Brown-breasted Parakeet aka Flame-winged Parakeet (Pyrrhura calliptera)

The Flame-winged Parakeet (Pyrrhura calliptera), also known as the Brown-breasted Parakeet, is a species of parrot in the family Psittacidae.I was unable to get a photo and all Wikipedia has is a drawing.  However there are some good photos on the “Learn More” links below.

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They are endemic to Colombia and found in forest edge and shrub at altitudes of 1700–3400 m.  The best places to see them are Chingaza & Bioandina areas near Bogota.

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LEARN MORE ABOUT BROWN-BREASTED PARAKEETS

Wikipedia

World Parrot Trust

Birdlife

Neotropical Birds

VIDEOS

All uploaded to YouTube by Oswaldo Cortes, proving that he is the birding guide of choice when looking for this elusive little bird!

 

Day Trip – Birding Chingaza & Bioandina Area

Once again I was up for a very last minute off-the-cuff birding excursion-the last one in Colombia.  This time I was on my own as my husband wanted to take a day off and relax in the hotel and get over his altitude sickness.  I was targeting Brown-breasted Parakeet and had studied their locations on eBirdBirds of Passage had a nice post about their birding in the area, looks like they had bad weather to contend with as well!  I contacted Oswaldo Cortes on Facebook but he was already booked that day but he suggested we go to Chingaza for the parakeets.  So I got the hotel to book a car & driver (SUV) who arrived promptly at 5am to take me to Chingaza.  The scenery was gorgeous along the way!

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Finally we arrived at Chingaza National Park.  I was already looking for parakeets!dscn3507 img_6706

This is the desired Brown-breasted Parakeet and the mascot of the park.img_6707 dscn3508 dscn3509

This is the office where you pay admission and enter the park.  However they didn’t want to let me in since I didn’t have a guide!  I was hoping a guide might show up or be waiting around the entrance like they do at some other parks but no dice.  The area where the parakeets frequent is further into the park so I couldn’t just hang around the car park area and hope to get lucky.  So not wanting to waste any more time, I decided to try the other place where the parakeets had been seen – Bioandina which is on the north side of Chingaza.

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You can see how we traveled from the hotel to Chingaza (blue line) and then we backtracked to where the red line begins.  I knew Bioandina was in that general area (yellow) but it wasn’t very well signposted and we ended up going all the way to where the red line ends until we realized we missed it. dscn3511 dscn3512

This is the road we turned down which finally led to the right area.  I never saw the word “Bioandina” but we did head into prime bird habitat.dscn3513 dscn3516 dscn3517 dscn3519 dscn3520 dscn3522

I think this is some kind of school, anyways it is very near the trees where we finally saw and heard a good-sized flock of parakeets!  The trees are in the photo above.dscn3525

The area was fenced off so all we could do was sit on the side of the road and wait.  It was so frustrating, I could hear LOTS of parakeets and see them flitting back and forth.  I knocked off a few Hail Mary shots but just couldn’t get them.  After about 20 minutes, they took off like bats parakeets out of hell and disappeared down the valley. The fence kept us from getting closer and I was feeling minor effects of altitude sickness from the previous trip so I was sitting in the car hoping they would come closer.  They didn’t.

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We drove around the area some more hoping to find the parakeets again.  dscn3526 dscn3527

We found a crested guan hiding in a bush near the road.img_6708 img_6710 img_6736 img_6711 img_6717 img_6732 img_6735

A few shots of the road heading back into Bogota.  I wanted to go to some craft shops but we couldn’t find any along the route.dscn3529 dscn3530 dscn3537 dscn3538 dscn3539 dscn3541

The driver dropped me back at the hotel and I found Ina in much better spirits after having a day to rest.  I was one one hand happy to have found a flock of parakeets but disappointed I didn’t get any photos.  Maybe I should have bought some flowers!

Planning A Birding Trip To Colombia

Planning our birding trip to Colombia was a much bigger challenge than planning the Ecuador trip.  Even though the countries are next to each other, there is a huge difference between the tourist infrastructures.  Ecuador has been a travel hotspot for years and places like Mindo, Napo, Southern Ecuador & the Galapagos are well equipped to handle travelers of all types and budgets.  But Colombia was off limit for many years due to safety concerns and has only recently been returned to birders’ itineraries.  Even now, there is a preference for organized package tourists.  Many of the large birding tour operators are going to Colombia but there is still a good market for us budget minded independent birders!  We just have to work harder to manage it!

