Our day started in the Pacific slope lowlands just outside Mapastapec, in the so-called ‘MicrowaveValley’, where we picked up two key endemic birds – the Rufous-breasted Spinetail, and a pair of White-bellied Chachalacas, that were being surprisingly quiet. Other finds there included a party of noisy Giant Wrens, in addition to the miraculously Giant Wren-like form of the Rufous-naped Wren.
The afternoon was just great, working a steep mountain trail very close to the Guatemalan border near the town of Union Juarez. We had a cracking afternoon on the flanks of Volcan Tacana, with a female Emerald-chinned Hummingbird working a bloom, several Green-throated Mountain-Gems (see photo), and our first Blue-tailed Hummer too. Best performance thought was by a pair of Blue-throated Motmots, a lifebird even for an experienced neotropical birder and dedicated ‘Mexican’ birder present.
A pair of tits (Blue and Great) in a London park 30 years back changed my life; I became a birder, and an obsessive birder by the following weekend. Works like Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book and Richard Millington's A Twitcher's Diary helped in no small part to nurture this in my formative years.
30 years on I am still an avid birder but have also learnt to appreciate other sectors of the natural world, especially frogs and primates in particular, through the undoubted influence of David Attenborough The Great and others. I now work as a full-time professional tour leader for Tropical Birding Tours, and now reside in the Andes of Ecuador. I love my job, sharing birds with people provides every bit of a buzz as a lifebird, which, of course, still creates a wave of excitement every time. I have been lucky enough to see well over 6550 bird species on my travels, which does not make me any more talented than anyone else, just one that is always greedy and impatient for more, which has taken me to all seven continents, and always yearning for that ONE...MORE...B-I-R-D!
I use Swarovski binoculars & scope, & shoot with Canon 7D and Canon 400m f5.6L lens.
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