UPDC Bird Count

The New Year in the reserve started with the “Un poco del Chocó-Bird Count” as the reserve forms part of the Los Bancos-Milpe count circle. Compared to the count in Mindo, our count circle is pretty young: the count took place this year for the third time. For this reason we had invited some friends from Mindo and Cosanga on the first weekend in the new year. The Mindo-Crew arrived late on Friday afternoon. But our friends from Cosanga had a longer drive and woke us at 1 a.m. in the night. Friday evening, Nicole and the friends from Mindo had already organized five groups and routes for the next morning. With these routes we covered altitudes between 850 and 1600m. For example, we had one group counting on the neighbor‘s land, another one did a route at La Finca Cascada Cristal, one group counted at Reserva Mundo Verde and a bit higher up Wilo’s uncle counted on his land and the Las Tolas-Ayapi road. Obviously Nicole counted birds in the reserve as well. We all got up early and counted birds accompanied by nice weather almost until the sun set. We all met up again at “Un poco del Chocó” to have an early dinner together. The friends from Cosanga had to leave early but the rest of us stayed. So we realized our own small recount in Nicole’s house on the same evening and celebrated the count with a few beers together.

To sum it up on this weekend we recorded 221 species on only five different routes for the “Un poco del Choco count”. Among all the birds we saw, the different raptors and a couple of Long-wattled Umbrella Birds were the highlights of this count.

And here a few pics….

This blog post was written by: Vivian Welzel, 3. Semester BSc. Landscape Management and Nature Conversation at the University for Sustainable Development in Eberswalde