Day 13 - Minca and Camarones, Colombia



This is to be another travel day, but we have some catching up to do around Minca first, so after a rather late 5.15 am breakfast, we moved off back up the road.   Our prime target bird was coppery emerald, a hummingbird of elusive qualities.   Although it can be found anywhere along the road feeding on the terrestrial orchids and small trumpet shaped pink, yellow and white flowers which abound in the area, we had seen no trace of one the previous day, and this morning was no different with all our efforts remaining unrewarded.   Drizzle then harder rain started to fall, and we sheltered on the side of a very wet and muddy road, with a nearby tree adding to the protection given by our umbrellas.

The muddy road

Phil spotted it first, a female perched on a low cross branch half-way up the hill.   About half of us saw it, then nothing.    As we waited and watched for another sighting, motorcycles were passing us, some with more skill than others on the slippery and rutted road.   We tried not to watch!

Collared Aracari

Suddenly I spotted the hummer again, but it was too far away and too fleeting a glimpse to get anyone else on to it.   After some while we decided that we should move on.   As we did so we spotted the bird again in a tree just out of view from where we had been standing.   Most people got good views this time.   Golden-olive woodpecker, cocoa woodcreeper, black-breasted antshrike, yellow-margined flycatcher, black-headed tanager, purple honeycreeper, and rosy-thrush tanager all added to our enjoyment, golden-crowned warbler, and yellow tailed oriole, completed our morning set.

The wet Desert

Our afternoon journey of some four hours took us to Camarones an area of desert.   Vermillion cardinal was the best bird seen on the journey.   This has to be the wettest desert I have ever seen with huge areas of completely sodden ground where your feet continually slip from underneath you as the top surface of sand acts as a skating rink - it made for an interesting walk.   Needless to say as we arrived it began to rain so we birded from the bus.   Not a very practical or effective way to view as the rain lashed against the windows, the top of the windows we darkened (apparently it stops the locals staring at tourists) and add to which they kept opening the door so that the three of us at the back had go look through double whammy - we were not happy!

However we did manage to add many water birds to our trip list including, southern lapwing, brown pelican, American flamingo, yellow-crowned night-heron, great blue heron, reddish egret ( White morph), White and scarlet ibis, wood stork, roseate spoonbill, american oystercatcher, black-bellied (grey) plover, semipalmated plover, black-necked stilt, double-striped thicknee, whimbrel,

Washday

greater yellowlegs, willet, semipalmated sandpiper, least sandpiper, laughing gull, gull-billed tern, caspian tern, royal tern, osprey.  

The rain stopped and we moved into the scrub, slipping and sliding as we went, we found bare-eyed pigeon, groove-billed ani, stripe-throated hermit, beautiful white-whiskered spinetail, northern scrub flycatcher, slender-billed tyrannulet,  grey kingbird, tropical gnatcatcher, tocuyo sparrow responded immediately and did a circuit of our group before moving off.   Black-striped sparrow was equally obliging, blackpoll warblers were in good numbers, which surprised Trevor as he had no cord of them there before.   A harris's hawk and lesser nighthawks bid us a farewell as we moved on to our final destination - Riohacha.

Final dinner and checklist, then an early night as we have a big day tomorrow - the journey home