02 Oct 2024
I went on the Chicaque Nature Reserve (Cloud forest) day tour. It was a great day trip, highly recommended for anyone who loves birds! This reserve has native forest that has never been logged.
My guide Leon was extremely passionate and knowledgeable about birds (and Colombia in general), knowing all their calls, identifying them immediately by name (scientific name too), and also letting me know if they were endemic or not.
When he heard a bird, he played a recording of the call of that bird (he has a large collection of bird calls on his iphone) and lured most birds out into the open where we could spot them.
Leon has a digital SRL camera and was able to take some great photos of birds we saw (if they were still and close enough), then sent them to me later through WhatsApp. He also had a telephoto lens on a tripod, to which I connected my iphone and was able to get some great videos of hummingbirds feeding. AND he carried all this gear quite easily in a lovely walk down through the cloud forest. They drive you back up.
Breakfast and lunch provided were very good. All in all, we spotted 50 birds (Leon said it was a good day), which was a lot more than I expected! And the most I have ever seen in one day. So the price of the tour was well worth it.
Some of the highlights of the trip was seeing the Black Inca (Coaligena prunella), twice, and the Golden-bellied Starfrontlet (Coeligena bonapartei) only found in this small pocket of Colombia!
I found that Oswald and Daira were very helpful, easy to communicate with, responding to my emails and WhatsApp messages very quickly so I could decide what to do. I was also very happy to hear that they are very interested in the conservation of the beautiful fauna and flora of Colombia, so a company well worth supporting.