For our tour description, itinerary, past triplists, dates, fees, and more, please VISIT OUR TOUR PAGE.

See this triplist in printable PDF format with media only on page 1.

Our jovial group at amazing Kaieteur Falls. We had not yet seen Rufous-winged Ground-Cuckoo, Ocellated Crake, Red-and-black Grosbeak, Sun Parakeet, Red Siskin.. and I'm out of space. Photo by guide Bret Whitney.

This tour differed from our regular Guyana tours in spending 3 (rather than 2) nights at each of our three venues in the Iwokrama Rainforest Reserve (Kurupakari, Atta, and Surama), and in adding two days at the end of the trip, in southwestern Guyana, to go to Karasabai for Sun Parakeet and Sand River village for Red Siskin. We used the last morning (before the flight back to Georgetown) to go the Ireng River for Rio Branco Antbird and Hoary-throated Spinetail.

The tour was a beauty despite very dry conditions in the savannah regions. It rains along the coast of the Guianas, pretty much throughout the year, mostly short squalls that blow in off the Caribbean, and we hit that kind of rain on our one day out of Georgetown. This made for skimpy birding, but we managed to cobble together a reasonable bunch of species for that first morning, including some Scarlet Ibis, a Common Black-Hawk (that’s what the perched adult bird was, after all), and a much-appreciated Rufous Crab Hawk that swung in to land on a pole right beside us. The Mahaica River boat trip yielded good looks at Hoatzin and a beautiful adult Peregrine Falcon, then good looks at Blood-colored Woodpecker at a known nest-site, and a pair of White-bellied Piculets – all on a fairly windy morning. These Hoatzins always strike me as smaller than Amazonian birds, and with a somewhat thinner, less throaty voice. Our afternoon walk in the Botanical Gardens was fun, with great views of a West Indian Manatee feeding on grasses only a few feet away, the front third of the animal out of the water, and excellent views of several parrots, especially Festive Parrot, which is the highly range-restricted A. f. bodini, very different (plumage and voice) from nominate, Amazonian populations. We saw at least four Blood-colored Woodpeckers and two pairs of White-bellied Piculets, one of which was at its nest hole. A Great Horned Owl was spotted on a day roost, and I got it to sing back with a vocal imitation, which was fun. We also saw a Pearl Kite and another Peregrine (maybe two), a high-flying immature bird. Back at Cara Lodge, we organized our luggage to separate the heavy stuff from hand-carry, as tomorrow’s charter flight to Kaieteur Falls would allow a maximum of 20 pounds of luggage per person. Three cabs, commandeered by Francis, the main Georgetown driver, came by the hotel to pick everything up at 18:00, so it could all be driven to Kurupakari (Iwokrama Rainforest Lodge) overnight, to meet us there upon our arrival tomorrow afternoon.

Next morning, we had a leisurely breakfast at beautiful Cara Lodge, our stately hotel that dates from the late 1800s, and departed for the small, municipal airport in Georgetown at 08:40, arriving there about 09:00. Trans-Guyana Airways, operating our charter to Kaieteur Falls, had each person step on to the scale with their hand-carry. I had had the ground crew clean the windows inside and out, to help with the photography. While they were readying the plane, we walked a couple of hundred yards to another hangar, with the airport administrator, to see a Bat Falcon nest in the apex of the metal roof of the hangar. That was cool, and only the second nest I’ve seen in a man-made structure.

Ron Allicock, our ground operator, was well organized and the tour ran quite smoothly. That said, our charter to Kaieteur Falls was set for 09:00 check-in, and 10:00 (“or so”) departure. We finally left Georgetown at 10:40. I had told Ron last year that it made no sense to have the flight this late in the morning, and that it would work best to fly at about 07:00, to arrive at the falls at a reasonably early hour, and after morning fog has generally lifted. This would allow us longer to bird at the falls area, which would be much less rushed than the two hours (max) we are currently allotted. Happily, we had a great flight out to the falls, and the pilot did two swings around it so folks on both sides of the plane could see everything to fine advantage. It really is an impressive site, surrounded by one helluva lot of forest!

On the ground, we had to rush around to go for Roraiman Antbird, which we saw quite efficiently, then hustle over to the first falls overlook, finding a couple of the endemic Golden Rocket Frog (which was singing a bit; Anomaloglossus beebei), then continue down the trail to the second overlook, stopping to scope Orange-breasted Falcon on its regular dead-tree perch. After adequate time to view and photograph the falls, we headed back to the airstrip with a stop to scope a couple of male Guianan Cocks-of-the-Rock very nicely.

