Day 2 - La Florida and Imbarge, Colombia

Today we went to La Florida in the Bogota suburbs, this is a golf course which has a large lake and reed beds along the edge.   The altitude is around 2600m.

La Florida

Our main hopes for the morning were Apolinar's wren, yellow-hooded blackbird and numerous water related species.

We walked alongside the fairway, and as it was only around 5.30 am, there were few golfers on the course to watch out for.   We spotted the area of reed bed ahead of us, but seemingly beyond a large area of flooding.   As we neared the pool we saw that there was in fact a wooden block causeway just under the water.
A pair of bare-faced ibis flew up as we stopped to view the scene.   Amongst the birds seen here were northern waterthrush, house wren and tropical kingbird.   Barn swallow and brown-bellied swallow swooped over the water. 

Eastern Wood-pewee

Our guide heard Apolinar's wren which immediately responded to playback appearing in front of us.   A second bird called from further away.   The first bird stayed close to us allowing the more sophisticated photographers the chance of a good shot.
We walked along the side of the water area in soggy ground where our Wellington boots came into their own.   an eastern wood peewee caught flies as it darted from a dead branch.   An oriole sang from one of the trees but was left for another day.

On the large lake were black-bellied whistling duck, Andean teal, blue-winged teal and ruddy duck.  A yellow-billed cuckoo was spotted nearby and a snipe was flushed ahead of us, but remained unidentified between noble or wilsons.

Soon it was time for us to leave so we retraced our steps back to the reed bed where we started to give one last chance for some new birds.   A broad-winged hawk perched in a nearby tree, yellow-hooded blackbirds were screeching in defence, but the hawk didn't appear interested.   A merlin flew through,

Rufous-collared Sparrow

reminding us of home, then a peregrine appeared.   The merlin flew back and landed in a nearby tree, showing off the barred tail which this subspecies has.   In the distance a white-tailed kite was mobbed by a brave tropical kingbird.

After a very welcome snack in the 19th hole of hot chocolate and traditional Colombian potato cake, we were off on our lengthy journey to Imbargé at 800m.  
On the way we stopped at Payande where we saw large numbers of scarlet fronted parakeets, spectacled parrotlet, orange chinned parakeet, sparkling violetear, and barred ant shrike.   We had great views of silvery-throated spinetail and sub-tropical doradito, a very smart black-bellied wren,  slate-headed tody-flycatcher, great-crested flycatcher, and our main hope for the site - apical flycatcher which showed well initially,  but after a while we had at least three birds flying around.   Our whole visit to this site was accompanied by the shreeking from the scarlet-fronted parakeets which just about drowned out the sound of anything else.   A rufous-browed peppershrike did it's best to be heard.

Eventually it was rime to move on to our bed for the night, in the town of Imbargé.   The hotel was okay with slightly run down rooms, but it was ideally placed for our next day's journey.