It has been almost a year since I was last in South America, a very sad development, but now I would spend the next seven weeks exploring Colombia and then Bolivia. The Colombia itinerary was scheduled to be more relaxed but since my flight did not land in Bogota until 04:00 it started with extreme tiredness. Helpfully we then had an internal flight to Santa Marta in the north of Colombia on the Caribbean coast, a place I had visited back in 2019 and enjoyed a great deal, but missed out on a few birds that I now wanted to try again. It should be mentioned that while Colombia was not exclusively a birdwatching trip, we had planned to visit many areas that promised phenomenal birding.
From our arrival in the airport at Santa Marta, we took a
taxi up the road about an hour to the Tayrona National Park. Sadly we knew
ahead of time that the park itself would be closed during our night there, but
we still wanted to enjoy the lowland forest surrounding the park and had chosen
our lodging; Moon Wind Hostel accordingly. Since we were so heavily jetlagged
and exhausted from our travels, it promised to be a pleasant environment in
which to recover.
Bird wise we did not see much on this first evening, only
common birds with which I needed to refamiliarize myself after so much time
away. The highlights occurred after dark with a phenomenal show the local Giant
Toads, with no less than three feeding on the hostel paths, enjoying the
plethora of insects after the evening rains.
Moon Wind Hostal Tyrona: Ruddy Ground Dove, Black Vulture, Whooping Motmot, Red-crowned Woodpecker, Blue-headed Parrot, Great Kiskadee, Southern Rough-winged Swallow, House Wren, Pale-breasted Thrush, Crimson-backed Tanager, Blue-grey Tanager, Palm Tanager, Blue Dacnis, Bananaquit,
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