Colombia is a classic destination for birders as it is the country with the longest bird list, with almost 2,000 species having been observed within its borders. This is a result of the great variety of habitats found across the country ranging from the high, inhospitable Andes to rich green valleys, deserts and the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. Colombia was therefore irresistible to us and we decided to make this our major birding trip of 2020. It was organised by Birding Ecotours and we took their ‘The Very Best of Colombia’ tour from 18 February to 4 March. The timing of the tour was particularly fortunate as we got home just 2 weeks before the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed in the UK, which effectively stopped all travel.
Our route over the 19 days differed slightly from that on the map above because of availability of accommodation, but basically consisted of two parts. Firstly we covered a section of the dry, desert Caribbean coast from Barranquilla to Riohacha, with a side trip to the Santa Marta mountains. After flying from Santa Marta to Pereira in the western Andes we then looped through several classic birding areas before finishing in Cali from where we flew home.
Because of the length of our report we’ve split it into two sections so that the pages load more quickly The links below point to the pages dealing with the Caribbean coast and Western Andes sections of the trip:
This was an excellent trip for a couple of bird photographers, with us managing to photograph 419 species of which 201 were lifers. It’s hard to chose highlights from the trip, but very special birds were the endemics in the Santa Marta mountains, the antpittas at Rio Blanco and Hacienda El Bosque, the Buffy Helmetcrest in the Los Nevados National Park and the colourful tanagers at the La Florida reserve just outside Cali. We would highly recommend this Birding Ecotours trip to any birder wishing to visit Colombia and wanting to significantly extend their life list.