Cordillera foothills. Cali is quite a bustling place. Our first morning we departed early and drove up to the famous KM 18 (“kilometro diez y ocho”) to visit two fincas (like small plantations) where our hosts have set up several different types of bird feeding stations. The first stop was at Finca La Florida where we got our first views of the gaudy Multicolored Tanager. This is an apt name since you don’t know which color is dominant, and there is a bunch of them. There were other birds visiting the feeders (hummingbird and fruit) including Colombian Chachalacas, Red-headed Barbert, Andean Motmot, and Crimson-rumped Toucanet. Next up we drove over to Finca Alejandria, where the hummingbird spectacle all gave us a bit of ADHD. It was hard to just focus on one bird at time. There were hundreds of hummingbirds of different sizes including the tiny, White-booted Racket-tail and Purple-throated Woodstar to the larger Bronzy Inca and Brown Violetear. We lunched nearby, sampling our first Colombian dishes like bandeja paisa, patacones, and sancocho, though some of us opted for the “safe” grilled chicken breast (pollo a la plancha). From the foothills, we dropped down into the sugarcane of the Cauca Valley with a brief afternoon stop at Vinculo (mostly dry, thorn forest here) and a night in the small town of Buga.
We woke up to Yellow-crowned Parrots calling in the palm trees around the open breakfast area at the hotel. This morning, we drove a short distance to Laguna de Sonso for some fun birding in the wetlands along the Cauca River. We spent most of the morning leisurely walking along the unpaved road ticking off new trip birds without much effort: Lesser Nighthawk, Common Potoo (I think we counted 9 total!), Grayish Piculet, and Dwarf Cuckoo, which ended up being the top bird of the trip for the group. It was nearly 100 species morning. We headed out of the hot lowlands midday and climbed back into the Western Cordillera dropping again on the humid east slope to the Choco side. The Choco region is one of the wettest places on earth, and because it’s an isolated area located in the Neotropics, it is full of biodiversity and regional endemism. Our base for the next three nights would be the Montezuma Rainforest Lodge, where we would explore the different elevational segments of Cerro Montezuma within the Tatama National Park. Our first morning was chilly as we started just after dawn at 3,500 meters finding Colombian endemics like Chestnut-bellied Flowerpiercer and Munchique Wood-Wren. The next two days we worked our way down the mountain, from 3,500 meters to 1,300 meters. More endemics (regional or Colombian) would follow including Gold-ringed and Black-and-gold tanagers, Red-bellied Grackle, Crested Ant-Tanager, and all those new hummingbirds: Violet-tailed Sylph, Brown Inca, Velvet-Purple Coronet, and Rufous-Gaped Hillstar. Our local guide, Fernando, was fantastic, and even he got excited when we found the rare White-faced Nunbird!
Leaving Montezuma, we crossed the Cauca Valley and made our way up to our local guide, Daniel Uribe’s hometown, Manezales. Manzeales is a perfect base for exploring one of the most productive birding areas in Colombia. A short 35-minute drive from our hotel is the protected watershed area of Rio Blanco. This is the place to see antpittas, plus a bunch of other goodies often associated with mixed-species flocks. The antpittas were awesome and we saw four species super well including Chestnut-crowned, Bicolored, Brown-banded, and Slate-crowned. Do you remember their names? We also had one of the largest mixed species flocks I have encountered. It seemed to swirl around us, evaporating and reappearing at different times, adding and subtracting species; we must have seen close to 30 species in this flock, which lingered for 30+ minutes (we eventually had to walk away from it!). Rusty-faced Parrot scoped in the tree over the visitor’s center, Black-banded and Tyrannine woodcreepers foraging together, and the final evening good-bye with a flyover Lyre-tailed Nightjar, were also all cherished encounters from this day. Our second day around Manezales was spent visiting the highest place on our tour, Los Nevados National Park. This time we started low and worked our way higher up. Early stops included incredible looks at Paramo Tapaculo, Rainbow-bearded Thornbill, and Stout-billed Cincloides at Laguna Negra. We continued up to the top, below the smoldering caldera of Volcan Ruiz, for a chance at the endemic hummingbird, Buffy Helmetcrest. We weren’t alone. Several other groups were on the prowl, but thankfully, pooling our eyes and coverage, we were able to locate a cooperative bird that perched for us, albeit never super close. Still, it’s a helmetcrest! Afterwards, we had a great lunch at Los Termales, followed by some more feeder action with lots of Shining Sunbeams, and a Golden-breasted Puffleg. We spent our last morning around Manezales at Hacienda El Bosque, which is also famous for its antpitta feeding stations (among other species) and generally good birding on the grounds. Paramo Seedeater, White-browed Spinetail, Equatorial Antpitta, and Hooded Mountain-Tanagers were amongst our haul for this morning.
Our last two days of the tour found us inching ever so closely to the city of Pereira. There was a night at Hotel Tinamu and some fun birding on the grounds. We caught up with Parker’s Antbird, Moustached Puffbird, and Large-billed Seed-Finch here. Between Tinamu and La Florida, we stopped at Lago Cameguadua where before we got rained out, we were able to pad our shorebird and waterflowl list, including an almost cooperative White-throated Crake, lots of Solitary Sandpipers (think about that one), and every single ardeid on the checklist! On our last morning of the tour we left in the dark in three 4x4 vehicles to bird the entrance road at Otun-Quimbaya Protected Watershed. We brought a picnic breakfast with us to get started early. Our targets for this site are the endemic and local, Cauca Guan, and the rare, but more widespread, Red-ruffed Fruitcrow, both of which we managed to find after a couple hours of birding. However, the real highlight was non-avian. We were dumbfounded to stumble across a Mountain Tapir that was feeding casually along the roadside. It would occasionally wander quickly away from us only to reappear a bit further down the road. The throngs of young weekend visitors to the park, arriving in their large chivas, seemed to hardly notice. What a way to end this trip!
CRITTER LIST:
Colombian Red Howler (Alouatta seniculus) = A few hanging out in the trees at Otun-Quimbaya.
Red-tailed Squirrel (Sciurus granatensis) = The most common squirrel encountered on the tour. Seen in a variety of habitats.
Andean Squirrel (Sciurus pucheranii) = One was seen at Finca Alejandria.
Amazon Dwarf Squirrel (Microsciurus flaviventer) = Seen a couple of times at Montezuma (Tatama NP). I am not sure this is the correct species for this area.
Central American Agouti (Dasyprocta punctata) = On the grounds at Montezuma, and again at Hotel Tinamu.
Mountain Tapir (Tapirus pinchaque) = An amazing creature we “stumbled” across at Otun-Quimbaya. One of the most difficult mammals to see in the Andes.
Again, thanks to this group for a great trip. A special thanks goes to Daniel Uribe, our local guide, and John, our driver. Both did excellent work and helped me a lot on this trip. I look forward to seeing everyone again soon and thank you for choosing Field Guides. All the best in 2025 and beyond.
You can see my complete trip report on eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/tripreport/306586
You can download a combined PDF of this page and the eBird report at this link: https://fieldguides.com/triplists/cce24TRIPLIST.pdf
Jesse Fagan (aka Motmot) from Oaxaca, Mexico