Some International Background

My first trip to South America was to Argentina in March 1989 mostly in the area of Junin de Los Andes with 4 buddies fly fishing and enjoying great food and spectacular scenery in addition to the wonderful trout. At that time I was more interested in flyfishing than birding but had done a fair amount of birding as well so I kept track of species seen, a total of 41 species and somehow a photo of just one – a Black Necked Swan. My first international birding had been in Trinidad in May 1978, finding 97 species on a trip with friends courtesy of an amazing airfare deal through the now long gone Eastern Airlines that had included birding stops at ABA Biding meccas in South Texas and South Florida. Altogether on that trip we had 178 species of which 143 were new for my then pretty short World Life List (no camera). My next international trip was to the Mai Po Nature Preserve outside of Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1979. The 79 species there was followed three months later in March 1980 with 13 species seen casually on a definitely non-birding vacation visit to Jamaica. No camera on either trip.

It would be another 3.5 years until my next international birding adding 31 species from a single afternoon of birding squeezed into another non-birding vacation, this time to Japan in July 1983. That was it until that flyfishing trip to Argentina which was followed by another flyfishing trip, a very exotic one to the very remote Christmas Island (Kiribati) where only 7 species were seen incidentally as we concentrated on bonefish and other saltwater species in May 1989. By that time, a daughter and a son had been added to our family and birding and fishing both took back seats to child rearing, work and family activities. By April 1997 both kids were old enough to enjoy their first exotic vacation – a week in Costa Rica that included visiting some great lodges with birds, monkeys, butterflies, frogs etc. but no camera – the standard fare for an introduction to the natural history of the tropics and giving me the chance to see 155 species of which 99 were added to my World Life list which then reached 938. Concentration remained on kids and my career including starting my own consulting company in 2000. There was little birding and little fishing until 2002 when as a half time chaperone on my daughter’s trip with the Seattle Youth Symphony to Hungary and the Czech Republic I was able to get away for a half day guided trip in Hungary which produced 54 species – all World lifers.

Snapshot – After the foregoing it was July 2002. My daughter had graduated from high school and would be starting college. My son would be entering high school. My business was underway but with lots of pressure and uncertainty. In 2003 my only “vacation” was a solo mostly birding trip to Australia. With some guiding help only around Brisbane and on my own otherwise, I managed to see 267 species and actually got photos of 7 species. The one guide I was with, Bill Jolly, took photos of many of the species we saw. I have those photos but since I did not take them, I did not use them. So at the end of that trip, my world photo list was 8!! But I was over 1000 species for the world – 1243.

I don’t know if Ebird had yet been invented but I would not start using it for another 7 years until 2010. I am sure I did a little birding in those intervening years but I did not keep lists or records except for new life birds and apparently there were none of those – at least in Washington or elsewhere in the U.S. as I have no records of any except for a single Barred Owl record in Lincoln Park in West Seattle in 2007. For the 8 years following that Hungary excursion, my recorded birding trips (paper records and then later entered into Ebird after the fact) were all international with trips on my own to Australia (2003) as above, Brazil (2005), Kenya (2007) and then Belize (2010). I began taking pictures (I would not yet call them “photographs”) in 2005.

In large measure these trips enabled me to deal with pressures from business and domestic issues as I found that birding allowed me to take my mind away from those matters, re-energize and continue on. In 2010 I discovered Ebird and have 10 real time lists from that year, adding 35 species to my then very meager state list but evidencing that birding was becoming an important part of my being. At the end of 2010, Ebird showed that my Washington State Life List was at 235 species; my World Life List was 1959 and I had entered a total of 198 checklists – a number much lower than would have been the case if I had done lists as they occurred instead of retrospectively and only when new lifers were found. And per the above, I had finally started to take photos with only a handful in Australia but with another 59 in Brazil, 142 in Kenya and 19 in Belize. Those percentages would later be seen as unacceptable, but it was a start on a path that would become very important later and is very much so now.

Major Transition – 2011 would begin a number of major changes in my life. My son would be graduating from college. My daughter would be in her first year of residency after Med School. Some major deals in my business would either be closing or falling apart, I would be looking at a separation in my marriage (to be followed by a divorce) and I would be undergoing my first surgery since my tonsils had been removed 60 years earlier. As I confronted all of those matters and especially the surgery for a full replacement of my right shoulder, I was at least unsure of my future and probably a little scared as well. What if that future was one of limited possibilities instead of the creation of new ones? At the top of my bucket list was a desire to see a tiger, in the wild, in India. In January, the month before the scheduled surgery I joined a Victor Emanuel Nature Tour to India that promised birds, the Taj Mahal and a good possibility of seeing my tiger. It was a wonderful trip with several tigers, the magnificent Taj Mahal and 278 bird species with photos of 150 of them.

