ZECO TRAVEL TALK

The year was 1981 and my parents had just bought me a pair of binoculars for my thirteenth birthday, a significant improvement on the minimal magnification, mother-of-pearl-coated opera glasses that had piqued my early interest in all things feathered. The birding bug had bitten hard, my youthful interest had exploded into an obsession, and my personal “life list” of just over 200 local bird species had become a source of great pride to me. One afternoon, while browsing through the natural history section of my municipal library, I happened upon a book written by a birding businessman estimating that a dedicated birder, in a lifetime of travel, could reasonably hope to see a maximum of 5,000 bird species (approximately half of all birds on Earth). Times changed, jet travel improved, new field guides and bird-finding site guides were written and, in the early 1990’s, this 5,000 limit was handily passed by a new generation of world birders.

Having never dreamed that such lofty goals were possible, I found myself passing this magical milestone in 2002, a combination of two decades spent birding in my home continent of Africa and two years working and traveling in the “Bird Continent” of South America. My work with Eco-Expeditions, apart from providing rich birding opportunities on the expeditions themselves, facilitated personal exploration of bird-rich areas in Asia and Australasia, and my global bird tally crept over 6,000 in 2004, approaching the magical figure of 7,000 in mid-2007.

Still a full 50 species short, I pondered where to start hunting. Zegrahm’s “March with the Penguins” expedition made up my mind for me: it would be South America, home to over a third of all bird species on Earth. At the end of the trip in Santiago de Chile, I caught a short flight north to Peru—a country that vies with Colombia for the title of World’s Top Birding Country (each boasting a staggering 1,800+ species). Although I had spent a full seven months working in the Peruvian Amazon in 1996, there were still significant chunks of the country that I had been unable to explore back then, since they were effectively “out of bounds” due to civil unrest.

My first stop was the Andes of southern Peru, where a visit to remnant high-altitude Polylepis woodland east of Cusco yielded rewards in the form of the critically endangered Royal Cinclodes, Ash-breasted Tit-Tyrant and White-browed Tit-Spinetail. Four days camping at various altitudes along the fabled Manu Road produced a further haul of Andean specialties such as Peruvian Piedtail (a scarce hummingbird) and Cinnamon-faced Tyrannulet (a flycatcher only recently described to science), as well as a host of more widespread “crowd-pleasers” like Andean Cock-of-the-Rock and the mind-boggling Lyre-tailed Nightjar, a sure contender for the title of the “World’s Most Glamourous Nightbird.”

Tantalisingly close to my goal, I shifted northwards to the high-altitude wetlands and cloud forests of central Peru. These sites, made famous by the Louisiana State University expeditions of the late 1970s and early 1980s, are home to a mouth-watering selection of newly described, rarely seen, or critically endangered endemics. A night camping at 17,000 feet, near the village of Marcapomacocha, produced the first of my most-wanted birds, in the form of the endemic White-bellied Cinclodes. This largest of all ovenbirds (a family named for the habit of some of its members of building bread oven-shaped mud nests) is also the rarest, with a total global population estimate of no more than 50 individuals, scattered across the high-altitude, so-called “pin-cushion bogs” of the central Andes. Flushed with success, I moved on to the reed-fringed shores of Lake Junin, where a dedicated search produced a small group of another Peruvian endemic, the attractive Junin Grebe. Sadly, this bird is also critically endangered, its total global population of around 120 individuals brought perilously close to the brink of extinction by ongoing pollution of its lake by the tailings of active iron-ore mines.

My final destination in Central Peru was the town of Huanuco, a convenient base for the exploration of two sites with legendary status among birders: the high-altitude, perpetually wet and mossy, or “elfin” forest of the Bosque Unchog, where no fewer than four highly distinctive birds were discovered by the LSU expedition of 1978, and the slightly lower, but no less moist, cloud forest east of the Carpish Tunnel, accessible along the famous Paty Trail. A first misty morning along the Paty Trail brought a string of difficult under-story birds, among them a host of new dazzling hummingbirds, tricky flycatchers, and skulking antpittas and tapaculos (the word “tapaculo” in Spanish is best translated as “cover your ass”); these diminutive, blackish “avian mice” dash around the undergrowth with tails constantly cocked up over their backs). Emerging from the forest interior, I was met with one of the spectacles that makes Andean birding so absolutely exhilarating: a mixed foraging flock of insect- and fruit-eaters, with wave after wave of brilliantly-coloured barbets, tanagers, and flycatchers streaming past in an almost overwhelming kaleidoscope of riotous colour. Among the multitudes one bright tanager caught my eye, revealing a characteristic “turban” of gold on a background of iridescent royal-blue: Gold-scarfed Tanager! Yet another localised and highly sought-after Peruvian endemic, and worthy of the honour of being my 7000th world bird!

From my vantage point overlooking the cloud forest-cloaked Andes, I pondered the significance of this personal milestone, at once meaningless and yet encapsulating two and half decades of my life. From that first glimpse of an African Paradise Flycatcher through my grandmother’s opera glasses all those years ago to this rare tanager in Peru, the pursuit of birds has moulded and immensely enriched my life, revealing a natural world of staggering richness and extraordinary beauty. I felt profoundly grateful to be alive.