Day 4 - El Paujil - Colombia

El Paujil

Today we spent our time around the El Paujil Reserve - starting with a lie in - as breakfast wasn't until 5.30 am!   We left for our walk at 6am.

We walked from the lodge in Wellington boots as overnight rain had made parts of the walk muddy, slippy and gloopy.   Birds came thick and fast at one of our early stops with blue and yellow macaw flying overhead, chestnut fronted macaw, blue headed parrot, chestnut mandibled toucan, channel billed toucan and collared araçari all seen.   As we continued along the trail passing out of the
reserve, along the road and back into the reserve some 7 hours later, a host of birds were seen and heard - including: great and little tinamou (heard), Colombian chachalaca, cattle egret, turkey, black and lesser yellow-headed vulture, king vulture, hook billed kite, double toothed kite, roadside hawk, short-tailed hawk, black-hawk eagle (h), white collared swift, short-tailed swift, black-throated mango, blue chested hummingbird, broad-billed motmot, white-tailed trogon, closely followed by rufous-tailed jacamar then a rufous motmot was heard, but did not respond to playback.

Butterfly

White-fronted nun bird was seen, beautiful woodpecker was heard, responded but did not come near enough for us to see.   We had more luck with cinnamon and lineated woodpecker, wedge-billed wood creeper, straight-billed wood creeper, chestnut backed antbird, forest elaenia, brown-capped tyrannulet, sepia-capped flycatcher, black-headed today-flycatcher, Acadian flycatcher, eastern
wood-peewee, panama flycatcher, great crested flycatcher, striped manakin showed really well with it's red cap and striped breast, white bearded manakin were lekking by the side of the trail, golden headed manakin, black-crowed tityra, several black-chested jays, white-breasted  wood-wren, grey-headed tanager, golden-hooded tanager, yellow-backed tanager, ruddy-breasted seedeater, sooty-ant-tanager, bay breasted warbler, orange-crowned oriole, thick-billed and fulvous-vented euphonia.

At lunch there were the following hummingbirds at the feeders which detracted from lunch for a while; White-necked jacobin, rufous-breasted hermit, pale-bellied hermit, White-vented plumeleteer, lesser kisskidee, swallow tanager.   After lunch we had a couple of hours to rest, then we were off again at 4 pm along the river.

Rufous-tailed Jacama

Marbled wood quail, greater ani, plain-brown woodcreeper, black-striped wood creeper, streak-headed wood creeper, rusty margined flycatcher, cinnnamon becard, black-billed flycatcher was a little shy in the morning but was far more obliging in the afternoon.
As we finished for the day and the light dimmed the more enthusiastic amongst us watched pauraque, feeding on insects in the evening light.  Turtle or terrapin in the pond dived from view and a morpho butterfly found its evening roost.