Back in the U.S. after India, I had the surgery which at first seemed to have gone well, closed at least one of the pending important business deals, went forward with the separation and continued to use birding in my home state as a diversion – an increasingly active one. My shoulder was not doing well and a re-examination determined that the replacement had not worked and would have to be done again. During that surgery in 2012, it became obvious that the reason it had not at first succeeded was because there was an undetectable infection. The recovery was not fun and I have never regained the full use expected, but now 13 years later, it still works, so I cannot complain. It was a momentous year in other ways as well. We proceeded to a divorce; after another business deal closed and an option was entered that could result in a significant fee later, I contemplated retirement; and I left Seattle and relocated to Edmonds, Washington where I still reside.

When I sat down to write this blog post, I originally intended to just give a background of my birding trips to South America in anticipation of this trip to Colombia, the country which has more species than any other in the world and unlike as in my case is often the first in South America visited by birders since there are so many species to see and get on our lists. Maybe I just needed to revisit those early years and some of my own ghosts and demons and how birding has been so important in dealing with them. But enough of that – back to South America.

South America – That first South America trip to Argentina had great fishing and just the barest taste of bird life. On my own in Brazil in 2005, it had been a perfect escape for 3 weeks combining a visit to Rio, unguided birding at a large ranch in the Pantanal, time in the Amazon with help by a guide for two days and then time on my own at the incredible Iguassu Falls. At the time I was very pleased to have found 280 species but was not really looking to expand a World list. Later in 2013 I went on a guided trip to Peru with 413 species and 127 photos. Now after that trip to Peru and later visits to Ecuador (twice), with trip lists of 450 and 540 species each that Brazil list seems small, and I know that if I did it again with guides, the number would have been twice what I had in 2005.

In 2022 after canceling a number of trips in the Covid Doldrums, spouse Cindy Bailey and I went on a private birding trip to Ecuador and in 2024, even though there were too many “little brown jobs” for her taste, Cindy joined me on a wonderful Wine and Birds tour to Chile and Argentina. We had more birds (153 in Argentina and 104 in Chile) than wine (56 varieties tasted) and a great time. Cindy has learned a lot more about birds than she acknowledges and kindly tolerates my obsession but when a friend and I committed to another trip to Ecuador in 2024, she passed but together we planned a visit to the Galapagos which was wonderful and except for all the Darwin finches, the birds, especially like the boobies and albatrosses were fun for Cindy. When I looked into this Colombia trip, Cindy passed and continued that stance when I committed to a trip back to Brazil – a very different area in that very large country where I might expect 300+ species many of which would be new lifers and/or new life photos.

Enough background except for these numbers: It is June 19th as I start to write this and wait to board my plane for Miami and then on to Barranquilla. My World Life List is 3712 species. I have photos of 2,430 species. We will be birding for 10 and I half days in Northeastern Colombia, an area that includes Santa Marta and Perija with many endemics. For this trip, my organizer, ICARO BIRDING sent a potential list of more than 575 species. After comparing those possibilities with species on my World Life List, I calculated that there is a longshot chance to add 170+ new lifers and 175+ life photos. More realistically maybe 150 of each. My goals are to eventually have 4000 to 4500 species on my World Life List and to have photos of 3000 species. I sure wish I had been taking pictures on those early trips before 2005. Here is the itinerary. I will return to writing this after I have returned, gone over pictures and lists and reflected on the visit.

