[Posted by Chuck Almdale]

Femi Faminu returns to Colombia, this time staying at Aracuana Lodge in the Cauca Valley, near Cali and southwest of the capital of Bogotá, an area stuffed to the gills with birds. Indeed, the first bird in the film is a hoot-honking (and perhaps duetting) Toucan Barbet, one of only two members in its family Semnornithidae, one of the seven families of Piciformes (Woodpeckers & their pals). Eventually the food appears, and I believe I saw one version of the ubiquitous South American dessert pass by, known to its aficionados as fluffy white stuff.

It’s good to know that Colombia is again safe enough to travel in. When bird field guides for Central and South America began to appear decades ago, permitting travel by birders who were not fully-employed professional ornithologists on collecting trips, one of the first books to appear was one for Colombia. By the time a second, improved guide was published, the various Colombian insurgent groups had appeared, and birders completely avoided Colombia, going instead to nearby Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela, as well as points south, and that field guide languished. Birders have been again visiting Colombia for the past decade or so, and there are several excellent in-country birding tour companies, plus many international birding tour companies visiting regularly.

According to WorldRainForests Colombia now has the highest bird species count in the world: 1,917 species (18.3% of world species), followed closely by Peru at 1,892, Brazil 1,864, Indonesia 1,791 and Ecuador 1,684. Brazil led for a long time, but in recent decades Peru consistently was first. Colombia, most likely, recently took the lead because – safety now restored – researchers (not to mention garden-variety birders like us) could again explore the mountains and rainforests and discover new species.

At the end of the video is her phylogenetically-sequenced trip lists which includes 241 species, 108 non-passerines and 133 passerines. Twenty-six hummers, twenty-six Tyrant Flycatchers, twenty-four Tanagers anyone? Her all-too-brief YouTube photo & video film is as enjoyable as always, despite the notable absence of one of my favorite birds, the startlingly-plumaged Oleaginous Pipromorpha.

If you go here https://www.youtube.com/@femif9792 you can see her other films.