Saturday, July 7 - The Marvelous Spatuletail, Por Fin!!

interesting fly/bee??

Breakfast this morning was sausage omelets which we had at six AM, loading onto the bus at 6:30. I sat in the elevated back seat with Jack which had great views out the window. All the seats are good except for the seats over the wheel wells if you have to share, which is rare.

We drove up the highway about 20 KM up and down over crests and into a substantially dryer area which was much more inhabited and cut over. We passed through several villages and turned off onto a dirt road winding up along the small río Chido past pastureland to our high point of 8900’ and turned around stopping at several places to bird. We saw purple salvia and many other lovely flowers and a great view of the White-capped Dipper in the river and flying to her football shaped and sized nest!

rio Chido village



blue church at 8800'

Laundry by the river

We drove on another 10 km to the Huembo Research Station, a small preserve on a hillside with areas to view hummingbird feeders and a very nice museum. The station was set up years ago by various international conservation groups to conserve the Marvelous Spatuletail hummingbird which only exists in a limited surrounding area.

Entry gate at the Spatuletail Reserve

lunch by the bus

Spatuletail habitate

Our crew set up the tables and produced a delicious chicken with gravy of raisins and veggies on rice - how they do this way out in the boonies on camp stoves is utterly amazing! We then walked down a short ways to some benches set in a clearing with a view of four hummingbird feeders. All sorts of hummers were zooming in and out of the surrounding shrubs, chasing each other


















away in their very aggressive manners. We saw the wonderfully named Bronzy Incas, Little Woodstars, Violet-fronted Brilliants, Chestnut-breasted Coronets, and the most amazing hummer of all: the Marvelous Spatuletail, a rather small hummer with bright blue above the bill and a green gorget and a tail consisting of two straight spikes in the middle and two extremely long wavy outer spikes tipped with violet rackets! We saw several Spatuletails and were amazed each time!  Note: the Spatuletail is a very small hummer and against the green background, very difficult to photograph - if you want to see what it looks like, go the the first post and click on the YouTube film clip listed there.





We finally tore ourselves away and walked down to the museum which is run by a local farmer who had protected his woodland, thus conserving the hummers and has been recognized by conservators for his efforts and given this position. The museum had several interesting exhibits of hummingbird plants, samples of nests, and drawings of the local natural history by locals.

Kids playing in a dugout canoe on Pomacocha

We started back to the lodge, stopping at Pomacocha (puma lake in Quechua), an artificial lake with a fancy thatch-roof boardwalk and a fairground under construction, to look for the Plumbeous Rail which cooperated very nicely. The bus pulled into the Puerta Puma Hotel grounds where John was greeted with open arms by Oscar the manager who showed us around the lovely landscaped grounds. The hotel looks wonderful and exotic with wildly painted murals, but seems somewhat out of business at the moment. The tour used to stay there before the more conveniently located Owlet Lodge was constructed.

We returned home at 4:30 under suddenly gray and drizzly skies, organized our gear a little for our departure tomorrow and gathered for the List and our final dinner of chicken and cilantro soup followed by pasta with a tasty beef, mushroom and egg sauce. We have to have our suitcases outside our rooms by 4:15 AM tomorrow for the long drive back to Tarapoto. It is pouring rain at the moment - should be an interesting day!