A few new bird species in the reserve

One good thing about all the visiting birders and photographers is that our bird species list is constantly growing. I’ll update the list soon, but so far I think we have 248 species registered in the reserve. In the past two weeks we registered four new species. Christian and Wilo were the first ones to find some Emerald Tanagers accompanying the mixed species flocks around the station house. A visiting photographer took a photo of it and he also found a Scaled Fruiteater right behind the station’s house in a Palicourea tree. He also got some excellent shots of the Cuckoo which was sunbathing on the trail down to our neighbor one morning. Our neighbor was on his horse and when he saw the Cuckoo he came back to our house to tell me that “my bird” was sitting there in the sun. A couple of months ago, he would probably have shot it, but now he is as enthusiastic about it as we are!

In the same week we had some other visitors who unfortunately did not see the Cuckoo. But one morning we found two Ornate Hawk-Eagles. One individual was perched in a nearby tree, but the vegetation made it impossible to take a good photo. Later we saw the two individuals soaring right above our heads.

One of the visitors came back the next morning to give it another try with the Cuckoo. He wasn’t lucky, but something ridiculous happened instead. We were observing a fruiting tree and I spotted an Andean Solitaire. I chatted with the visitor about the fact that we were still hoping to find a Black Solitaire in the reserve, when I saw another bird moving in the same tree. It was a Black Solitaire!!

This blog post was written by Nicole