Colombia Itinerary

• Day 1 – June 20 Arrival in Barranquilla at 12:50 PM – drive to Cartagena – PM Birding Cienaga de la Virgen  Hotel Cartagena
• Day 2 – June 21 Matute Birding Reserve: Scaly-breasted Hummingbird, Red-throated Ant Tanager, Black-bellied Wren and others. eBird checklist – 3 hours late afternoon drive back to Barranquilla BH Barranquilla
• Day 3 – June 22 Km 4 via Palomino and Salamanca – Minca Veranda Hotel
• Day 4 – June 23 Birding Minca towards Mountain House Lodge Mountain House
• Day 5 – June 24 San Lorenzo Ridge and around the lodge Mountain House
• Day 6 – June 25 Minca – Gaviotas – Camarones – Riohacha Hotel Taroa
• Day 7 – June 26 Los Flamencos Flora & Fauna Sanctuary: Camarones – Valledupar Hotel Sonesta
• Day 8 – June 27 Tananeos Reserve and Perija Perija Bird Reserve
• Day 9 – June 28 Birding the Perija Mountain range Perija Bird Reserve
• Day 10 – June 29 Perija and Valledupar Hotel Sonesta
• Day 11 – June 30 Valledupar – Barranquilla (birding all the way) BH Hotel
• Day 12 – July 1 BH – Airport flight at 1:50 PM

Back Home – Reporting/Reflecting on my trip – Overview

I am going to start with the most important comments. Overall the trip went very well – no dangers, no illness, everything went according to schedule, weather was good, guide Breiner Tarazona was great, lots of birds and lots of photos. Flights all worked although some delays and gate relocations caused more stress than I would choose. This was a solo tour with guide Breiner and driver Jeferson in a very comfortable and very capable 4 wheel drive Toyota Fortune. With maybe one exception the lodging was very good to excellent. Food was mostly unremarkable but in quantities significantly greater than needed. Everyone I met, including police officers on FOUR road stops were all friendly or more. Lots of dogs enabling me to send photos back to dog lover Cindy. More city travel than expected or compared to other international trips, but traffic was not bad, roads in general were very good with the exception of the two incredibly challenging “dirt” roads leading up to key areas in the Santa Marta and Perija mountains which were as rough as any roads I had ever traveled. Jeferson was an exceptional driver and often with speeds less than 5 kilometers an hour, got us easily through the tough roads.

Breiner was a great guide and a great human being. Very easy to travel with, good English, friends with everyone we met, and definitely on top of bird identification by sight and sound. He was very patient and particularly good at helping me get on birds buried in the foliage, a major problem for me, aided by his own keen eyes and ears, top notch binoculars, excellent recordings, a good scope, a good laser pointer and a new tool in the arsenal, a very effective heat sensor scope that helped find numerous species.

Let me get the only two somewhat negatives out of the way: (1) the “potential list” of 500+ species was somewhat misleading as it was not a trip list from a specific similar tour in the past – rather a compendium of all species that were possible to find in the geographic area. This kind of list is often used in tour descriptions and is certainly honest, just not as useful as a list of actual experiences in the past – like an Ebird Trip List from an earlier tour. So the reality was that the likely number of species to be actually seen was maybe 400 at most. I should/could have realized this and in no way would the smaller number have changed my mind about taking the trip. The second minor matter was that with Jeferson and Breiner in the front seats and me in the back, when they conversed in Spanish, as they did often, I felt somewhat left out/isolated. This emphasizes that I wish I had taken Spanish instead of French. Breiner never failed to communicate to me or respond to me in excellent English, just would have been nice to have been more engaged – especially since I understand that Jeferson, who had very little English, is quite the story teller. And in addition to his driving skill, Jeferson was helpful in numerous ways including in spotting some of the birds. Very minor negatives completely overweighed by many positive.

The geography of the trip was essentially in Northeastern Colombia along the Caribbean coast, almost to Venezuela and especially focused on the endemics of Santa Marta and Perija (endemics shared with Venezuela). This is a tiny part of the country and other trips would have produced very different bird lists. Bottom line on this trip was that we had 367 species, with only a few heard only. As expected there was significant overlap with species seen elsewhere so total lifers were 124 and total life photos were 142 (out of a total of 272 species for which I got a photo). Not quite the quantity I had hoped for on either account, but definitely acceptable and worthwhile and the quality was great including some unexpected and unusual finds and photos and excellent coverage of the Santa Marta and Perija endemics (altogether we had 21 endemics). So those life lists that probably get more attention than they should are now at 3836 World Lifers and 2572 photos. With trips that are scheduled for later this year (Amsterdam, hopefully with a day of birding and a birding trip to Southeastern Brazil), I think there is a reasonable chance to get to 4000 species and maybe 2750 to 2800 life photos. And if all goes well trips to Costa Rica and Thailand in 2026 should get me to that 3000 photo goal as well. But those reports are for later. My next post will get into the details of Colombia!!