Birding Peru June 24-July 9 1995

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Snapshot of Eva & Herman at Machu Picchu Eva & Herman at Machu Picchu (61k)

We spent 5 days in Amazonia:

Snapshot of a thatched launch in the Amazon 14k Snapshot of a thatched house along the bank 47k Blurry frontal snapshot of a yellow-bellied bird perched upright. 13k Snapshot of Herman on the canopy walkway. 28k

We flew Fawcett Airlines from Miami to Iquitos, Peru, which is a navigable port 2000 miles from the mouth of the Amazon. The Amazon is miles wide at Iquitos. Rivers are so wide in the Amazon basin they often form specie barriers for birds: related but separate species are on either side of a river! Today's fact: Bingo is played on every Fawcett flight, just as mattter-of-factly as airline snacks are served.

We travelled down the Amazon and into the Rio Napo for 4 hours, occasionally passing picturesque houses on the bank, to ACEER , site of the canopy walkway. No nails were driven into any tree to construct the marvelous walkway.

We saw both White-tailed & Violaceous Trogans perched in the canopy.

We spent a few days on the coast:

[Snapshot of sealions & seabirds on a rocky island (41k) [Snapshot of the diving seabirds around our open boat] (32k) [Snapshot of flamingos against blue water and sky and yellow sand] (36k) [Snapshot of 3 birders on a boulder-strewn beach] (24k)

We took a 2 hour open-boat trip out of Paracas to the Bellestras Islands, teaming with seabirds & sealions. These islands have been a source of guano fertilizer since pre-Columbian times.

Most of the birds in the first two pictures are Peruvian Boobies. We also had Blue-footed Boobies, 5 Humboldt Penguins (two of them swimming), a surfbird, knockout looks at the Inca Terns and three species of cormorant (Guanay, Red-Legged & Neotropic), Swallow-tailed Gulls (& Gray, Band-tailed & Kelp Gulls), Peruvian Terns, Peruvian Pelicans, White-tufted & Great Grebes...

The third picture does not do justice to the wintering Chilean Flamingoes in a bay on the Paracas Peninsula.

We read in "Birds of the Department of Lima, Peru" by Maria Koepcke that the Seaside Cinclodes likes rocky shores. Driving from Paracas to Lima we saw the above-pictured rocky beach and drove right down to it. Ellie found the Cinclodes on the first boulder we checked!

We spent 6 days in the Andes:

[Snapshot of a llama] (11k) [Snapshot of 3 birders walking RR tracks] (51k) [Snapshot of 3 birders by a lake] (42k) [Snapshot of two Indian women] (12k)

This is a llama. Alpacas look similar. We did not see a vicuna.

The most conspicuous birds in the flocks we had along those RR tracks below Machu Picchu were the beautiful Saffron-Crowned Tanagers. Stauffer pointed out a Dusky-green Oropendola coming out of its pendulous nest.

Herman, Stauffer & Ellie birding an Andean lake. Did I mention that they are all birders, but I am not? Nevertheless I may have loved this trip most of all.

I took the snapshot of the women from the Machu Picchu train window.

Peru Album Supplement
Marooned on a desert!
The Inca Trail--we met exhilerated hikers finishing it

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Wildlife sketches made at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

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Last revised: August 8, 2019