A BIG Announcement For a Special Kind of BIG YEAR – & A Trip to Colombia

Ross and I like to joke that we could never permanently live in South Florida simply because it would be too dangerous for us — the flights to South America are so cheap that we’d have a hard time staying in the country. When we saw that we could get ROUND TRIP tickets to Colombia for just $200 it was game over. Once again the absurdly cheap airfare from Miami to South America had Ross quickly planning a trip. When a direct flight can cost so little it’s hard for us to fathom spending a long weekend locally, even if it means missing out on some much needed rest. We’ve been go, go, go, as per our usual and rest is typically not our area of expertise. When places like Colombia are so welcoming, so inexpensive, and so, SO worth exploring, we are happy to do the exact opposite of rest and relax in pursuit of the world’s birds.
And this year I had a little extra incentive to go to Colombia: I’M DOING A BIG YEAR!

In all honesty, a properly planned “big year” would not have me in the Choco region of Colombia because earlier this year we had already visited places like Ecuador and Costa Rica where many birds overlap. I wasn’t actually getting many year birds but Colombia is safe and low risk and lately I care greatly about safety and the aspect of low risk. Why you may ask? Because I am (at the time of this writing) six months pregnant! Yes, this September we are adding another human to the BudgetBirders clan. (!!!!)

So let me clarify: I am not just doing a “big year”, I am doing a “pregnancy big year”, a feat I’m not sure has ever been attempted before. When I found out I was pregnant, sometime at the end of January, the thought of doing a “pregnancy big year” never even crossed my mind. It wasn’t until I realized that I had already visited Costa Rica, Ecuador, California, went on a sea watching cruise up the West Coast of the USA, and then visited Canada, along with my regular, everyday birding on the East Coast down in Florida, and that I’d already accumulated over 600 birds, that I figured why not see how many birds I can see during the nine months I’m pregnant. Obviously the “pregnancy big year” will come to an end in September when I give birth and will only be 9 months long, but until then I’ve been scooping up new birds left and right. Luckily I still have the stamina to keep up with my birding machine of a husband. It won’t be any kind of jaw dropping number I’m sure, and I likely won’t even end the year in the top 100 on eBird, but I think, at least for 2022, I’ll have the highest list of birds seen around the world whilst pregnant! If you know of anyone who has done this before do let me know! (I did ask around on Facebook a little bit and no one seemed to know of anyone else who has attempted a world “pregnancy big year” so perhaps this is a first?)

So even though many birds would overlap, it was off to Colombia, a safe, friendly, easily accessible country full of unique and colorful birds. Our itinerary was short and we would primarily be in the southwest region near the third-largest city in the country, Cali. But before birding around Cali, first it was off to San Cipriano, an isolated little village accessible only by brujitas. There are no roads to San Cipriano, but there is a single old railroad track so the locals built brujitas, these small wooden platforms with seats on top and then attached them to the tracks and power them with a motorbike! The term brujitas literally translates as “little witch” and these things seemingly fly (at rather high speeds) over the railroad tracks. They are quite the ingenious way to travel! (But beware, if another one comes from another direction the brujita with fewer people must take their cart completely off of the tracks to let the other pass!)

San Cipriano is one of those places that is simply fun to visit. If the motorbike-propelled train car to get to the town isn’t enough, the trails along the clearest river I’ve possibly ever seen with no shortage of waterfalls, swimming holes, and birds calling all around is sure to win even the most jaded traveler over. This is actually more of a local tourist spot, rather than an international backpacker one, and people come from all over Colombia to swim in the crystal clear waters of the Danubio River. A short walk up through town takes you along the river and a turn off up one of the side trails into pretty awesome habitat. While tubing down the river is the main attraction, the birdwatching is pretty spectacular and was clearly the reason we came to visit!
We arrived mid-day and fortunately our first afternoon remained overcast and quite birdy so we saw flock after flock. Although we seemed to miss all of our hardest targets, we did see plenty of the more common flock birds and it was nice to finally connect with Tooth-billed Hummingbird, a bird Ross had hoped to see for quite some time. Views of Thicket Antpitta, a bird we missed seeing in Costa Rica despite having it calling oh so close, was a nice cross off the “heard-only” list. Oh, and the Uniform Crake that crossed the trail right next to where we were sitting only moments after we played the call was nice too! We ended the night with stellar views of Choco Poorwill, Choco Screech-owl, Black and White Owl and a delicious fish dinner back at our accommodation, Hotel y Restaurante David. I think I’d have a hard time calling our first half day anything but a success.

But on our second full day we seemed to connect with those aforementioned “hardest targets” when we got excellent views and even passable photos of Berlepsch’s Tinamou crossing a log over a stream to get to the other side just before dark. This was arguably our hardest target and we were quite happy to get photos as well! We walked miles and miles and in the end we connected with all of our most wanted birds: Sapayoa (a bird in its own family), Scarlet and White Tanager, Stub-tailed Antbird, Scarlet-thighed Dacnis, Purple-throated Fruite-crow, and Five-colored Barbet. San Cipriano was a huge success!

After that it was back into Cali to visit a few feeding stations and hike up an awesome trail in the Peñas area. Even at 6+ months pregnant I’m happy to report I can still keep pace and climb over 300m in elevation! The hike was steep but enjoyable and the views were pretty great too! We saw some awesome birds along the hike as well such as Crested Ant-Tanager, Yellow-headed Manakin, and White-capped Dipper.
I ended my short but sweet trip to beautiful Colombia just outside of the town of Buga viewing a large number of open habitat and marshy birds. In one morning of birding we had 92 species of birds in this area, including birds such as Dwarf, Striped, and Little Cuckoos, Grayish Piculet, Horned Screamer, Cinereous Becard, and loads of water birds! Many of these birds were Colombia birds for Ross and his hope of seeing more birds in Colombia than he has in Peru (1,100) was just missed! (He has seen 1,107 species in Colombia!) Unfortunately at 10am we had to call it quits because I needed to head to the airport!

For those interested, our full, aggregated checklist being called somewhat inappropriately on eBird as a “trip report” can be found here. And for anyone wondering, the total cost of this portion of our trip, excluding flight, was $438.30!! Yes, for two people we saw 253 species of birds for less than $500! Not too shabby!

Ross then continued onward for five more days without me to visit far southern Colombia including Pasto, Mocoa, and the Palestina area because I guess he’s doing a big “life” before his whole world changes this fall! I’ll keep everyone updated as the year goes on to see just what my “pregnancy big year” amounts to, but I consider even being able to do all of this a blessing, and all birds seen here on out are just an added bonus!

This birding occurred on 28 May – 31 May 2022