From Salsa to Hummingbird Heaven

The shortest transit of our trip was the one-hour drive from Cali to Araucana Lodge nestled in a palm and bamboo grove of the Western Andes range.  This boutique lodge was established by Christopher and Vivian, American and Colombian, respectively, on a finca originally purchased by his grandparents in the 1950s as a retreat from city life.  Besides the lodge, the finca grows organic vegetables, fruit, flowers, and coffee and employs a small army of locals.  Christopher's father started and still runs a nursery business on site.

The lodge's meals were excellent and the rooms spacious and comfortable.  Among our fellow lodgers was a group of 8 or so hyper-serious birders (we could tell by the long and intense evening debates about what they saw and by they early early departures each morning) and a lower-key trio from northern Ontario with whom we had more relaxed conversations.

The lush interior garden of the Araucana lodge

The view from one of the lodge's common area, where we sat and drank beer and wine each evening recollecting and identifying the birds we saw

With our birding guide, Vivian, co-owner of Araucana

We saw a lot of new (for us) birds walking the finca's gardens and trails and on a sojourn to the famous-among-birders Kilometer 18 area.  Here's a sample of our discoveries - the colors are amazing!

Crimson-rumped toucanet

Orange-bellied (really??) euphoria

White-lined tanager

Colombian chachalaca

Golden tanager

Blue-winged mountain tanager

Safron-crowned tanager

Flame-rumped (no kidding!) tanager

Southern emerald toucanet checking out a suspicious sound from it tree-hole nest

Red-headed barbet (amazing paint job!)

Green honeycreeper

Mountane wood creeper

Masked flowerpiercer (whose piercing helps hummingbirds get to the nectar!)

Golden-naped tanager

Southern lapwings on the wing

Colombia is home to 170 of the world's ~360 species of hummingbird.  Here's a few of the small fraction of that total we saw while at Araucana Lodge:

Steely vented hummingbird

Rufous-tailed hummingbird

White-booted racket-tail

Brown violetear

White-necked jacobin

Long-tailed sylph

Finally, on our way to our next destination, Salento (in the coffee "triangle" of Colombia), we stopped at a botanical gardens and were thrilled especially to see two birds we'd been looking for:

Spectacled owl, a large reclusive raptor that roosts during the day high in the bamboo

Andean motmot - a fierce hunter that eats snakes and the eggs of other birds

Andean motmot, up close

It was cool seeing birds from North America in their southern migratory habitat, like this rose-breasted grosbeak

The botanical gardens also had a butterfly house, where we covorted with all sorts of colorful insects... 

... and some turtles, one of which took a liking to Kate's very cute ankle