Following a verdant, beautiful flight south to Iwokrama, we landed at the newly refurbished Fairview airstrip, and transferred to the lodge via pickup truck. We learned that one of our vehicles from Georgetown had broken down en route, but it had been repaired and our luggage was expected to arrive shortly. At dusk, we did a short boat trip to see Black-collared Swallows and Ladder-tailed Nightjars, which worked to perfection. Sure enough, our luggage vehicle had arrived on the other side of the Essequibo River, and it came across to us on the last ferry of the day (18:00). A post-dinner owling walk produced excellent views of Mottled Owl and Tawny-bellied Screech-Owl; no responses to Long-tailed, White-winged, or Rufous potoos, although I’ve seen them all along that piece of road.

Next morning we had breakfast at 05:30 and spent some time scoping the clearing edges on a rather dark, rain-threatening morning. It was dead-quiet in the forest but we eventually stirred up a couple of Capuchinbirds, and chalked up a number of other species on the loop trail back out to the entrance road. After lunch and a siesta, we reemerged at 14:30 to walk along the entrance road, which was rather slow, but “ok”. All of our days at Iwokrama, Atta, and Surama kept to this routine of 05:30 breakfast and birding, lunch and 1.5 to 2 hours off, then another outing and back at least 45 minutes before dinner, with an optional post-dinner owling attempt most nights. Two nights at Atta produced Black-banded and Crested owls, and a stellar experience with White-winged Potoo. Spec ended up heard only, durn it, and I never did find a Rufous Potoo. We also dipped on Long-tailed; Ron’s day-roosting birds weren’t sitting where they were supposed to be this time around (we’d seen two on last year’s trip!).

The local guides at each of the three rainforest venues were great: Tichi at Iwokrama, John at Atta, and two somewhat less skilled but very helpful guys at Surama. John is especially talented, and I have urged Ron to hire him permanently, if at all possible, as John says he’s 100% sure he’d like to be a career, professional birding tour guide. I bet Ron would have enough work for him to stay quite busy by next year.

A quick summary of rainforest highlights includes Gray-winged Trumpeters on several days (fabulous!), Crimson Fruitcrow at Atta clearing (fabulous adult, stuck for 15 minutes) and an adult male flying high past the canopy walkway; an adult Harpy that came by the walkway as well (not a lifer for anyone in the group! The nest-site was empty, quiet.); Red-and-black Grosbeak (one heard along the road refused to show, but a pair at Atta ripped in to playback); Black-throated Antshrike and Red-billed Woodcreeper at Atta; Dusky Purpletuft 4x, Gray-winged Trumpeters on 5 days; perched Blue-cheeked Parrots at three places; and Rufous-winged Ground-Cuckoo at Surama. Wow, we heard at least two, quite possibly three birds singing in response to playback of my and Ron’s recordings, and, with perseverance, we saw one of them extremely well, even had it singing about 15 feet above ground. Several folks got good photos, but Steve’s were probably best. Also excellent at Surama was Ocellated Crake, which came into view repeatedly with bluetooth speaker playback – Fantastic!!

The Rupununi savanna is typically very dry Sep – Mar, and mostly flooded May-July. It has been under prolonged drought conditions for nearly two years now (I learned that the absolutely torrential three-day rains that wreaked havoc with our April, 2016 tour had stopped the day after we drove back to Georgetown, with darned little rain falling since then). Nonetheless, we managed to find most of the birds we’d normally hope to get out there, including Crested Doradito and Bearded Tachuri (the latter on a long cast, right at the buzzer, however), Spot-tailed Nightjar, Least Nighthawk, and Pinnated Bittern, but no luck with Giant Snipe or Sharp-tailed Ibis.

Our day out to Karasabai village for Sun Parakeet was really good. The drive was about 3 hours, and roads were nice and dry, so no hassle. We quickly found a group of 8 birds and got to see them very well, especially after I called them across a valley to perch briefly, using playback of the very closely related Jandaya Parakeet. The local guide at Karasabai told me there are 11 individuals in that easily accessible area near the village, but there are “hundreds” about 1.5 hours’ drive on motorcycle or ATV, over the Pakaraima Mountain range. It sure would be fun to go there someday, and video that scene. Ron had arranged lunch at the village, which was great. We rolled into Manari that evening feeling pretty tired, but quite happy. It was rough to tell everyone that we’d be departing next morning at 03:30, breakfast in tow!