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SET YOUR BIRDING GOALS FIRST

With over 1900 bird species, Colombia has a lot to offer and unless you have unlimited time and money there is no way you are going to see it all.  Before you can choose which reserves you want to visit, you need to know what species are your priorities or which reserves have the biggest bird lists if you are looking to build up your life list.

My #1 target is to see as many parrot species as possible and lots of other bird species who live in the same habitats.  While I am not a “life-list ticker”, I do want to see as many different species of parrots in my life as I possibly can.  Therefore, when choosing between destinations within a country I consider these elements:

  1. Endemic species (can only be seen in one country such as Yellow-eared Parrot ( Santa Marta Parakeet).
  2. Species that I haven’t seen before.
  3. Species that are more easily seen elsewhere (Ecuadorian Amazon vs Colombian Amazon for example).
  4. How easily can I get to the reserve and is it in a safe location?
  5. Are some species just too rare that we probably have no chance of seeing them? (Sinu Parakeet – Pyrrhura subandina)?
  6. Can I hire guides in the reserves or nearest town?

So after looking at the 57 species of parrots that can be found in Colombia, I prioritized species that I hadn’t already seen on previous trips to South America and that I wasn’t likely to see in Ecuador, then I eliminated species that had no sightings on eBird and I was unlikely to be able to find.  Actually eBird played a HUGE part in planning this trip as I was able to get really good data on birds such as Fuertes Parrots which were being seen regularly near Santa Rosa and Rufous-fronted Parakeets which were being seen near Manizales.

This is a snippet of my planning spreadsheet for Ecuador, Colombia & Trinidad.  A yellow-filled box means that species is an endemic and needs to be prioritized.  Light green font indicates I have already seen the species elsewhere (but I am always happy to see them again) but I don’t need to make a special trip for that species.  Some birds are seen in both Ecuador & Colombia so I had to figure out which location would be easier logistically.  Just to get to this stage involved hundreds of hours of looking up each species on eBird, tracking sightings, cross-referencing species to get them down to as few sites as possible and making sure we can logistically get to the location.

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ORGANIZING THE LOGISTICS

I was now down to 6 locations and less than 2 weeks to squeeze them all in.  I should probably say 5.5 locations as Minca is enroute to El Dorado.

  1.  Minca & El Dorado – accessed via Santa Marta airport
  2. Jardin – Yellow-eared Parrot Reserve – accessed by Medellin airport and a bus to Jardin.
  3. Rio Blanco & Surrounds – lots of species here, accessed by taxi or bus.
  4. Pereira – nearest city to accessible Fuertes Parrots.  I was trying for Giles Fuertes Reserve but told by ProAves that this reserve was not accessible to tourists.
  5. Chingaza Reserve – accessible by road from Bogota, planned to hire a taxi to get there.

I would need 3 flights.

  1. Quito to Santa Marta via Bogota (used Avianca Lifemiles).
  2. Santa Marta to Medellin (used Avianca Lifemiles).
  3. Pereira to Bogota (originally was going to use bus but found super cheap fare on Avianca).

This is what it all looked like on paper computer screen.

Colombia Plan

FINDING ACCOMMODATION

This turned out to be the easiest part.  Broken down by site:

  1. Santa Marta – flight got in at 9:30 so used an Expedia voucher for budget hotel.
  2. El Dorado – booked online via ProAves.
  3. Minca – booked online via Booking.com
  4. Jardin – got off bus from Medellin and walked into budget hotel on main plaza.
  5. Manizales (Rio Blanco) – must have advance booking so booked by email.
  6. Pereira – booked a backpacker place as I knew they would be able to find a cheap taxi to take us to Fuertes Parrots location at low cost.
  7. Bogota – was going to use Club Carlson bogo redemption but they closed their cheaper hotel so I used Orbucks from last year’s photo contest with 15% off promo code.

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This is an extremely succinct version of all the work I put into organizing a budget birding trip.  It’s very time consuming, especially if you have target species to track down and are limited by both time and budget.  But the end result was worth it for my high success rate.  Birds highlighted in peach were seen on this trip.  Those preceded by a 9 were allocated to Colombian sites (1-6 were allocated to Ecuador).  Red font on white background (ahem – parrotlets!) were total dips for this trip and my lifetime.  Lilac background was a dip on THIS trip but seen previously elsewhere.  For Colombia, out of  15 allocated species, 11 were seen, 4 were dips but the Brown-throated Parakeet had been seen in Panama so not a life dip.  Lilac-tailed Parrotlets could also be seen in Trindad so there was a 2nd chance (which ended up failing).

Colombia targets

So how can you do a trip like this?  Join me for the fantastic ride through Colombia during the next few weeks!