Birding in Medellin Day 2

January 18, 2025

We met Daniel at 6:30 and headed to a mountain on at the south end of town. On the way up, I wanted to stop for a picture of the panaramic view:

While we were stopped on the side of this impossibly steep and busy road , there was a guy bicycling up the road who had a full on coversation with us as he passed by. Machismo!! Ted said it was over 20% of an incline – when we have a 6% incline in the States there is a warning sign – not in Colombia! I didn’t know you could pave a road that steep! It was such a random stop, and yet we saw several awesome birds while all the traffic crawled by us:

It was perhaps 2 miles to the park at the top of the hill and we stopped to bird along the way. Incredible plants, butterflies, and birds to see! We walked about a half mile up the road as well. I may have gotten confused as to which birds I saw when – it’s an exciting show of nature’s wonder. We barely see one bird before the next one pops up.

Personally, I could spend quite a bit of time just scrolling through these images over and over again. By the way, most are from the Cornell University Database, Ebird. For those of you who pay attention to such things, you will note that there are a few species that migrate and Colombia shares with the States.

Some of the names in English are pretty lame, so I have enjoyed the Spanish interpretation more:

Scrub Tanager suggests a boring colored bird, but the Spanish words translates as little Match because the top of the head can look like a match head!

Black and white warbler is descriptive but Little Zebra – “Zebrita” is far more fun

We also saw Oripendula’s building their nest! What a racket! Red-bellied Grackles travel in gangs of 4-5 and act a little like teenagers with nothing constructive to do! MotMot Tailfeathers have a part ot the rachis (spine) that is devoid of barbs (the vains) and they dig a hole in a dirt bank complete with tunnels and a nesting chamber.

On the way down the hill, we experienced one of those “close” traffic events those of us in the States dread. We were going down a very narrow one-lane road and a cargo truck was coming up. There was no backing up or turning around! Two of the truck passengers got out and guided Daniel and the truck driver to pass each other with literal inches to spare. Yikes!!

Next stop was a park in the rich part of Medellin, Poblado. The garden from one of the 80’s drug lords was siezed and given to the people of Medellin as a park. It’s lovely! We saw some great birds here. Some target birds for us and one was a lifer for Daniel. He got so excited and started jumping and dancing and shouting, “De Vida, De Vida!! Or something like that – have I told you my Spanish is terrible?