For my final day in Allpahuayo, I decided to walk the same trail as yesterday morning but this time walk counterclockwise around the loop, meaning the best early hours of the day would be in the variila, and the later hours in the dry forest. It was certainly a more birdy morning than the previous, with over 40 species recorded in total but most of these were commoner birds and I did not manage to add any of my target species to my list.
That is not to say there were no good birds, and one of the best birds of my whole stay here happened during this morning when I managed to tape in a Pheasant Cuckoo. It did not sit as well as my previous encounter in Bolivia, but it remains such a stunning bird and always a pleasure to see. I also finally got views of a Double-banded Pygmy-Tyrant but it remained high in the canopy, so not one to live long in the memory. What will live long in the memory was encountering the endemic poison dart frog that lives here, which had a stunning red colouration. Sadly he was too quick for photos, his tiny size helping him scuttle away into the leaflitter.
The afternoon did not fare much better, as I was caught out by a serious rainstorm. Fortunately it passed allowing me about two hours of birding before dark, but there was nothing much to be seen on that front. Instead I had fantastic views of a Black Agouti feeding in the middle of the path in front of me. Another excellent mammal for my trip list.
And mammals continued to be excellent into the night. I decided to walk the same trail I had in the afternoon, following gthe Varilla forest northeast from the camp. It produced nothing on the walk up, but on the walk back I thermalled a Yellow-crowned Toro coming out of its cavity hole, followed by a Kinkajou feeding on a palm tree and then finally a Brown-eared Opossum. I made it back just 10 minutes before the rain began once again.
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