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Another fun day in the mountains. We didn’t get up with the chickens today – actually partook of the breakfast that comes with the hotel. Not quite as good as Dona Rita’s but fine. And we picked up our spare take away breakfast that was our consolation prize for not being able to get out of the gate yesterday. Actually we walked down the road a bit beforehand, along the small but very fast-running and full of rocks Sevegre River, looking for the bird that I had seen on videos about the area – the Torrent Tyrannulet. And we saw one – a NEW LIFER. Plus a MOUNTAIN ELAENIA. The weather was lovely all morning – when the sun was out I was down to just a shirt. When the wind blew I was glad for my long pants and vest.
There is a guided birding group here at the Hotel – we spoke to 2 ladies the first afternoon we arrived, and we chatted again this morning. They highly recommended the Batsu Gardens, just “up the road.” Indeed it was up – up a crazy steep track. I just sucked in my breath and held on but David did
great. And in fact because we were following a little all-terrain vehicle, we knew we wouldn’t face anyone coming down. That turned out to be the owner, Felipe. He did have a lovely set up of many feeders with fruit and sugar water, plus he scattered seed in lots of places. We had the place to ourselves for an hour, and then a small group of German-speaking Swiss folks who didn’t speak much English. We actually picked up 6 new birds there – David was coveting the Emerald Toucanet, which did come in a few times. The others were the Golden-browed Chlorophonia – which was amazing; White-naped brush finch – gorgeous; Chestnut-capped Brush finch – sorry, no photo yet but good enough to identify on Merlin; Buff-fronted Quail Dove – so many colors; Sulphur-winged Parakeet – they were everywhere and boy do they fly fast! We also saw such a handsome hawk but it turned out to be a red-tailed. Sure did look different from our Ohio ones though.
Once back at the ranch we decided to quickly eat just a yogurt from the care-package and pay for a lift up to the “deck” here in this property. We
thought we were high at Batsu – ha! We were looking down on it from twice as high. Silly us decided to walk down rather than taking the 4x4 – mostly because we didn’t know how long we’d stay up there. While up on the deck we met a young Swiss couple who were camping in some sort of converted van. They’ve been traveling all over for 2 weeks, finding very out of the way places to set up. As the Deck had facilities, they were just visiting it when we arrived.
As we chatted, the cloud moved up the hill. Then the mist. And then the rains fell. Fortunately we had our rain jackets and ponchos, and David could keep the camera dry, but we only saw one new bird on the way down the 1.2 mile road – we were drenched. Not our best idea of the trip. The bird was the COLLARED RED-START, very different from the American Redstart.
After drying out (we’ll see if the jackets ever dry out) and taking a hot bath in our luxurious deep and sunken tub, we napped and decided it wasn’t worth dressing for dinner. Ate the final
bits of our cheese, with crackers, some protein bars and cashews. Let’s just say we will be hungry for breakfast!
The photos – well this is a mix of new birds (in caps) and photos of repeats that are too georgous to omit. Plus a squirrel and lizard and scenery. Obviously no photos of meals this time – ha ha.
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