PEREGRINE BIRD TOURS BOLIVIA 10 – 30 November 2018 TOUR
PEREGRINE BIRD TOURS BOLIVIA 10 – 30 November 2018 TOUR REPORT LEADERS: Chris Doughty and Sandro Valdez. GROUP MEMBERS: Rebecca Albury, Graham Barwell, Paul Handreck, Elvyne Hogan, Max James and Jann Skinner. This little known and sparsely populated country, has the highest avian diversity of any land-locked country on the planet, the birding was breathtakingly exciting and produced a suite of new and interesting birds, on every day of the tour. We did particularly well with birds of prey, observing a good number of rarely seen species, which included King Vulture, Andean Condor, Swallow-tailed, Slender-billed and Double-toothed Kites, Great Black Hawk, Solitary Eagle and White-rumped and Zone-tailed Hawks. Bolivia is an outstanding destination to observe New World parrots, and we observed a total of 22 separate species of parrots, and all of them were seen particularly well. Five of them were Macaws, including two large and exceedingly rare and endemic species of Macaws, the Blue-throated and the Chestnut-fronted, which we saw splendidly well. Throughout the tour we explored a wide variety of habitats, we birded steamy Amazonian lowland rainforest, savanna grasslands, cactus-studded hillsides, elfin cloud forest and the Altiplano, high alpine plateaus, situated above the tree line, dotted with numerous small lakes. Highlights amongst the 470 species of birds we observed, were many and varied, we saw 13 of the 19 endemic birds of Bolivia and here are just some of the many highlights; Huayco Tinamou, White-bellied Nothura, the flightless Titicaca Grebe, Whistling Heron, Rufescent Tiger Heron, Plumbeous Ibis, Hoatzin, Giant Coot, Sungrebe, Red-legged Seriema, Wilson's Phalarope, Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe, Cliff, Grey-hooded and Andean Parakeets, Tucuman Amazon, Tawny-bellied Screech Owl, Andean Swift and no less than 23 species of dazzling hummingbirds.
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