And that’s what we did, and what it took, to get us around the base of the Kanuku Mountains and out to Sand Creek village by 07:00, to go for Red Siskin. After rounding up a couple of local guides at their homes, we eventually made our way across low-water crossings and boulder-strewn creekbeds to a place called Shurintau, where we had a delicious cup of coffee and egg+ cheese rolls at the edge of a savanna within a range of low hills covered in a cerrado-like woodland (Curatella was dominant, and an important food-plant for the siskins). Here the Red Siskin seems to be doing fine, mainly owing to the presence of several perennial springs flowing out of these hills. We sat down near one spring that our local guide, Assaf, told us was especially attractive to the siskins. We were on a jumble of large rocks, watching the spot from maybe 40 feet away, perfect light at our backs. After nearly an hour there, Assaf suggested we walk ahead to the second spring site. As we walked along, he made radio contact with Ron and our main guide for western Guyana, Leroy, who had gone to cover another good area for the siskins a couple of miles away. They reported that they’d seen a group of siskins come by just then. We headed back to the vehicles, and, as we came by the first spring, a group of 11 Red Siskins flew in out of nowhere and briefly landed above the spring! Assaf had us sit down to wait, saying the birds would definitely be back soon, as they had not had a chance to get to the water. And yes, they did come back, just a few minutes later, staying sneaky and very quiet, but providing us with perfect views! They stuck around the area for several minutes, disappearing then suddenly reappearing a couple of times, and we got some great photos. Lifer for all, including me! Lunch at isolated, forlorn-looking Dadenawa Ranch in the middle of nowhere was most welcome, and provided a chance to poke our heads into gallery forest along the Rupununi River, where I pulled up a Pale-bellied Tyrant-Manakin, Blue-backed Manakin, and White-barred Piculet (which ain’t a Picumnus cirratus, whatever it is), with pygmy-owl imitation and squeaking. I could not get the tyrant-manakin to vocalize, unfortunately.

Our run to Ireng River was excellent, and we had beautiful views of both Rio Branco Antbird and Hoary-throated Spinetail in, literally, less than 10 minutes!! HOO-RAYY, BABY! This is in marked contrast to my experience in April, 2016, when it took about 3 hours to come up with them. Everyone was definitely very happy. We had our third pair of Pearl Kites out there as well, a pair vocalizing quite a bit, which was cool. We also spotted a couple of Pinnated Bitterns in near-dry, remnant marshes, about halfway out from Manari.

We got back to Manari by 10:00 to take some time to rest and repack, have lunch, rest a bit more, then get over to Lethem for the flight to Georgetown. All of that went very well, and we had a generally relaxing final day, all things considered, followed by a fine dinner at Cara Lodge. Most of us were on the Caribbean Air flight departing Georgetown at 05:30, so had to leave for the airport at 03:00 (bags down 02:45, aarrrgh).

This 16-day itinerary makes for a fully rewarding tour to Guyana. We ran through the majority of it at a brisk but unhurried pace, with generous afternoon siesta time, and 7-8 hours of sleep even on the several owling nights. Then comes the finish, with runs for the parakeet and siskin. Those hauls are harder on the frame, and coming at the end of two weeks of birding, are definitely more tiring. That said, the rewards are unusually exciting, and finding the parakeet and siskin is, especially with the help of the local guides, highly likely. It is important to do it in the dry season, and not just for the road conditions; I suspect the siskin could be real tough if there were much pooled water around those wooded hills.

A huge thanks to all of you guys for coming on this tour to Guyana. We had a wonderful time, full of great memories and sightings of difficult birds. I’ve been slow to get this list ready for you, so will prepare the list now and drop in some photos/videos here and there for fun. Happy birding, until we meet again!

KEYS FOR THIS LIST
One of the following keys may be shown in brackets for individual species as appropriate: * = heard only, I = introduced, E = endemic, N = nesting, a = austral migrant, b = boreal migrant

A few Scarlet Ibis and a bunch of Snowy Egrets were at the Georgetown waterfront one morning. Photo by participant Steve Rannels.

Long-winged Harrier. Photo by participant Steve Rannels.

What a great view of Black-faced Hawk! Photo by participant Steve Rannels.

A fabulous Guianan Toucanet, from the Atta canopy walkway. Photo by participant Steve Rannels.

Crested Doradito -- excellent experience! Photo by participant Steve Rannels.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

Bruce and Bill identified many interesting plants for us, which was greatly appreciated by all -- thanks guys! We also saw lots of butterflies and a couple of large tarantulas, and Black and Spectacled Caiman, among numerous other non-avian actors.

Totals for the tour: 446 bird taxa and 13 mammal taxa